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The TSA is a pet issue of the upper-middle class because they annoy and harass them frequently and they are an easy and relatively safe way to push back against
by mahyarm 14y ago
The TSA is a pet issue of the upper-middle class because they annoy and harass them frequently and they are an easy and relatively safe way to push back against a police style authority. They're a figurehead of what was lost after 9/11.
The TSA is also an obvious waste. They aren't that much different before hand although, their function were covered by a hodgepodge of regulations usually dictated by the FAA and private airport security employed at airports US wide.
The upper-middle class tends to set the agenda for the media in general. They're also the archetype of what are depicted in TV shows and so on. Why the recent school shooting became a national outrage is probably because they were a middle class school. The death toll also added to it.
- toyg 14y agoI wish you didn't use that sneering tone. Class warfare by the upper class is a real thing, but trivializing every item as "pet issue" of this or that class doesn't help anybody and makes you look like a loony. Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.
- d2vid 14y agoGetting annoyed by airport security has everything to do with class - you need to fly often enough to find it annoying. We don't talk about stop and frisk over and over again on HN because most of us don't live in areas where we are subjected to that police behavior every time we go out for a walk.
- greyfade 14y agoI find it annoying, and I haven't flown since before the TSA was founded.
- mahyarm 14y agoHe was asking why so much media _attention_ was being focused on the TSA vs other government agencies, not how the US compares to the rest of the world, or if it was class warfare. It's really true that the media uses the upper-middle class as the focus group. The upper class, the %0.1, is too alien, too small, too smart, too international and thus too unrelatable for most Americans, so the upper-middle sets the tone instead. You also have to separate UCSIS, the scary border organization with teeth and a horrible attitude, and the TSA, the organization that takes your water bottles away. Also, you need to have money to fly a lot, and that starts around upper-middle class.
- drcube 14y agoDude, poor people don't fly. It absolutely has to do with class. The systems set up to serve the poor are significantly worse than the TSA in every way, and I say this as someone who hates the TSA with a white hot passion. But the blogosphere isn't filled with tirades about how stupid, ineffective, wasteful and absurd the process is for obtaining food stamps, for example. Or getting a menial job, or getting adequate legal representation, or fighting slumlords, or getting police protection, or any number of things. We hear about the TSA much more often because it overwhelmingly affects the wealthy.
- toyg 14y agoReread what I wrote: Class warfare by the upper class is a real thing, but trivializing every item as "pet issue" of this or that class doesn't help anybody and makes you look like a loony. I'm not saying it's not true that some topics get more attention because they affect a certain class, but that if the problems are real (and we agree the TSA is a problem) and do not depend on class divide (and the TSA does not, at this point, depend on that), in strategic terms there is no point in bringing up the topic.