Swanson: Why Airports Are So Horrible
Why Airports Are So Horrible
In a world full of starvation, illness, war, and other horrors, the problems with airports are minor, or we wouldn’t go near airports. (I only go near them if I think it can help address the world’s major problems.) Most of airports’ shortcomings are familiar: air travel does severe damage to the Earth’s climate, and in many cases is less convenient and even slower than train travel but has been made dramatically less expensive. And don’t get me started on the food. “Inconvenience” is not, however, the word for what goes on in airports. A better name for it might be ritual degradation.
People line up, expose the contents of their possessions, allow themselves to be scanned and patted and virtually stripped, stand and answer questions about their activities, and generally follow orders from uniformed personnel whose job it is to suspect them of being mass-murderers. Sometimes these personnel are openly mean and nasty about it (and sometimes it leads to serious harassment, imprisonment, or deportation, not to mention preventing free movement by millions of people lacking the proper documents), but usually it is all done with a smile and finishes with a silent “I guess you’re not going to murder a planefull of people after all” and an audible “Have a terrific day!” There’s no apology, just out-of-place friendliness. But on the part of those put through the searching and grilling there is often apology, and almost always eager cooperation, friendly appreciation, gratitude no less. “Thanks for the ridiculous fearmongering and grotesque accusation. Sure do appreciate it!”
Set aside for the moment the question of whether the airport fear theater serves a useful purpose. Even accept, for the sake of argument, that it does — that it saves people’s lives and must therefore be tolerated. Better tolerated with friendliness than bitterness, right? The fact remains that we’re tolerating a system in which everyone is suspected of being a mass-murderer and is treated accordingly, and we normalize this by understandingly recognizing that our accusers are just doing their jobs. Unlike with grocery stores, in the case of airports I’ll be glad to whatever extent they make machines (and dogs) do this stuff instead of humans. But part of that will involve increased photographing of our faces and scanning of our bodies and possessions.
Yet, there does not seem to be any evidence that this nonsense keeps us safe at all. It could deter some criminal, and we could have no way of knowing that. But documented cases of preventing airborne terrorism: Where are they? Has anyone ever really done something horrible to someone else’s bag when they weren’t maintaining eternal vigilance? And why aren’t stadiums and shopping malls that lack anything resembling airport scare sessions blowing up left and right? Moving resources into preventing the airplanes from crashing into each other would save lives. Moving resources into creating safe, fast, reliable, and green train travel would save lives. Moving resources into healthcare would save lives. Keeping things as they are conditions people to allow more searches and abuses outside of airports — more areas of people’s lives freed from that pesky Constitution.
The airport experience seems to combine two of the more troubling trends in our society. One trend is constant police surveillance and technological tracking. Our phones and computers — not to mention video cameras and license plate scanners — know darn near everything we do and exactly where we do it, and they know this for the twin offensive motives of trying to sell us stuff and trying to prevent us from committing horrible crimes that we would supposedly otherwise be eager to commit. Entering an airport is like shrinking to a size at which you could enter the inner workings of your phone and stand face to face with the microscopic fascists in there.
The other trend is that of having to relate in a normal, day-to-day manner to people whose jobs are hideous. This includes a reverse of the airport scenario in situations where I view people as participants in mass-murder, rather than standing under that suspicion myself from the suitcase snoopers. In the US of A, there are armed troops in streets. There are militarized police indistinguishable from soldiers. There are masked thugs kidnapping people with the wrong skin tone from public places or kicking in private doors. There are lobbyists being paid and paying others to manufacture wars. There are neighbors who work in weapons manufacturing. There are college students taking internships with companies researching new ways to blow up buildings more quickly from greater distances. The person sitting next to you or in front of you on an airplane was just closely inspected for small-scale mass-murder plotting, but likely works for the war machine that NATO nations have just agreed to massively enlarge.
Surrounding the edges of the war machine are those praising and celebrating it, singing national anthems, pledging loyalty to U.S. flags, waving Ukrainian flags, etc. And around the edges of those are the cultural enforcers, censoring photos of Palestine, firing professors who oppose genocide, etc. Almost anywhere you go, you will find yourself interacting amicably with people who profit from mass-killing, energetically strive to accelerate climate collapse, or cheer for brutal attacks on immigrants. It’s their job. Or it’s their political beliefs. Or it’s their religion.
The people driving armored vehicles down your street or driving themselves to work at the local weapons lab: how should you relate to them? How can you balance the priority of friendliness with the priority of halting the globe’s mad rush toward nuclear and/or ecosystemic apocalypse? No doubt the best behavior varies by circumstance, but a good goal is increasing honesty. I wish everyone well even when wishing them well includes wishing they had a very different job or viewed the world very differently. Communicating that, in a way that people care to hear — that is the challenge.
I was recently at a protest outside a U.S. military base in Germany. One of the signs said: “Go home. Come back as a tourist.” In the U.S., peace rally signs have always said “Support the troops: Bring them home.” An all-purpose message might be: “What you’re doing is a threat to life on Earth. I hope you can find something else that’s fulfilling and enjoyable for you.” Or, in bumper-sticker / t-shirt form: “I like you, not the war machine you work for,” or “I like you, not the surveillance state you work for.”
I’d feel a little better wearing that shirt as I greet Mr. “Good morning. Give me your passport.” But I’d feel even better staying home instead.
https://davidswanson.org/why-airports-are-so-horrible/
Comments
Post a Comment