I think part of that is the fact that the TSA is so bad at their jobs that it feels like a joke going through it. The worst part is that they know that they are a joke -- they freely admit that they miss between 70%-80% of weapons passing through.
So to my thinking it isn't even the dystopian aspect of big brother watching and prodding, it's the further disgust of big brother separating the haves and have nots. Some animals are more equal than others.
And here's the kicker, you can get TSA pre by paying for premium seats. At this point having non-pre passengers having to take their laptops, shoes and jackets off is just a way to inconvenience us and has nothing to do with security.
Don't forget that getting TSA Pre involves an in-person background check interview (complete with fingerprinting). There's no escape; you just get to decide if you want to pay to have a "not a criminal" permanent file created for you, or be treated like a criminal for free, repeatedly and in small doses.
Growing up without something really makes you not know what you're missing; if you don't know what you're missing, it won't feel so awful when you don't have it.
The problem with privacy is not that people try to take it away. It's that most people don't care.
A tiger born in a cage who experiences nothing but being fed every now will behave and feel very much worse than a free one. Children who were never treated with respect and never saw anyone else treated with respect don't suffer less harm in their development just because they don't know the difference.
I think at some very basic level, privacy is an obligatory requirement of becoming an individual person. An important part of the person grows when reflecting, when being alone with one's conscience, that's just as necessary as facing others. If you get all of either and none of the other, there's going to be a price.
Or take lead for example, if we increased our average exposure by a lot, that wouldn't mean that it now doesn't damage our central nervous system and organs anymore, not even for those who never knew lower levels of exposure. You can have the negative consequences without awareness of what is going on, and without any means to make it better.
A lot of the pressures already get relieved by consumerism at best, cruelty towards victims and identification with abusers at worst -- instead of being channeled towards the causes, it gets channeled towards what will make it worse. I think the rock bottom of that would a world unrecognizable even to Edgar Allan Poe.
Why no one set off a bomb in a TSA cattle line I cannot understand. USA built a perfect target. I assume the TSA is some sort of jobs program but I cannot understand who benefits from it.
Those contract workers come from giant firms like Aramark.
Yeah, it feels really different.