Vexed!

George Will has found another indication that—well, here he quotes Bill Buckley, who was inconvenienced one day by having to endure a train commute during which he suffered a long delay:

“Buckley, who was gifted at discerning the metaphysical significance of the quotidian, thought that he saw civilization tottering on its pedestal. He was not mistaken:

‘It isn't just the commuters, whom we have come to visualize as a supine breed who have got onto the trick of suspending their sensory faculties twice a day [they probably read a book or the newspaper] while they submit to the creeping dissolution of the railroad industry. It isn't just they who have given up trying to rectify irrational vexation. It is the American people everywhere.’”

Okay, a long delay on the train is now civilization tottering on its pedestal. What would George or Bill have done to rectify these irrational vexations? Would they have lobbied the government to invest more money in infrastructure? Insist that government get completely out of the mass transportation business so it can be privatized and run more efficiently by private enterprise? Buy a helicopter (the latter probably being the only real solution to this problem and available only to the super-rich, so I’m going with 3)?

George doesn’t say. He just knows he’s vexed.

Of course, George is writing today about the invasive new pat-down procedures at airports for those who refuse to go through the full body scan which allows screeners to see through our clothes.

First of all I’d like to say, it’s finally arrived! The x-ray glasses that allow me to see through people’s clothes, advertized in all the comic books and reputable periodicals like Mad Magazines I read as a kid, are here! Oh, how I dreamed of being able to look through the clothes of all my little female classmates in junior high school. (In grammar school I was still dreaming mostly about a new bike. In high school, well, in high school my sexual fantasies had evolved in directions I’m not yet prepared to discuss publically.)

Me, I can’t say about the pat downs. Apparently the threat of carrying on explosive devices taped to your penis or hidden in a lady’s butt crack is real, so the TSA is doing what it thinks necessary to keep us safe. Let’s face it: if someone gets through and brings down a plane, it won’t be a sign of civilization tottering, it will be just one more example of the monumental incompetence of the Obama administration. Remember, Bush kept us safe, at least if you’re not in the military serving in Afghanistan or Iraq, and he did it through a few noninvasive ways such as tapping our phones, screening our email, and waterboarding the occasional actual suspect.

The solution to the airport vexation, though, is obvious in three parts: get in the boarding line and either walk through the scanner or let some stranger of the same sex (damn it!) pat you down; turn around and walk away from the security checkpoint and stay home for Thanksgiving; or charter your own plane.

Again, for George, I’m going for 3. I'm staying home anyway.

For another perspective on the subject, Kathleen Parker today is more amusing and instructive than Will while being far less popinjay. And I'm with her, really. I'd rather fly and assume the small risk that another passenger has mastered the technology challenge of the TNT butt plug than have a complete stranger with no medical training check me for hernias and prostate cancer (although I can get a note from my doctor testifying that both have been remedied.)

But that's the trade off, and interestingly, the same people who found the Bush-era concessions to security to be reasonable and necessary find the same errors on the side of safety to be excessive under Obama. Something about black men with Muslim names wanting to put their hands on our white women, I suppose.