The American Dream

I. Recently, TSA began subjecting passengers to "enhanced" pat-downs. I took them up on the free massage offer but was quite disappointed by the service. One of the two gropers was civil, the other surly. The massage was quite superficial, without proper warm-up of the muscles or a "happy end". Massage parlors near truck stops don't have to worry about TSA competition just yet. Their performance wasn't worth the $35 "security fee" added to the ticket price or the ten minutes of my time.

The crotch-sniffers involved didn't have very high morale. One of them insisted on explaining to me that they were trying to observe proprieties. Their self-justification wasn't any more interesting or relevant than the motives of leg-humping dogs. I got an impression that the TSA creatures understand well just how undignified, ridiculous and useless their work is. They may view it as preferable to being on the dole, though many taxpayers would happily pay them to just stay home.

I didn't have to deal with as much idiocy when leaving the USSR in 1989 from a Leningrad airport. Had the Soviets done this, we would have viewed it as an outrageous example of totalitarian harassment. When our own federales do it, it's supposed to make foreigners even more "envious of our freedoms". The insistence on official documents -- equivalents of internal passports -- for travel is another similarity to the USSR. Not a surprise from the agency that treats "1984" as an instruction manual rather than a dystopian cautionary tale. Explaining our recent acquiescence to indignities to my foreign friends is becoming awkward. What do I tell to people accustomed to travel without physical molestation by fast food rejects?

II. The outrageous behavior of TSA isn't yet a cause for worry. At this time, parents are still not able to explain to their kids why certain strangers are allowed to touch the whole family inappropriately. So long as the outrage lasts, we have hope for an eventual solution.

When the outrage wanes and gives place to apathy, resignation and habituation, then we will be in trouble for real. To a European or an American boarding a ship or a train in 1910, the quiet surrender to TSA and their DHS backers would have been unthinkable. A civilized person could travel armed, unmolested and treated with courtesy. Today, we practice submission rituals no different from ritual mounting among baboons.

In today's land of the free, the debate centers on whether nudo-scans or intimate groping by uniformed strangers is a lesser evil. Rosa Parks objected to something so comparatively benign as sitting in the back of a bus...I wonder how she would have reacted to blue-gloved hands under her skirt. The indignities of racism have abated...the indignities of being an American traveler are just starting. What would it take to end them -- court decisions, airline bankruptcies or direct pressure on individual perpetrators and their bosses?

III. American Dream
When we came to these shores of Promise
We were given a new lease on life
And welcomed newfound freedom
With tears in our eyes

But we noticed with passing years
The rank, familiar smell
Of government domination
Turning paradise into hell

Papers required for travel
And permits for everything
Controlling on many levels
What once was the American dream

Sure, the past wasn't truly perfect
And today is not so bad
But the future will be a horror
Unless we reverse this trend

Reverse it, resist, but truly
Protesting is not enough
Beauraucrats don't care
We argue and they just laugh

When we came to these shores of Freedom
We ran from unequal fights
But the front has caught up with us here
We ran out of havens for flight

It's the last, lonely line of trenches
And the choices are do or die
We could live as serfs, I am sure
But who would want such a life?

What have you done this year?
This month? Or even today?
Not time for open warfare
But long past for clandestine raids

Give one inch and they will take miles
So allow them nothing at all
Give them neither votes nor money
Deny your approval, walk tall

Let the feds be like dogs in the wild
Surrounded by wolves
Let them bark, posture and growl
Then help their bodies cool

It may be too early to shoot them
But leave them out in the cold
Deny them your business and company
Like forefather had done of old

Boycott any foul creature
That denies your freedom and lies
That all their crass impositions
Are for the betterment of our lives

Being a klansman is held by most
In very low esteem
TSA should be viewed also
As stupid, useless and mean

Let them cry, unheard in the wilderness
Give neither shelter nor aid
They already spread too much fear
It's now their turn to be afraid

Oleg Volk