That other countries practice similar, or worse, exclusionary methods is irrelevant. That people within America still have the right to freely express themselv

That other countries practice similar, or worse, exclusionary methods is irrelevant. That people within America still have the right to freely express themselves is, I think, a less interesting takeaway from this snafu. More interesting is that this sort of behavior is emblematic of major government failure: a failure of policy, of implementation, and of accountability. From a policy standpoint, we've had roughly 24 terrorists or 3 trips attempt to cause harm to US aircraft in the last decade. In that time, we've hand hundreds of millions of air travelers or millions of trips. And yet, our policy is to treat every single traveler as a potential terrorist. We've implemented these policies poorly as well. We've spent billions of dollars on what amounts to security theater. We've deputized some of the least capable members of our society, giving them the power to screw with customers more or less without reprisal. We've made travel, which many people viewed with joy a short time ago, a massive pain in the ass. But apart from that, we've also given untold agencies untold power to surveil, apparently, the entire world. Eventually, and this didn't take long, those in charge of the theater begin to believe they were on the righteous path. As long as your behavior can be cloaked in "security" or "doing what's best for the country", you've essentially got a free pass. And so, 80 year old women get pulled out of line to have their colostomy bags inspected. Senators must be randomly patted down. We get decisions like this. And, that “security” cloak never gets lifted. When bad decisions are made, as I would argue was made here, we don't hear "Ya, we overreacted. Sorry." Instead, they double down. They cry Security! and spew politicized bullshit, the kind that would make Orwell cringe: "it tried to maintain a balance between 'securing our borders while facilitating the high volume of legitimate trade and travel that crosses our borders every day.'" The trouble is, many Americans seem to have no problem with this. Such a minor hassle is worth it, even if it increases safety an imperceptible amount. The problem, in the short term isn’t devastating either. We get a few less Mr. Van Bryan’s visiting each year. But in the long term, all societies whose citizens cede too much power to those who claim to be acting to protect those citizens fail. Usually in the most unpleasant ways.