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Trump’s the Security President, and That’s a Bad Thing
The victory of post-9/11 paranoia
Sometimes you come across an idea that, once you’ve read it, seems obvious in its correctness, but had never occurred to you before. I stumbled across one of those recently in Richard Beck’s excellent book , a bold and fascinating look at how 9/11 and its aftermath changed America.
Here’s the quote that rearranged my thinking, from a section on the TSA and anti-terrorist security:
Safety is the feeling that you are not threatened. Security is the feeling that you are threatened but that you are protected from the threat.
Beck argues that the lost dollars, hours, and dignity that we’ve poured into airport security have been counterproductive. I’ve seen many authors make the case that the whole TSA rigamarole is “” — in essence, a series of ineffective measures undertaken to make the public think it’s safer without providing much additional protection. But I’d never seen someone put it quite the way Beck does.
He writes that the relentless securitization of the United States — from TSA checks to “hardened” cityscapes — mostly reminds us of the threats around us. This means that, especially when they don’t have much practical effect on our welfare, security measures make us…
