Every day, this country becomes more and more like something out of The Onion. I know it’s a cliché to say you can’t make this sh*t up, but the fact is you can’t make this sh*t up.
Now, according to our security overlords, toothpaste is a threat. Yep, you heard that right: toothpaste.
The Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning to U.S. and some foreign airlines traveling to Russia for the Olympic Games to be on the lookout for toothpaste containers, which some intelligence indicates may actually hold ingredients that could be used to construct a bomb aboard a plane, a senior U.S. official told ABC News.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
To the credit of Americans—some of them, anyway—the majority of comments at this insuperably ridiculous, inane story are ridiculing it. But fair warning—there are still millions of people out there who are taking it seriously. I know; I’ve talked to some of them.
Oh, and lest I forget, details about the Terroristy Toothpaste Threat are, of course, SSI:
The official did not provide further details about the warning or the intelligence that prompted it, but an official with the Department of Homeland Security, while declining to discuss the specific warning, said the department “regularly shares relevant information with domestic and international partners, including those associated with international events such as the Sochi Olympics.”
Mais, oui! How could we mere peons ever hope to be privy to the Super Secret Sensitive Information that our overlords guard? But fear not! Those overlords are on the case:
“While we are not aware of a specific threat to the homeland at this time, this routine communication is an important part of our commitment to making sure we meet that priority,” the official said. “As always, our security apparatus includes a number of measures, both seen and unseen, and DHS will continue to adjust security measures to fit an ever evolving threat environment.”
Was there ever more Orwellian linguistic sewage spilled?
And ah, yes—”The Homeland.” Heimat sicherheit. With a precedent like that, what could go wrong?
After you’ve gotten over the historical resonance, pay attention to that statement: “While we are not aware of a specific threat to the homeland at this time. . . .”
In other words: ”We’re just ramping up the fear factor to get you people to go along with whatever bullshit we put out there. And ya know what? You will go along with it. We know you will. You’ve proved it. You prove it every day. Every time you step into a strip-search scanner and raise your arms in a pose of surrender, like a criminal, you prove it. Every time you allow yourself—or your children—to be physically assaulted just to get on a plane, you prove it. We can do anything we want to you—anything—as long as we use the trigger words “terror” or “terrorism”—and you’ll go along with it. We like you this way. You’re so easy to control.”
But hey, why stop at toothpaste? Why not sunscreen? Why not hand lotion? Why not lipstick? I never go out of the house without mine. Clearly, I’m a potential terrorist and my lipstick must be confiscated for the good of the country. After all, Can’t Be Too Safe™!
Lucky for me, I don’t fly anymore in/from this country, so the rest of you suckers can get pawed and groped and robbed and have your Terroristy Lipstick and Terroristy Sunscreen and Terroristy Toothpaste taken away from you. “We’re your overlords and we know what’s best for you. Now shut up and move along.”
Lisa Simeone is a writer, editor, political activist, Glamour Girl, and radio host. She publishes ABombazine, where this originally appeared.
Old news by now. Here’s the latest:
http://abombazine.blogspot.com/2014/02/united-states-of-paranoia-lives-and.html
Indeed, Ms. Simeone, I fear the day that some agent of a bloated security agency, desperately seeking to justify its existence, overhears a couple of drunks discussing explosive suppositories.
I wonder what color on the Bush’s homeland security famously designed terror-threat crap, err, I mean chart, this tooth paste terror crap places: red, yellow, green, orange, purple … exasperation as in they, the Homeland Security crap(s) crappers just stepped on my last one good nerve?
One of my cousins recently had to fly from one state to another to her sister’s funeral. She’d recently had a hip replacement surgery. She had a medical card stating so. Still, at the airport, the TSA agent made her go through the line at the metal metal, take off her shoes, (which after hip replacement surgery was not easy for her to get them back on) and because she had bought a bottle of water and put the change in her pants pockets and the metal detector went haywire … they made her step out of the line while a very menacing, “I am here to defend this country against any shit-assed-headed terrorist, came over to down-pat-search her,’ all the while displaying to the 100tth-and-one degree on the mercurial temperature chart the power she had over my 70 year old cousin.
My now 71 year old cousin, her replaced hip, her this time around slip on sneakers rather than tie down sneakers, is poised to fly again from one state to another, as she accompanied her 72 year old sister on a reconnect with old friends and dear family members trip/vacation sort of thing.
The ennerving sort of thing for me is that both of my cousins buy this crap about we have to do it to keep us all safe that homeland TSA sells.
To begin with … the word “homeland” wreaks od emotionalism … and of authoritarian dictatorial power grabs.
All this crap still looks and smells like something that come crawling out of the Bush, putrid paranoid brain … and for some reason, the present administration is still awash on it.
Wasn’t it Boris Yeltson the one who broke the chains chaining the Russian people? Where is Boris Yeltsin? We need a Boris Yeltsin of our own.
E.T., I was going to say I have sympathy for your cousins, until I got to this:
“. . . both of my cousins buy this crap about we have to do it to keep us all safe that homeland TSA sells.”
In that case, they’re getting exactly what they asked for. And exactly what they deserve. Just like millions of other credulous Americans. They want to feel the boot on their necks. So let them. I hope they’re happy.
After “Boston Strong”, the bizarre spectacle of our valiant fellow citizens bleating their unconditional support for the martial law declared in the attempt to capture one badly wounded teenager, little remains to be defended in our present locked down, sheltering in place, total surveillance, dog eat dog “society”. When I occasionally try to engage fellow working folk in conversation about King Obama’s declaration of his right to indefinitely detain or murder American citizens anywhere in the world without any due process whatever, I often am made to feel like the Kevin McCarthy character in the 1956 sci-fi film, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, running through the streets shouting, “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!” In fact, everything IS in place for iron-fisted totalitarianism.
Tony, yes. Agree to all. What went on in Boston was cringe-inducing. Yet people cheered for it. Cheered!
This country is nuts.