Safe at Home
Easily the best thing about working from home is that there’s no one here to keep me safe. When I leave, there are so many people whose livelihoods revolve around reminding me they’re keeping me safe that I just wanna have a tantrum. Safety is a lie that has turned so many of us into paranoids and morphed the very notion of precaution into a joke.
I’ve visited prisons and schools and there’s not a material difference in what it takes to get in to one as a visitor versus the other. When I was a beat reporter, I had a collection of security mugshots from school visits. There was a fad earlier this century wherein people had to have their pictures taken before visiting a classroom. You would hand over your drivers license, type your name, and pose.
Before long, they would print a grainy likeness out on a sticker that was half fax paper and half register tape. I always kept the resulting sticker because the photo was me with a scrunched-up face and the name Osama bin Laden printed beneath it. No one ever noticed. Not once.
I don’t mind the safety industrial complex so much as I hate the fact that it encourages bad theater, often performed by (literal and figurative) bad actors. School shootings are up since the “people” in school administration adopted the photo safety protocol, though I’m not saying it’s causal. I am saying that we should try the cretins who sold this useless measure to the schools as war profiteers.
For actual security, I like to use the Jeff Goldblum test. In the movie Jurassic Park, he talks about using power that you haven’t earned. The problem is, you don’t respect power you haven’t earned and don’t understand what it really can do.
We live in a world where a work-a-day joe from the TSA is elevated to autocrat because they were literally not qualified for higher-skilled labor. How does that make anyone feel safer?
I want to say that I have no plans to launch a terror attack on the Cape May/Lewes Ferry, which takes people between those cities in New Jersey and Delaware respectively. I also don’t endorse or suggest an attack of that kind.
But.
Every time I have to open my luggage so a Delaware Bay Authority employee can rifle through my things, I want to remind them that I could fill my suitcase with C-4, or automatic weapons, or high-grade drugs or literally ANYTHING that would fit, and leave it in the trunk of my car. No one would know or care.
It started after 9/11, when fear and cowardice reigned. Before that, you only had to go through metal detectors at schools in bad neighborhoods. And then only if you were a student. This week, I’ve stood for pat-downs to get on a ferry and to get into a baseball game.
I’d forgotten why I stopped taking the ferry. I used to take it a lot. I remember the first time I stood in line, waiting for them to hand-search the bags of every passenger as they waved car after truck after RV through and onto the ferry.
It’s embarrassing.
What’s more embarrassing, though, is we’ve lost the ability to speak truth to power. That’s not right. We’ve lost the ability to speak truth to faux power. I can tell the president what I really think; I can call “Congressperson” Andy Harris a boob. What I can’t do is offend the sensibilities of an hourly employee pretending to keep me safe.
In an equitable world, I could encourage the security people to laugh at the absurdity of searching a bag that they wouldn’t search if it were hidden in one of the hundred cars already on the ferry.
As it stands, under the “no terrorism jokes allowed” law, I’d be arrested for pointing out how dumb searching only the foot passengers was. It’s bananas that they pretend they’re providing security and insist we pretend along with them. It’s like dealing with toddlers, excepted dumber and less cute.
Sometimes the metal detector breaks down and then there’s just no security that day. Any highly motivated terrorist who was too cheap to purchase a car ticket really would just have to be patient.
As I got off the ferry on the other side, I dithered about whether to take a photo of the security apparatus and decided I didn’t need the hassle. I did linger, though, and watched as a harried, sweaty man made his way toward security.
He held up a bag and the security guard said, “You just got off the last ferry, right?” The man nodded and was waved through as the metal detector went off.
He clearly had run ashore, picked up a package, and was heading back to Cape May. I don’t know how that made him less suspicious, or less likely to be a smuggler or terrorist, but public safety relies primarily on a security guard’s mood.
If the security guy wasn’t having a jovial, end-of-shift conversation with the trash guy. If, say, he just found out that his relief wasn’t coming and he was going to be two hours late getting home, maybe that man poses more of a threat. Maybe he stands there as the security professional riffles through his metallic-purple birthday present bag.
Instead, the guard felt magnanimous and got (and probably expected) a thanks. Had the birthday bag guy said, “Thanks for ignoring security protocols and letting me board unmolested,” no one would have laughed. Which is too bad, because that would be funny as hell. I might even have contributed to his defense fund after they sent him to Guantanamo.
For me, the soul-crushing depression comes from understanding how little it matters. This game is over, and we’ve lost. We will always let them frisk us whenever they want because the alternative is not getting to fly, or ride, or sail.
We empty our pockets when we’re told because it is just too exhausting to do otherwise. We don’t feel safer after being searched. Plus, we know we’re just a few days away from the next mass shooting.
I’ve decided to think of my acquiescence as a superstition. That’s how I get by now. Like putting money in the plate at church to get your prayers amplified, or throwing change in a fountain to help your wish come true, maybe emptying our pockets and standing for frisks makes us feel like when the next mass shooting occurs, we’ll be elsewhere. For me, it’s a perverse ritual to keep away the violence spirits.
Anyway, that’s my new approach. The next time a grown man grabs my genitals as a display of a safe and thorough security protocol/punishment for having a comb in my pocket, I’ll consider it an offering to appease the god of violence.
Keep the faith,
Tony
Postscript
If you want to have a conversation about this story, feel free to visit the story chat or comment below.
By the way, I did have a tiny tantrum and released my anti-airline screed as a podcast. I want to do these more regularly, but I’m going to have to wait until the spirit moves me.
Quick commercial, joining Substack is free. In fact, if you got this in your email, you’ve already joined. If you’re social mediaed-out, you should scroll through and see if there are any other Substacks you like. I read this and wanted to share.
Finally, I’m getting in the habit of posting one or two of these each week. The latest is below, but you can find them all here.
TR