My 135 Opt-Outs, And An Easy Way For Al-Qaeda To Skip The Scanners
Friends and readers, what a couple of weeks it's been! I drove a $350k supercar to the top of the highest paved road in North America, added four configurations of two new racetracks to my been-there-done-that list in machinery as diverse as a World Racing League '83 Thunderbird and a Pirelli World Challenge GT car, hung out with friends I've known for twenty-four years and some I'd never met before, and spent three days restoring my sanity in what I suppose you could describe as an effort to re-live and forget the past all at once.
In the course of doing all of this, I "opted-out" of the ridiculous TSA full-body scanners a further seven times, bringing my total count in doing so to something like one hundred and thirty-five. I have never cooperated with TSA scanning procedures. When there was no opt-out procedure, I refused to hold still and would hop on one foot, claiming injury. When the opt-out procedure arrived, I chose it immediately and have done so without fail since.
My reasons for doing so, and a few easy ways for people to beat the search procedures entirely, can be found below. I'm not one of the people who think that 9/11 was an inside job, but I have to say that our government never lets a crisis like this go to waste. It never has: the indifferent effects of President Roosevelt's "New Deal" were rendered brilliant in retrospect by the much better job-creation program of Pearl Harbor, while President Clinton rode the Oklahoma City bombing to re-election and his Justice Department received a friendly whitewash of its murderous behavior at Waco and Ruby Ridge as a bonus. This time, with 9/11, the government misused an isolated incident to implement "security" measures that were simultaneously laughable and terrifying. Why did they do it? There is only one reason that makes any sense: to make Americans more docile and accustomed to invasive "security" procedures.
How laughable are those procedures? Well, here's one way to defeat them: Put nitroglycerine in travel-approved bottles, wipe down the outside with alcohol, freeze them (nitro freezes at 55F), and carry them on. Once you're on the plane, you can convert any metal-barreled pen into a firearm, or something fun like a flamethrower, or you can just throw balls of nitro at the armored door of the cockpit and burst it open. Better yet, 3-D print a zip gun that looks like a pen and put it in your luggage, or stuff it up your ass. Hell, just put a zip gun in your ass. Here's one that will work fine and it will easily fit in the ass of anyone who's watched "Glee" at least twice.
Don't worry about the scanners. The scanners are a joke, they have never worked in any measurable fashion, and many of them are currently being used to give prisoners cancer through repeated and unnecessary screenings. I repeat: they don't work, they never have, they are completely unnecessary, they are less useful than metal detectors because they cannot detect metal items that are stuffed up the ass or down your throat or, you know, that place that girls have.
The only purpose of the scanners is to ensure compliance with the scanners. The only reason for the scanners is to teach you that you should walk through the scanners. Read those two sentences until you understand them. No attack on America has ever been stopped by the scanners. There is no reason for the scanners except training Americans to unthinkingly surrender their rights.
I oppose the scanners for that reason and that reason alone. I believe they are likely to be medically harmful, despite what the TSA says, but that is not why I refuse to be scanned. Nor do I refuse to be scanned because I am unwilling to be photographed nude. Trust me, I don't care if you see me naked or not. Typically, I like to play the guitar for someone before I let them see me naked, but if we have to do it the other way around, that's fine with me. I've been in the hospital plenty of times, I've been in jail, the horse is way out of the barn when it comes to my privacy and modesty.
No, I oppose the scanners because I oppose their purpose. I oppose the people who put them there; they are my enemies. I oppose the system that permitted it to happen; that system is treasonous and should be destroyed. I oppose the people who work in the operation of those scanners: they are no better, morally speaking, than the Kapos. Perhaps they are worse, because if you quit the TSA they don't throw you in a gas chamber. I oppose everyone and anyone who would search, scan, spy on, molest, assail, and violate the boundaries of American citizens. To me, the primary difference between John Pistole and Osama bin Laden is that bin Laden was forthright about his desire to subjugate the American people to his will.
The purpose of the TSA, the purpose of the scanners, is to defeat Americans, not defeat the so-called Islamic extremists. We know this because no Islamic extremist has yet been defeated by the TSA but thousands of disabled people, nursing mothers, frightened children, mentally handicapped people, and normal citizens have been humiliated, stripped, assaulted, molested, intimidated, and subjugated by the TSA. The only victims of the TSA are Americans, period, point blank.
The good news is that the foundation beneath the TSA is shaky. We know this is the case because they are working like hell to divide and conquer Americans with the Pre-Check and CLEAR programs. Both of these programs allow travelers to return to 1975 levels of "security" in exchange for their further submission to the government. The only purpose of the programs is to exchange hassle for additional submission. When you apply for Pre-Check or CLEAR, you are effectively co-signing the TSA's war on the American people by volunteering additional information about yourself in exchange for a break. In other words, you're a snitch, a punk, a traitor. The purpose of Pre-Check and CLEAR is to train you that you have to apply for special favors just to be treated like a decent person. To crystallize in your mind that the default status of the American citizen is to be stripped, photographed, molested, and invaded and that you can become one of the elect by begging for an exemption to this.
A friend of mine noted the other day that Al-Qaeda could easily get CLEAR status for someone by flying them first class twenty times and then having them apply. CLEAR and Pre-Check, of course, are particularly biased towards people who fly first class, because their opinion of the TSA is more likely to carry weight somewhere outside the airport. I agreed with him. He then said that the only reason they, Al-Qaeda, haven't is because they don't care to do so. I agreed with him again.
Use of the scanners is decreasing, slowly but surely, as TSA holds out exemption from them as a piece of candy to be given to the subservient. Are you a child? You don't have to go into the scanners. After all, no child has ever carried a bomb anywhere. Are you the parent of a child? You also get to skip the scanners, because no parent anywhere has ever sacrificed themselves or their children for a political ideal. Are you old? You can skip them, because old people never do anything rash.
The most recent exemption, which I've witnessed twice in the past week, boggles the mind. If you are traveling with an emotional comfort dog, you can skip the scanner. That's right. Carry a dog, skip the scanner. This is where we are as a country: we value the emotional comfort of an emotional comfort dog over the safety of Americans on a plane. Of course, since the scanners are just there for theater, it doesn't really matter if you're carrying a dog or not, they're useless and the metal detector is to be preferred for all reasons that are grounded in reality --- but what does this say about the ridiculousness of the TSA? Do they really think that Al-Qaeda can't get their hands on a small-breed dog?
I'm certain the scanners will eventually disappear. The question is why they will disappear: because Americans demand an end to the stupidity and the security theater, or because everybody who travels begs for an indulgence back to the metal detector? If the latter happens, then the TSA can be fairly said to have won, because we will have implicitly accepted their right to scan, even if they don't exercise it at this precise moment. That would be a loss for Americans.
With that said --- as a white male with no dogs, child companions, or desire to kneel before the TSA, I imagine they'll have to keep the scanners around for a long time, just for me. So I can opt out, now until eternity, my little way of saying that my opinion of what it means to be an American differs from theirs, and that mine is correct. O beautiful, for spacious skies.