I completely agree with your first two paragraphs, but you lost me on the second half of your comment. The TSA's response to attempted attacks has been to clam

I completely agree with your first two paragraphs, but you lost me on the second half of your comment. The TSA's response to attempted attacks has been to clamp down on the rest of us after the fact: shoes off, no liquids. This tells us that the intelligence gathering effort was not reflected in the airport security measures. They lock down those attack vectors to prevent "me too" attacks, but there haven't been any. Yet, the security gymnastics routine has not gotten lighter for the average traveler. Where I disagree: > no normal person would ever have occasion to set foot in You just dismissed a chunk of humanity as non-"normal" along with their homeland. Yes, Westerners have rare occasion to visit some of the places where terrorists breed and train. But the world contains more than Westerners, doesn't it? > If I was a black man in the US I'd be much more afraid of looking at a cop the wrong way than being caught up in a terrorist outrage. You are making the same mistake we're talking about with airport security: you are blowing a few highly-publicized events way out of proportion. Here[1] is some 2011 data from the FBI highlighting homicide victim/offender race & sex. Compare that to this report[2] from the Bureau of Justice Statistics showing arrest-related deaths from 2003-2009. (I know different years, etc, sorry) From that data, it looks like blacks kill way more blacks (and whites kill more whites) than cops killing either race. [1]: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c... [2]: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ard0309st.pdf