Fox Two

A regular reader will recall that we live in a crisis and complacency America.

Today? Crisis!

A week or so after a failed airline bombing we're again in crisis mode after a few years of complacency. Terror in the skies! Every drunk is now a hostile! Every enthusiastic Chinese American looking to score points with his girlfriend is now a "defiant trespasser!"

F-15's escorted a plane yesterday to "safety," due to some drunk passenger who wouldn't give up his throne in the lavatory. Really? What exactly is the purpose of scrambling jets?

Perhaps the military could first ascertain who exactly is in the cockpit through visual inspection. Pilots? A drunk who battered his way into the cockpit? Of course, the obvious question becomes whether the military would intentionally down a commercial aircraft if it became clear that a "hostile" had commandeered it. Wouldn't that be something, huh? Some guy from Ames, Iowa works hard in high school, graduates from the Air Force Academy, gets trained as a fighter pilot and lives with the memory of killing 237 civilians, 7 crewmembers and 1 inebriated "hostile" after an order to disable the aircraft with an AIM-9 sidewinder.

I am so glad I'm not traveling anytime soon. I am not one to take airport security well. Before it was mandatory to remove footwear, I didn't. I emphatically didn't, actually, because it was fucking stupid, which always led to a secondary screening. Didn't bother me. In fact, it shouldn't bother you either, even if I'm holding up the show. That I received a secondary screening means that I'm even safer to all passengers. Don't you feel safer when others get their shit rifled through and get their shoes sniffed for explosives residue? You should, because that's the whole point of airport security -- to provide the illusion of safety. The more others are searched, the safer you feel. The more you are searched, the more aggravated you get.

Regardless, from my chair here I find it quite humorous to watch the reactions of my America, from military escorts, evacuations due to unknown smells, crackdowns due to some .22 bullets rolling around in the cabin, to security lockdowns of whole terminals...Americans over reacting because the time for complacency has passed and crisis has taken over.