Succumbing

[rinue]

"When the country falls into chaos, patriotism is born."
--Tao te Ching

What doesn't surprise me but does, I suppose, unnerve me, is the general consensus that this was an act of war and the overriding astonishment that this sort of thing could happen in America. "We're not safe anymore!" people exclaim.

Of course we're not. We never were. "Find the security holes" is a game I've played ever since childhood. And I've never agreed that most terrorists want to get out alive, which is an assumption upon which most deterrence methods are based.

There will always be a lunatic fringe. You will never be able to predict them. Yes, it's reassuring to believe that everything is planned by large shadow organizations, but that isn't really where the danger lies.

So we're not safe. Nobody is. Life isn't safe.

Live.

Comments

Find the Holes

[ailei.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Jason and I played this game every time we went through an airport. "Well, I could easily have just got a glock through there, that woman was an idiot." It used to make us feel *ever* so safe. Smell the sarcasm? The only condolence we ever gave ourselves was that if we were ever on a flight getting hijacked, we would certainly make it as hard on them as humanly possible. Or, even better...the plastique game. It's a little harder now with sniffers and swabs, but it's still way too easy to line a cell phone with enough c4 to put a hole through the side of a plane and still leave it intact enough to turn on. I actually own an ABS knife that fits into the handle of a comb. I could walk on any plane in the US with it. Of course, I have it because I used to work in an office building with really lax parking deck security, but if *I* could do it, who else could, too? The kevlar knives they used wouldn't show up on metal detectors, and they are slim enough that only a very thorough and invasive pat-down would find them. They'll continue to be a threat, and outlawing them will do exactly no good, of course. These people didn't order theirs' from United Cutlery, I guarantee you.

Wow, look at me go. I so missed my calling.