Maggie Buckenmayer, another person sexually assaulted by the TSA

Her full name is Maggie Buckenmayer. She posted this at YouTube on November 4, 2012; here’s the link:

I don’t have the link to her petition. Maybe someone else can provide.

What are we to make of the lack of mention, by either major political party, of TSA’s abuses and crimes? They say that we get the government we deserve, and perhaps a lot of TSA apologists will eventually find the numbers catching up with them when they, too, are abused, humiliated, sexually assaulted, or stolen from–or some combination thereof–but even today, without going any further, a cursory reading of all the very real complaints in that recently-released (via an FOIA request) list show there are plenty (plenty!) of examples. Enough, surely, to warrant serious, top-down change. These are personal, heartfelt letters to Pistole. Detailed examples of the abuse of law-abiding citizens.

What are we to make of this convenient, willful ignoring? Other than the unpleasant reality that they are all behind it, all in full support of it. I just don’t buy the whole “it’s politically toxic to denigrate anything to do with 9/11″. Nine-eleven was eleven years ago. Imagine if the U.S. or Britain had still been clinging to provisional WWII policies and behavior…in 1956? Would people have been okay with rationing of food, for example, even though the shortages were no longer? Would they have been fine with use of the nation’s metals being heavily restricted–if not used exclusively–for military purposes? Which would have had incalculable effect on the boom in the US auto and aviation industries in the 1950′s, to name just two metal-using interests?

The threat of an in-air hijacking is greatly reduced by two things, neither of which is the TSA having stopped a terrorist. Those two things being reinforced and locked cockpit doors, and a flying public who will subdue a violent passenger as opposed to meekly going along with his demands. Furthermore, the ineffectiveness of this criminal agency has been demonstrated again and again: even the attacks of 9/11 would not have been prevented by TSA, as countless people have admitted that their various, inadvertently-packed knives, box cutters, etc. made it through screening while TSA was busily confiscating their shampoo and feeling up their children. And of course, Jon Corbett demonstrated how simple it is to go through the scanner machines with a metal object simply by wearing it on one’s side, not one’s front or back.

Yet the illusion of security theater makes people feel better, so it’s OK to subject others to groping, humiliation, and theft?

It’s OK with a majority of travelers?

I follow @TSArants on Twitter. On a daily basis, dozens of flyers complain about the intrusiveness of the groping, the electronics that went missing, the long, long lines, the rudeness of the agents themselves, and the delays that cause them to miss flights. Some are realizing for the first time that the agency is both useless and abusive. Few seem to realize they are not alone, and that if enough of them did something a bit stronger than Tweeting their disgust and then forgetting about it, we might actually develop the critical mass that draws the attention of those two major political parties controlling Washington.