Of all the farfetched explanations...

of why Americans should support the latest TSA security theatrics, this is absolutely the silliest I have read yet*:

It reminds me of the time I spent playing war games with the Marines in Quantico, Va. Upon returning to the barracks after spending an entire night in the woods, an officer ordered us Naval Academy midshipman to strip naked and line up in the hall for inspection.

He didn't say why. And there wasn't an "opt out" provision.

After lining up, he methodically walked down the line with a bottle of Aqua Velva after-shave and cotton balls in his hand, which he used to extract all the ticks that had burrowed themselves in us during our time in the woods.

I keep thinking about that tick

There probably would have been a more sensitive way to do that, but the indignity of the situation was far outweighed for me by the tick that was removed from my rear end.

Now if groping children, nuns, and those whose medical conditions already necessarily exposes them to a high level of radiation risk, makes you feel more secure personally, say so. It's irrational, but may be truly felt.

But the tick story? (Likely a woodtick*, and a non-fatal Lyme disease carrying one, at that?) I don't buy it, as proof of anything.

The military might have chosen to line up it's conscripts nekkid-- rather than permitting them to self examine (yep, with mirrors, you can even check your own backsides) or buddy up to check each other -- but civilians are permitted to question such requests a bit more. (not at the airport with low-level workers, but here in print, on blogs and in newspaper columns, of course.)

Otherwise,
haven't the terrorists won?
We're alive, but we're relying on the government in all aspects of our lives to keep us safe ... except when they fail, and they've conditioned us to passively accept the theater, and not think for ourselves just how "safe and secure" this is really keeping us...



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* Don't most American youngsters learn to perform tick checks after their first hunting trips at age 12 -- sans Aqua Velvet or cotton balls; tweezers, if needed, and Bic in hand? -- or as soon as you begin hiking off path in the woods?

An Army of One, or a nekkid gauntlet needed to protect from those potentially deadly ticks? I suspect the military here was teaching those Naval midshipmen something besides the most simple, tick-check procedures in that exercise...

Just like this security theater is perhaps designed to teach Americans something too, more than just how to most effectively and efficiently screen out potential terrorists. And if civilians, like the writer here, feel more secure...


** And why do I suspect Mr. Cerabino perhaps had that "saved from a deadly tick, by intimate (buttocks open?) inspection" story, all queued up for a defense of why civilians just can't understand the military's need for DADT discrimination?