The bug up my nose this month is airport security.
This summer, my wife and I returned to the USA to attend my niece's wedding in Kankakee, Illinois. (Who can? We can. Kankakee can!) This was not the first time we've traveled by air since 9/11. We were well aware that dangerous implements like finger-nail files, nail-clippers and tweezers should not be packed in our carry-on bags. (I'd learned my lesson when I had the unmitigated audacity to forget to remove a pair of tiny, foldable moustache scissors from my carry-on before boarding an inter-island flight from Oahu to Maui. The security guards bristled to full-readiness. 'Stand back, sir.' Hands instinctively went to weapons. The security guard located and removed the scissors from my bag, unfolded them ceremoniously, casting her most withering looks of incrimination my way. She held up the miniscule blades of the offending personal grooming device scornfully, shaking them at me in accusation. Thank goodness we'd left our C-4 and detonators behind.)
I know. I've heard the 'better safe than sorry' rationale about the new security measures. I haven't been living under a rock. (Like some I could mention.) But my innate sense of personal grievance kicks in while I'm waiting in a queue to be processed like a criminal, simply because I want to board an aircraft. Some deranged loony once tried to set his Adidas on fire and now everybody, even 80-year-old Japanese grandmas in sensible shoes, have to offer up proof by partial strip-search that they're not up to the same suicidal insanity. I saw one well-heeled business traveler in a thousand-dollar suit subjected to the humiliation of standing in a Plexiglas isolation booth awaiting further screening because his high-priced Cole-Haan wing-tips had steel shanks. What nonsense!
The inconvenience of long waits in cattle-lines is one thing. (I can never resist but to give a long 'moo-o-o' at least once when I'm in line. I'd bleat like a sheep but that's one barnyard impression I've never mastered.) Likewise, the potential for public humiliation should one be so rash as to wear well-cobbled footwear like the aforementioned businessman is not my real concern. I sense that Americans, in particular, are surrendering themselves and their personal freedom to the notion that the government has the right to impose such processing on its citizens. I also sense that many Americans undergo these security measures with a sense of patriotism and pride that their government is 'doing all it can in the war against terror'. I also sense that processing like this in airports is only one step from such 'stop-and-search' stations on American city streets. What is the constitutionality of such security measures? Surely, it can be seen that civil liberties are being eroded at an increasing rate.
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