OT, Stella is leaving today for a three-day visit with her brothers and their spouses. This will be the first encounter either of us has had with commercial air travel since, well, since before 9/11/2001, if I recall correctly. [CORRECTION: I remembered at least one other flight Stella made, about the time we moved to Our House.] I don't envy her that encounter, but at least I'm not going along, and Stella, unlike me, is diplomatic enough not to make any sarcastic remarks to the official pokers/prodders, which might be beyond my personal restraint. Meanwhile, the kitties and I are going to find the house mighty quiet until Stella returns...
Air travel for the disabled in America is a nightmare. Two years ago in Denver I went through a Gulag experience. I was wearing a suit and tie, white haired and walking with a cane, while dragging along a carry-on. The line was long and exhausting. They made me take off my glasses, so I stumbled and fell injuring myself because the burly inspector just stepped aside and didn't catch me. Then they did a double pat down and wand bit. There was a quarter lodged in the bottom of my pocket. Then they dove into my carry on because of a funny image, which turned out to be the tin clasp on a very old family Bible that belonged to my great Grandmother. It was one of those Sears and Roebucks catalogs that frontier folks ordered in those days. It was fragile. They ripped the cover off it and then stuffed it back in the carry on, further ripping the Frontage page and signed family history page. America is a f'ing police state. If I was thirty years younger I'd leave this hell hole of a country without a second's worth of looking back.
ReplyDelete"America is a f'ing police state." - M.
ReplyDeleteM, you are not the first friend of mine to tell me of such an experience. Yes, America is exactly that, a police state. Why? Simple... read Ms. Klein's The Shock Doctrine. If you think it's coincidental, think again: it's a technique by which the totalitarian goons manipulate the rest of us into submission... and it's working.
Stella came through OK. She asked for a wheelchair to get to her plane on time, and they accommodated her request. There was a huge convention in Houston (sororities, I believe) with a couple thousand participants flying out at about the same time, each one carrying a souvenir program book in her luggage... a book that somehow showed up on x-ray as an explosive device. So they had to open every single piece of luggage for hand inspection. The lines at the airport were so long and slow that local TV news stations photographed them from a helicopter; they couldn't get a news van through the obscene traffic. But Stella had started out a couple hours early, and actually made her flight. Better she face it than I; I don't consider Stella a patient person :-) but she is certainly more diplomatic with the goons than I would be.
I've seen some appalling treatment of disabled people at Dulles . . =(
ReplyDeletec, the last time I was through any DC airport (I don't recall which) was on a vacation on my 45th birthday; I visited Tom Bickley, Scott Horton (the lutenist, not the author/activist), etc., and had a great time. But I wasn't yet crippled, and in 1993 the Shock Doctrine had not yet been activated by 9/11/2001, so it was hardly a fair test. That said, several people have told me their stories of treatment that would have been downright silly if it weren't so cruel and hostile. Let's face it: some people seek jobs like that because they enjoy harassing or hurting or detaining people, and Dog knows they have opportunities in the TSA. In a way, it saddens me that I shall probably never fly again, but I'll be damned if I'll put up with that sort of treatment.
Delete