basically airplanes and airports have become tyranny zones, where the fear of TSA and being bumped off a flight or having it delayed makes everyone submit meekly to the bullying of petty functionaries.  so the petty functionaries are having a field day, like teacher's pet made hall monitor for the week.

I flew to Canada and back last month, very irritably wishing for a decent rail service so I wouldn't have to go through all of this idiocy.  they were not letting bottled water onto the plane even if it was purchased in the concourse post-security...  you could not even buy water in a bottle on the concourse;  no, it had to be decanted into a large paper cup, which of course was plastered with Coca Cola advertising.  but they let me on with a niji waterbrush full of water, which had it been instead, say, dimethyl mercury, would have enabled me to condemn many/most of my fellow passengers (and myself of course) to an unpleasant end.  the laptop passed security w/o even being opened.  no, this week we are all afraid of bottled water and shampoo... somehow the Hollywood physics of the whole 2-part liquid explosive thing made all this even more offensive, i.e. the sheer stupidity.

I was thinking as I put my shoes back on and reassembled my luggage and pocket contents that the experience was strangely similar to being processed into and out of jail:  one's personal effects all confiscated, then (maybe) returned;  partial disrobing;  being processed in a lineup like cattle, feeling rumpled and slightly humiliated, being treated like a n unwanted immigrant or a suspected disease vector.  Ellis Island.  do I feel more like a cow or a prisoner when approaching the gate?  not sure.

a paranoid chunk of my brain says that inconsistent conditioning is more effective at behavioural modification than consistent conditioning.  the very irrationality and looniness of the scare du jour and the designer-coloured alert levels may make the conditioning of air travellers to meek acceptance of arbitrary authority even more efficacious.  a week of peaceful sanity in BC ended with my unwilling return -- interview with a US customs/immi officer who was downright scary:  totally affectless, no human response whatsoever, intrusive questions droned at me from a dead blank visage, like fictional descriptions of the old Soviet border agents... a bored, hostile and paranoid bureaucratic underling who you pray will not decide to enliven his day by picking on you.  a mischievous impulse urged me to refer chidingly to the signboard at his booth which listed "our promises to you", including "we will welcome you to the United States" -- "welcome" was certainly not among the words said to me -- but discretion was the better part of getting on the damn plane and I was just glad to get ny passport back and leave the eerily robotic young man behind.

at the baggage carousel in SFO the voice of the security announcements came over the Tannoy, syrupy and quaalude-calm, telling us to watch our baggage (as it has for 15 years or so) but adding that "the current national security alert level is Orange" ... and I had that sinking feeling of being back in the loonybin.  the whole thing is like a vast intricate game of Simon Says, with (one feels) Kip Hawley rolling on the floor of his private office laughing his ass off as he watches on videotape the suckers lining up, taking their sandals off, draining their soft drinks, hurriedly stashing their lip gloss in the checked baggage.  Simon Says give me your lip gloss.  Simon Says take your jacket off. Simon Says hop on one foot.  Simon Says step out of line...

oh yeah, I forgot, don't make fun of Kip Hawley, either.

agree with the poster upthread, it's a feeling in the air.  the feeling of petty power unleashed, or starting to slip the leash.  of petty sadists and bullies feeling that they have license to abuse -- in mild, irritating, stupid little ways for now, but how much worse it can get we already know.

so far the UK authorities scored the ultimate own goal, when they deprived a pilot of his contact lens solution.  now that's what I call security!

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...