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Flickr photo by rofl indy
Sheer hysteria or the illusion of hysteria dominates the conversation in the media right now.
The public is being subject to fear that those in power hope will trickle-down and influence Americans as they continue to grapple with the thought that a bomber carried explosives in his underwear on to an airplane.
Americans continue to be fed moving images of a political freak show starring Republicans who if you didn't know better would lead you to think they were drawing from a secret admiration of Vlad the Impaler as they suggest what should be done to the underwear bomber, chide Obama for what measures he has taken similar to Bush that weren't as draconian as the party wishes they would have been, and fan the flames of fear that the terrorist industrial-complex wish to keep alive so they can sell more body scanners to airports around the nation and the world.
Americans continue to be fed less than satisfying details on the future as Democrats and Obama push an expansion of detection procedures and terror watch lists as a pragmatic way forward or a compromise between the insanity, which will put greenbacks in the pockets of security industry lobbyists who constantly go in and out of the revolving door of Congress, and the unpleasant sanity of wholly rejecting the homeland security complex (a complex which must bring joy and delight to members of al Qaeda cells all over the world).
The tip of the iceberg is that Americans in airports are now becoming engulfed in situations that make them feel like they are in an Indian marketplace after a school shooting. Except, it doesn't take them long to figure out that there really wasn't any shooting at all. Nobody died. The reason why everything has been brought to a standstill really is unexplainable.
Americans do not stop to think of how security corporations are pleased that the political climate of hysteria is being replenished.
But, the climate isn't just hysterical. It's satirical. It's a farce of epic proportions.
Fawlty Airports
Pick out the stories that you think have and have not happened since the underwear bomber failed to bring down America with his condom bomb of mass destruction:
-Joan Rivers deemed a danger to national security, a man detained on a plane for unruly behavior or spending too much time in the bathroom
-A German family's vacation canceled after the father in the family joked about having explosives in his underwear
-An airport in Newark shut down after a man wandered the wrong way through a checkpoint
-A man late for his flight opts to take all of his clothes off and go through security nude to hopefully ensure that he won't be subject to a gratuitous search that will lead him to miss his flight or be stalled by a Nigerian or Muslim in line in front of him
-And, a California airport experiences a scare as five Gatorade bottles carrying honey are discovered and the bag the contents are being carried in test positive for TNT and two TSA agents open one of the bottles and become nauseated from the fumes and are both treated and released from a local hospital
