I'm looking through you

I'm pretty sure that it's not the correct quote nor the meaning of the correct quote, but it is hard not to think these days that "the media is the message", in that many of the stories that they dwell upon endlessly are basically the stories that only they feel the need to dwell upon endlessly. The shoe bomber sequel is perhaps the most recent example, in that the media is in a panic, Republican operatives are having a field day making attacks that they themselves would have called treasonous way back when in 2001 when Richard Reid tried the same exact thing, and honestly I'm not sure if anyone else really cares. By this point, if you haven't figured out that much of airline security is theater designed to make us feel safe, learn to love Teh Google, as there are 63,000 hits that can basically go over the concept for us. No, I think we all realize to some extent that while the government is good at retroactively preventing attacks that have already been attempted, there is inevitably a chance that someone will come up with a new way to attack a plane.

Quick aside: Like Kevin Drum in the following link, I think it is true that the fact al Qaeda always attacks planes and/or buses is a sign of weakness. Since 9/11, Afghan militants, Filipino militants, several African generals, and a bunch of other groups have figured out clever ways to slaughter the innocent. Al Qaeda likes to attack planes using shoes and underpants. They've tried twice in a decade, and failed both times, with the gravest injury being to the crotch of the most recent attempted bomber. As Nate Silver points out, airline travel is not just safe, it's ridiculously safe:

Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

If you are content leaving home without a lightning rod in your pocket, you should probably feel ok to fly. Honestly, I think people already know this, and the media freakout is basically an orchestrated show for the right wing to land free potshots and the hyperventilators to show how panicked all the rest of us should be. Remember during the past decade, of course, when across America the government and media hypervintilated about terrorism and New Yorkers, the people hit hardest and most likely tobe hit again, almost universally said "Al Qaeda? Fuhgeddaboutit. Fuck 'em." and managed to live life while small midwestern city governments built concrete fortifications around obscure county buildings.

The situation is so bad that David Brooks of the NYT is being held up as a voice of reason for his New Year's column. While agreeing in part with him, I think he misses a key point:

Resilient societies have a level-headed understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.

But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.

We do have a resilient society, by and large. The outraged calls and demands are a product of the media, by the media, and for the media. The rest of us were singing Auld Lang Syne badly, watching football, and other similar pursuits.

That said, while I think those calling for random insulting ways to racially profile Muslims really have no grasp of what drives a lot of the hatred of the US, I have to say that the proposal to put in many more full body scanners in airports doesn't really bother me. Even the two year old is starting to learn the names for various parts of herself, and I hope it comes as no surprise that there really aren't that many variations in all our parts. To put it mildly, even though many of us spend way to much time obsessing over penises and boobies, I'm pretty sure that after an airline scan technician looks at a few hundred, most of the prurient thrill will be gone. Your first glimpse of unobscured anatomy is a thrill, the thousandth, not so much. If this is what it takes to make a few people feel better, I can live with it, as the idea of just having everyone fly naked is hampered by sanitary and climate control issues. For those worried about privacy, the big threat is not a full-body scan, it's google if you've ever posted a single detail about your life on the internet, or if someone else has (hint: someone else has, trust me). Between google, facebook, and all the other easily searchable ways to find out info about people, our private lives are rarely private these days. If you haven't done so recently, try googling yourself. The only hope any of us has for anonymity these days is not a high level of privacy, but rather a common name. Matthew Smith, you are in luck. Me, somewhat, as there are a few of me and my googlegangers to obscure exactly who is who and who did what. In light of this, I just have trouble getting worked up about the idea of an airline screener staring at the outline of my genitalia for three seconds in a day full of body after same generic body.

Is such a step necessary to feel safe at the airport? Not at all! Driving in snow is a vastly bigger risk than a flight, and the biggest fear I have of air travel is having to sleep overnight in some of the country's lovely connecting airports after the restaurants have closed. Still, it's just not a big deal, and if it helps us as a society to get over some of our bizarre body issues, all the better. In the end, our genitals are our own, but they are basically like half of everyone else's too.

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