25 August 2018

The TSA, Bureaucracy and Permanent War


Undoubtedly some will have noticed this story which broke a few weeks ago regarding the TSA programme of passenger surveillance.
The TSA or Transportation Security Administration is largely a joke but there's nothing funny about it. Implemented in the wake of 9/11 the organisation has been repeatedly defeated by inter-agency tests. It harasses and humiliates the public and yet is unable to stop weapons from getting on to airplanes.


Of course after 9/11 the whole nature of plane hijackings changed. Prior to 2001 passengers would normally figure on being diverted and losing a bunch of time and yet unless things went really sour, no one was going to be hurt. Hijacking was usually a form of political protest with a threat of violence. It wasn't meant to be suicidal. Since that time any suspicious activity on commercial flights has resulted in passengers rushing and restraining the would-be terrorist or troublemaker. To put in another way, the 9/11 scenario of terrorists with box-cutters wouldn't happen today. The passengers would resist.
Instead the TSA serves a larger purpose. Although this cannot be proven but the conclusion I think is fairly patent and fits a larger pattern of social engineering in the days following the attacks. The US government in the wake of 9/11 sought to implement a regime of permanent war. Terrorism had little or nothing to do with it. The event was used as a catalyst (or to be more honest an excuse) to transform both the global and domestic order. While the Empire sought to solidify power and secure resources abroad the domestic population was to be subjected to an endless series of manipulations which will (in the end) lead to authoritarianism. The laws (like the Patriot Act) are already on the books and the TSA was part of that and a precursor to what is to come in the larger society.
The war so to speak is against the world at large but also against the domestic population. War is the paradigm and in the domestic theatre the TSA represents a contingent of shock troops on the front line.
The US government is preparing for an inevitable future of social unrest and the rationing of resources. The technological age coupled with the crises of capitalism, limited and declining resources, exploding populations, instant information and crowd-sourced citizen journalism has left the Establishment reeling and in fear. The 21st century will not pass without large-scale tumult, social upheaval and devastating war. These developments are deemed as inevitable and necessary and yet if the mechanisms are not in place to control information, the public, finances and much more, society will face collapse. The powers that be are desperate to hold on to what they have. Even the annual letters sent out by financial institutions to shareholders indicate this, communicating the threat and the fear regarding the lower classes. The other factors like population, resources and technology have only amplified the danger.
The Internet grew so rapidly that it escaped control and has become a threat. Social media has quickly ventured into directions no one could have imagined and the US isn't alone in being worried about the potential systemic-dangers that social media represents. The crackdown began in the airports which were quickly turned into totalitarian zones in which all constitutional rights and principles are abandoned. There is no free speech, press, right to assemble, petition, due process or protections against government intrusion in the form of search and seizure. They can strip you down and examine your insides if they want to. Thought crime is real in the US transportation system and indeed this has now branched out beyond the airports and has entered schools, city centres and is making its way into workplaces and will eventually affect virtually every aspect of life, including the cyber-realm.
A mass surveillance system was implemented in which the US government attempts to collect all data and is building profiles on not only every US citizen but eventually almost every person on earth. From your internet behaviour to your messages and emails to biometric data the US imperial beast seeks to control the world's data. An ambitious project and perhaps beyond realistic capabilities and expectations, Washington is nevertheless well on its way.
These changes have created a bloated multi-faceted almost incomprehensible bureaucracy as the United States is a society based upon and centered on the ability to wage war. If information is power the United States seeks to wield power that exceeds anything any civilisation has previously aspired to or perhaps even dreamed of. The degenerate Christo-American Empire is one of most potent manifestations of the Harlot-Beast imagery in Revelation.
What does this have to do with the TSA?
The TSA is another facet of this massive bureaucratic project that was launched in the wake of 9/11. Its mission is to provide security for the transportation system but in reality, on a practical level it's also something else. It's a bureaucracy.
Bureaucracies are never isolated. They function within larger bureaucratic structures and they have to justify themselves and continually grow or they face decline, obsolescence and death.
For several years the TSA had little fear of having its budget cut. The public was cowed and there were a handful of incidents real or imagined that fueled the fires of social angst. The TSA introduced an expanded Air Marshal system and while there had been a few dozen prior to 9/11, the TSA programme took the number into the thousands.
And yet the threat has been subject to gross exaggeration. For the most part the marshals have little or nothing to do and the programme has been facing cuts, unable to justify the massive expenditures.
And so the TSA has done what every bureaucracy does. Invent new programmes and craft narratives (supported by often meaningless statistics) to support what you're doing. Make it sound like what you're doing is essential and so we have this latest revelation in which we find out that the TSA is spying on and collecting the data of innocent members of the public. The TSA is surveilling these people and recording everything they do. And then this faux-surveillance allows them to create new layers of the bureaucracy. They have to process and analyze the data. Instead of reviewing the programme, expand it and think of new things to do.
It's a classic case of bureaucratic creep. The heads of departments want to convince their bosses that 'we need these programmes'. The department wants the budget and of course we're talking about jobs, paychecks, a middle class lifestyle and pensions. They don't want to give these things up. They don't care about whether or not the programmes are a waste of taxpayer money, whether their ethical, constitutional or anything else.
It's the nature of the bureaucratic beast.
What I wonder about, is the people who do these jobs. There are a handful of true believers, which have been brainwashed and propagandised into believing that they're really 'keeping America safe'.
I think that most of them know their jobs are a joke, worthless and a total waste of resources. But you know what? They don't care. They can't fix the system. Someone is going to do it and draw that paycheck. It might as well be them.
I even know many Christians who think this way about their jobs in the corporate sector, government and a host of other ethically dubious industries.
TSA workers (and by this I mean the larger body of employees, not just the Air Marshals) care nothing about the US Constitution. I don't either but then again I don't work for the government, profess patriotism or claim the rights of a citizen.
TSA workers frankly don't care about society at large or the fact that they are contributing to the degradation of government or classic liberal values. What they care about is themselves and that's really one of the biggest problems in society that keeps it from functioning well and eventually leads to decadence and eventual collapse. Egocentric thinking reaches a point in which it becomes destructive. But it's no surprise. It's at the heart of the American system and its consumer economy.
But on a more basic level many bureaucrats find they like the power and crave more of it.
Many, especially those who operate the security lines in airports display sadistic tendencies, the fruit of unrestrained power and another consequence of the bureaucracy. Each department seeks to maximise its claims and the hordes of petty bureaucrats crave power and respect, in many cases knowing they will never really achieve either. As a consequence they find satisfaction in using their limited to power to oppress those beneath them. In the case of the airport the public is subjected to humiliation, sometimes of the most base and dangerous kind. A toxic formula to be sure these same bureaucrats have been empowered and encouraged by a state that seeks to break the will of its populace and condition the public to a regime of anti-privacy and total subjugation in which the state not only looks over your shoulder but gets into your underwear and the most intimate realms of life. Husbands must watch their wives and daughters be groped and humiliated and any sentiment that expresses dissent will lead to punishment.
The freedom we have in our culture has become something of an illusion. You can be a freak and 'express yourself' through ostentatious and narcissistic display but if you dare question the system itself, in other words exercise actual free speech... then you are shut down, crushed and destroyed.
TSA workers should be ashamed. They don't bear as much guilt as their masters but they are guilty all the same. I would be ashamed and frankly defeated were one of my children to grow up and work for such a detestable organisation or its umbrella bureaucracy, the equally dubious and largely criminal Interior Ministry that Bush (in evoking a kind of über-nationalism) named the Department of Homeland Security.
The TSA and in particular this air marshal programme represents the worst kind of bureaucratic creep. Except we're not talking about annoying redundant paperwork in the DMV or some superfluous programme in a public welfare office, instead we're talking about basic social liberties and in some cases the destruction of lives. People are put on the TSA's mysterious and accursed lists and their lives are disrupted. The government keeps a special file on them and the ramifications may play out in their larger lives. For many being on such a list can mean a loss of employment and potentially a ruined career. Again, this is all done without a criminal charge or any form of due process. It is a violation of basic principles going all the way back to Magna Carta. Whatever remnants of Classical Liberalism remained in the United States died on the 11th of September 2001. And this is celebrated. Just recently John Brennan, the war criminal who previously ran the CIA and who has been leading the charge in the Anti-Russia campaign made some rather startling comments. In this age of 'Russian threat', democracy itself (we're told) is becoming a dangerous thing.
Terrorism is barely on the spectrum anymore. The Pentagon and the leading voices that are trying to shape the agenda have moved on. And yet of course all the destroyed civil liberties and constitutional rights are not going to be restored. In fact more restrictions are to come especially if figures like Brennan have their way.
The TSA and the DHS bureaucracies have played no small part in the crushing of society and in laying the groundwork for future oppression. To put it bluntly these are not nice people and I'm speaking even of those bureaucrats who have chosen to stick their heads in the sand or shrug their shoulders. They are not people of integrity.
I'm sure there were some upset people in the wake of this programme's exposure and yet they needn't fear. Congress is compliant. Some politicians will stand up for the camera and play Cicero but then when the chips are down and the doors are closed, they quickly fold and comply. After all they're bought and paid for.
If too much attention is given, there will be some bureaucratic shuffling, a few heads might roll and then after a whitewash the programme is restructured and reinstated under a different name and probably with some new bureaucratic layers to boot.
And the band played on....