Seriously?

Our freedom fighting TSA agents have rescued us once again from the evil terrorists masquerading as four-year-old Midwestern girls.

In a Huffington Post story today, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/tsa-defends-pat-down-of-c_n_1454410.html?icid=maing-) Isabella Brademeyer was targeted as a suspect at an airport in Wichita, Kansas after hugging her grandmother. Isabella had just been taught the dangers of talking to strangers, according to her parents, and was screaming and terrified as she was patted down, her family crying as they looked on. At one point she began to run away and agents threatened to shut down the entire airport if she did not come back. Her parents' statement on the matter conveyed that they understood the need for security but that there was no compassion or understand afforded their child and they had to realize that they were dealing with a four-year-old and not a terrorist.

Silly parents. Don't they understand that in today's travel environment everyone is a terrorist until proven unarmed? And rightfully so, I might add, since our post 911 screening procedures have thwarted untold numbers of would be assassins from boarding airplanes and blowing something up. Sarcasm aside, someone please tell me how many hijackings have been prevented by random rent-a-cops at the airport feeling us up and seeing us naked, taking our shoes and rooting thru our personal belongings? I have yet to see any real numbers here folks.

In my opinion, the entire screening process at airports is simply a show to keep us, the irrationally frightened traveler, happy and secure. This is certainly not a major issue I think about daily, but every now and again a story like this pops up that makes me wonder where the hell the America I grew up in is, you remember, the one where we were not afraid of a little danger if it meant we maintained the status of the only truly free nation on earth, the time when we actually had some mettle. I am tired of reading about people falling out of wheelchairs while being searched, of seeing videos of women so frightened and intimidated they are visibly shaking in videos while being singled out as suspects.

Lets face facts here. 911 did not happen because airport security was lax. It happened because our intelligence community did not have their act together. The right hand had no idea what the left hand was doing so the Jihadists slipped right thru the middle. Pretty simple. And since 911 that problem has been mostly resolved and we have prevented other attacks on us and other countries when they were still in the planning stages. Have we eliminated them totally? No, and we never will. A holy war is unwinnable and lasts as long as the zealots of that religion exist, so we need to learn to live with uncertainty like so many other nations have done for millennium. We are no long untouchable.

The last place a terrorist is going to go is another airplane.

Look, even a simple screening process of people and their luggage is going to yield almost anything that is a real threat. There is no need to "x-ray" passengers so that some faceless TSA agent can see them naked. And racist or not, the vast majority of terrorists look the part. They are from the mid-east, and the remaining ones are white drifting college students, usually male, who get sucked into this religion that seems more and more like a cult for the depressed and subnormally intelligent. So if you are going to torment your passengers, at least leave grandpa in his wheelchair alone.

As long as we are being honest here, our best defense has been and will continue to be, other passengers. On 911 a few brave men launched at attack on their hijackers that ultimately ended with the plane crashing in a field leaving no survivors. But those men, those heroes, set an example, planted a mindset in our citizens that states that we would rather die fighting than be held like cattle and allow ourselves to be quetly led to slaughter. I certainly have read more AP stories of passengers subduing other suspicious or rowdy passengers mid-flight than I have the TSA finding explosives strapped to a four-year-old at the airport in Kansas. So many people (myself included) board planes now with the resolve in their hearts that if anything "funny" should happen, we have no problem becoming the attackers, that we would rather give a rebel yell and go down in a ball of fire than be hijacked and on a plane that runs into a building full of people or is taken to god knows where. It happens. We hear about passengers doing just this. And this alone must give these terrorists pause, because oh my god the infidels have become as reckless and crazy as we are, which makes them unpredictable and fearless, and how do we fight that? Guess what, you don't.

The real danger here is not my nail clippers, it is not my shampoo or in the soles of my shoes, it is in the mindset of some Americans that all these abuses of privacy we must endure to fly are somehow justified, somehow keep us safe, when in actuality the very reason for these absurdities to be implimented in the first place was miscommunication between departments at a much higher government level than the barely effective airport security measures now in place. This also goes for the majority of The Patriot Act ( a misnomer if ever there was one) and Gitmo, both of which are blogs in and of themselves (yeah thanks for keeping THAT promise Obama). A person I love very much, a family member, who I consider very well read, very well versed in domestic and world affairs, who I consider highly intelligent and a rational thinker, still believes that giving up any amount of freedom is okay because:

1. Why do I care if they bug my house, I have nothing to hide…and
2. Any invasion of privacy, any indignity suffered is worth peace of mind and safety

This is NOT the American spirit, the do or die attitude. All the heroes lying in Arlington cemetery, the men at Gettysburg and in your local veterans hospital, they did not suffer or die so that we could roll over to both a foreign enemy and our own government, and allow our privacy, our liberties and our dignity, in any situation, to be taken away in the name of "safety". America is not about safety, it is about freedom, at any price, and this ideal is what gained us the respect we once had in the world, it brought some of the world's greatest minds to our shores, brilliant people who risked their lives and gave up family and property simply to be free to think, free to live and damn it we are not free if we allow people to be detained indefinitely, if all our neighbor has to do is cry "terrorist" for us to lose all our right, if some stranger can put her hands all over me because I want to fly to my family reunion in Topeka. Now, of all times, Patrick Henry's famous words should be ringing in our ears. I cannot say my choice would be death over liberty, but if I were in a plane and someone tried to tell me to lie on the floor, you bet I would gather my fellow passengers and beat the tar out of him, like its happened a dozen times before.

911 was an atrocity. Including Pearl Harbor (and I do have my reasons for this) it was the worst attack on American soil ever and it fundamentally changed who we are as a nation, as well it should. However, if we continue with these types of antics at airports, and personally invasive laws, which yield no real results, haven't they won anyway? And even if that were not the case, personally I have no intention of staying in this country if it means I have less privacy, less rights that our neighboring countries.

America, love it or leave it. Bull. I say American, love it or CHANGE IT. Change is what we are about and mine is one voice of millions that do not like, that will not tolerate, the abuse of power coming from Washington and the terror the fear mongers in congress are generating to slowly strip of, WILLINGLY, of our rights to dignity, privacy and due process.

And just for the record, this blog has been brought to you by a self proclaimed liberal who borders on socialism.

EUREKA MOMENTS or LET ME PUBLISH YOU

I have put out the word on Facebook that I need your stories. I am publishing  a book on those "eureka" moments, the ones that change our lives forever. Not everyone has one of these, they are a rare and beautiful gift.

I am writing this blog to share mine with you not only because there is a lesson to be learned from it, but to illustrate the kind of thing I am looking for, to show what the moment of clarity looks like and to give you an idea of how your story may be told. I have not yet decided whether or not to write a narrative using your story or to use direct quotes, I would be interested to know which YOU would prefer seeing published and which you would prefer reading. I am leaning towards having you tell it in your own words.

I was a little girl that bright afternoon, sitting on the floor in my grandparent's oppulent bedroom in McLean. I clearly remember the French Provential furnishings, the ivory rug and the smell of my grandmother's powder permeating the room. These things I remember clearly because what was about to take place was so simple, so common, and yet were to affect me the rest of my life.

I was cross-legged on the floor, my nose a couple of feet from the old television, watching what I think was an ABC After School Special. It was the story of a lonely, sad girl who had no friends and was rejected and ridiculed by her peers. I could relate already to this child, it could have been me back when I was a foot taller than my classmates, skinny as a rail and too bookish for anyone to befriend me but the teachers, adding "teachers pet" to my sins.

This lonely girl on TV finally ended up befriending a crow. This bird walked with her and allowed her to hold it and she fell in love with him. He was her only friend in the world, the only one to listen to her problems, to comfort her, he allowed her to love and nurture him and in doing so he was loving and nurturing her in return.

One day, as she walked down the sidewalk, her crow walking next to her, a group of the popular kids her age came up and became interested in the bird. They asked her questions about it and thought she was really "cool" for having this bird follow her. The little girl was delighted to finally have people to talk to, to NOT be the outcast for once. But then someone threw something at the bird and it jumped. This created peals of laughter from the other kids and the next thing I remember seeing was the group of them circled around the crow, throwing stones at it and laughing as it tried to escape. It jumped and cawed and tried to fly away but was too damaged at this point to move.

The next camera shot was of the little lonely girl, standing with the rest of the kids, throwing stones at her friend, watching him die. Silent tears streamed down her face as she tossed stones at him until the life had been beaten out of him. But she was with people, her peers, for that brief moment they had accepted her and she was no longer alone. This sad child had killed the one thing she loved to fit in with the rest of humanity.

Suddenly my surrounding became crystal clear and the sights and smells of that room burned into my memory forever. I physically felt something fundamental shift inside of me and I knew at that moment I had changed forever. I knew then and there that I would never forsake anyone, including myself, for the acceptance of others.

As I got older I, like everyone else, faced peer pressure. Pressure to do drugs, pressure to have sex, pressure to do immoral or illegal things in the name of  "fun". I heard all of it. "come on, you chicken?" "what's wrong, we are all going why wont you?". But I never did unless I WANTED to. I even lost a career over this little girl and her bird when my reputation for non-conformity got me fired. My boss was afraid I would not  be a "team player" and look the other way while he swindled people out of their retirement. And he was right, I did not. I reported him for it even after he fired me.

I owe who I am and what I have become to that ABC After School Special, for it gave me the heart and the resolve to never give in, be myself and protect the ones I love. Even to this day there are times the images from that old TV screen fill my head and I can feel my resolve harden when faced with a difficult choice. I am not saying I gained any moral superiority from this, hell no. I am as damaged as the rest of the world. What I am saying is that I have the courage and sense of self to say no when I mean no and the hell with whether or not anyone likes it, or likes me for that matter. I will not kill my own bird for the acceptance of others.

So there is my "eureka" moment. Simple, short, but life changing. And that is what I would like from you. A little piece of your soul. In return you will not only get a signed copy of a small book, but more importantly you will get the opportunity to share with others your story and be able to feel how wonderful it is to open  it all up to the world. You also will help others learn from your special moments. I know that me telling this story to others has changed them. Even with no explaination, just relating the events of the show has helped people resist people-pleasing too much. Plus there is somethign about sharing your life changing moments that deepens them, adds dimension to them for your benefit.

If you are interested in being part of this project please email me at MyStoryInPrint@yahoo.com and I will get back to you ASAP.

(please note I will be out of town the 6,7 and 8 of this month but will return your email as soon as I get back or prior ot leaving).

Thanks.