Everyone should have realized it was security theater when nobody was asked to remove their underwear after the underwear bomber.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab
Next up is to ditch the fluid restrictions.
“I’m sorry, that’s too much fluid, here, let me dispose of it right next to this massive line of people in case it has an explosive, chemical, or biological component…”
Cool, end the whole TSA next
Honestly, if it takes the Trump administration to get rid of pointless security theater policies like this that have never actually accomplished anything or stopped an actual attack, I’ll take it as a win. Silver linings and all that. Even a broken clock is occasionally correct, even if only for a second.
I do think Trump’s weird immunity to consequences (if this was fiction, I’d call it plot armor) is a factor in this. Everybody in authority had to know it was pointless security theater from the beginning, but being seen as reducing protection from terrorism in any way politically dangerous.
I think it’s less about politics and more about the way the US handles things in general.
We don’t take preventative steps, even to problems we can see coming a mile away. We don’t discuss alternatives. We pretend the issues don’t exist until we can’t pretend the issues don’t exist any more. Then, after a few rounds of running around like our hair was on fire while trying to convince people “Nobody could have seen this coming!”, we react. And by “react”, I mean grossly over-react and enact the first knee-jerk reaction we can think of regardless of whether it actually solves the problem, and even if it just ends up making the problem worse. And then it’s all about keeping up the security theater.
It’s the American way.
