the american rubicon

from TSA to rome, one cat's musings on the path to crossing the river

if one sought to identify the quintessential “government” agency, it would be difficult to improve upon “the TSA” as your choice. consider:

TSA is a relatively recent institution created a scant 45 days after the 9/11 attack and a month before that ghastly exemplar of DC naming inversion “the patriot act” came to be. it commenced on november 19th 2001 under the auspices of the “aviation and transportation security act.” prior to TSA, airports ran their own security and “security lines” were basically not a thing. you could consistently be curb to gate in 10-15 minutes. in response to the attacks of 9/11, this ecosystem (which had generally been working just fine) created a “political consensus to federalize aviation security.” and it did.

thus began the misery of TSA and shoe removal and let me count the ounces of your shampoo and long lines with gropers and annoyances at the front most of whom just seem to be milling around to no good purpose in an overstaffed pantomime of security theater. like any good governmental agency, it rapidly grew and gained authority and purview, being folded into the department of homeland security in 2003 and gaining dominion over surface transport, maritime security, and pipelines.

every new bugbear led to ever more tightening and demands for budget. but the simple fact is that it’s unlikely the TSA airport screening staff has ever stopped even a single credible attack. once can argue that they help the FBI from time to time in catching attackers before they ever make it to the airport, but even this is iffy and certainly does not require either TSA as an agency or the delay and frisk tactics of pouring dumptrucks full of gravel into airport gears.

“but deterrence!” argue the advocates of the security theater. “were this not here, it would be wall to wall hijackings and planes being blown from the sky!” but i see zero basis for this claim that “the bad guys are too scared to come to the airport because TSA will catch them!”

decidedly not scary

1. most of the world does not have to put up with this and has rapid, easy to deal with security that seems equally effective

2. TSA is a performative security circus whose rules are reactive nonsense rooted in structures as arbitrary and senseless as a covidian supermarket. “3 oz of liquid” is a great example. there is zero basis for the standard and it’s not like one could not mix bottles afterward or have several people each clear security and then meet up to fill an empty container (completely fine to bring).

3. these clowns fail basically every test they face. they can find an object you accidentally left in your bag, but that’s irrelevant. a hostile will be craftier and seek to hide or disguise it. and once you do? the TSA becomes about as effective as a paper mache frying pan.

in 2015, the DHS tested them with undercover agents with simulated explosives and weapons. they had a 95% success rate in passing security. this led to, wait for it, a shake up, bigger budgets, more equipment, more people, and even more hassle for the passengers.

they were tested again in 2017: 70-80% fail rate. (item got through)

they were tested again in 2018-19: 70% fail rate.

at that point, they, wait for it again, seem to have stopped testing (or at least releasing the results of the tests).

the whole thing is a unfunny joke played out as frustrating farce. a practice of near zero efficacy has impeded literally billions of flyers to no good end. all the safety comes from intelligence and law enforcement interception pre-airport, armored airplane doors, and air travelers who are unlikely to sit quietly anymore and hope the guy with the box cutter does not demand anything dangerous.

a DC insider once explained to me that “the TSA makes sense once you stop thinking about it as security and realize that it’s a jobs program” and while there is certainly truth to that, i think it’s incomplete:

it’s also security theater, a fear reminder like masks in supermarkets. during the times covidian, puerto rico restaraunts and stores had wall mounted or handheld thermometers that touchlessly took your temperature before you were allowed to enter. they read so low it was basically impossible to set one off. we used to ask: “hey, have you ever had to turn someone away for fever?” never got a single “yes.”

TSA is that. it’s not about safety, it’s about graft and reminding people to be scared, a program of no use, created as a panic reaction, that replaced private security, and that is now interminably metastasizing into endless epoxy in the gears of transport. every year it gets worse and more annoying and more expensive, taking much and providing nothing.

quintessential perfection.

chef’s kisses all around.

this brings us to the issues of the moment where we see that the true “systemic risk” associated with TSA is not the terrorists against whom it’s a dimestore plastic shield but the state.

perhaps you’ve noticed.

i’ve heard i have no idea how many stories about “got to airport 3 hours early, still missed my flight” because TSA paychecks are held up be the latest manifestation of oblivious and self-absorbed DC brinkmanship as government.

the current TSA mess is american politics in a nutshell.

the basic issue itself is manufactured and either side could break this deadlock but neither will.

the dems added policy terms/riders to a “must pass” funding bill for DHS to try and force them through. their demands were obvious non-starters.

it was basically “dox and neuter ICE while preserving asylum and preventing expedited removal.” one can argue about whether or not one wants such things, but it’s clear these are not budgetary issues but rather, full scale policy matters that one would generally expect deserve open and separate debate and that push congress into the precincts of the executive and judicial branches. much of it is a pile of officious requirements and stricture clearly aimed at generating too much bureaucratic overhead for an agency to be functional.

it’s a hostage situation: no funding until we get our demands.

this is all as predictable as it is tiresome and a classic end-around to demand concessions that are non-popular with the demos.

the GOP are refusing to pass it because of those terms which would limit and hamstring ICE, provide asylum, etc.

but this means there is no funding for DHS, FEMA, coast guard, etc. some other groups have alternate funding means, but TSA does not. workers are expected/required to “work without pay” but reality does not behave that way.

then the politicking starts.

the dems offered to split the bill and fund TSA as a standalone with no riders.

the senate GOP is saying no.

they see political risk in taking out the pain point felt by the public on keeping the pressure up on the rest of the negotiation.

and everything deadlocks.

and so DHS goes unfunded and the pain gets piled on us while the swamp donkeys and everglade elephants play at brinksmanship and wrestle for leverage.

everyone acts upset, but the reality is they both love it.

this is a show.

musk offers to pay the TSA workers personally. i have no idea if it’s possible or legal, but no one even seems to have talked about it. that’s no fun. we don’t want a solution. this problem is the product. poor elon is never gonna learn that one…

the GOP get to yell and fundraise on “the donkeys won’t limit immigration or let us arrest illegals! they want you to die from terrorists!”

the dems get to yell and fundraise on “the GOP shut down the airports! we gave them a bill!” and claim that “the jackboot republicans want to arrest your gardener! fascism!”

few see the issue holistically and so it’s grand theater for the faithful of both sides and just makes everyone hate one another more.

it does not stop because neither party wants to stop it.

we now see the GOP sending ICE agents to airports to “fill in for TSA security.”

this is obviously calculated provocation. there are loads of others who could be sent. and, of course, the dems take bait with (soros backed, who else) philly DA’s raging and threatening to arrest ICE.

one might mistake this for dysfunction, but i fear it’s not.

conflict is not a bug here, it’s the feature.

both sides think they are benefiting from the positioning and neither seems to care that there is a country full of people attached to their partisan poo flinging and the wreckage it inflicts.

this whole “and now it takes 3 hours to check in at the airport” is a contrived and needless problem. they generated it to play politics by inflicting pain on americans because this stuff is cash contribution gold and it benefits them and their political war chests.

“outraged? send money!”

the entire american political class has become a vicious, self-serving parasite. they do not care one whit what happens to we the people so long as their money keeps flowing.

and if you doubt this, consider: we’ve seen 1000 stories about corruption, graft, theft, mysterious $30 or 3000 million fortunes accumulated in a few years on a $175k salary. everyone sees it. they agree it’s an issue, talk about it on TV, stump speech about it, but has anyone actually done a damn thing to stop it?

has any actual DC denizen been investigated, held accountable, arrested? has any of the money been taken back? nope. nada. zilch. all the outrage is fake. there is just the swamp. and the swamp will lie and accuse and its dwellers will vilify one another and accuse each other of every kind of immorality and stupidity. but it’s a just a cacophony of calumny played as pantomime and devolving to farce.

congress and the permanent state has become a rancid and corrupt aristocracy. nothing more.

they do not serve the people, their serve themselves.

they will not solve the problem because they are the problem.

and they will never allow accountability because, above all else, the swamp protects its own.

it corrupts everything to touches by either inducting you into the graft or attacking you relentlessly until you cannot survive.

come on in, the water is lovely

the scale of it beggars belief.

it’s not billions, it’s trillions.

dropping several billion into a newly founded fake NGO and having it just vaporize is par for the course. no one even notices that anymore. it’s how they get you in the club. sincecures, fake jobs for family, the endless non-profit money laundry, it simply never ends. US congress critters are explicitly allowed to trade the stocks of the companies they regulate. the sentate banking committe front runs bank stocks right before they change the rules. “getting a big defense contract next week?” let’s buy! CHIP’s act coming? get me some semiconductor options.

no one even talks about closing this deeply insane loophole. if you or i or even goldman sachs traded on this info: jail. the SEC would be on you like a spider monkey. DC? nice trade bro! add it to the pelosi tracker!

both sides squawk for change, but no one really wants it. they want the theater of pretense because that creates fear and “fear that if you don’t vote for me, the other side will eat you like hannibal lecter right down to the fava beans and chianti!” is the best fund raising shillery there is:

endless existential threat becaus no matter how bad i am, the other guy is worse.

what we need in this country is a second political party.

so let’s fast forward to what’s to come as i head out on the limb and seek to play the prognosticating puissant pussycat:

the elephants are going to get shellacked in the midterms and will likely lose both houses. trump has become too divisive to unify (or motivate) the ticket. he lost the tech and fin bros over DOGE and tariffs. he lost another huge tranche of the “no more neocon war” republicans over iran. there is basically zero rizz (gen z for “charisma” it’s a great word, get used to it, it’s here to stay) in the GOP congress. they are largely torpid buffoons and their leadership is hand selected for being ineffective, snout in the trough, business as usual goons with all the sexy curb appeal of a rusted out 1971 AMC gremlin that’s up on blocks.

the dems are similarly horrid and rizz-less, but they have “orange man bad” to unify them and this will be their all out “cheat ‘till the dominion machines are smoking” push because if the save act ever passes and we get some actual US election security and integrity, they’re cooked.

they are also playing an easier hand:

incumbents always lose in mid terms, messes get blamed on whoever is in power regardless ot who made them, and there is pain at the pump and economic dislocation going on.

donkey’s take both houses.

they will use that to commence an unprecedented campaign of dirty tricks, scumbaggery, and procedural assaults. it will be enough to make beria blush. trump will get impeached (again) and they will seek to tie up every agenda point they can in miles of tape and stasi style recrimination.

it will be a masterwork of political interference and “russsia collusion” level lies. it will be like being ruled by jussie smollet.

they will prevent anyone from looking into any of the real crimes of uniparty politicians and drive us into phantasmagorias of fake crimes by their enemies.

it’s not going to work out the way they think it is.

that play has been run too many times and people are getting deathly sick of it, of the lies, the theft, the lack of accountability, the insane telenovella villain level accusations to hide the jame bond villain level crimes.

immigration and election reform are popular issues in the US. systematically preventing them and flipping them into “more of what 80% does not want” will not play well.

they may be able to hamstring trump, but i really worry what they risk by doing so. the greatest misapprehension of the donkeycrats is this: trump is not literally hitler. his positions (though perhaps not his attitude) are those of a late 90’s center leftist. 90% of what he’s saying positionally could have been said by bill clinton. trump is the soft option, the last off ramp before things go really, seriously fricking bad.

in the fine tradition of the TSA they are having such fun using as a political pawn, the dems are looking right at a bundle of dynamite and mistaking it for a children’s toy.

i used to wonder about rome. i used to wonder about how a people abandoned a republic to embrace a dictator, how they chose a caesar over a senate.

i do not wonder anymore.

i get it.

the republic became kleptocratic and broken beyond that which could be borne. the senators became corrupt and avaricious and took too much. eeryhting ran on “favors” and “political patronage.” too many were displaced by vast floods of cheap immigrant labor and slaves. the mos maiorum, the unwritten rules of conduct in the senate, the basic respect for term limits, offices, and vetoes were gone. the idea of the “noble service for a time” and then returning to one’s valleys and farms was subsumed by a permanent political class whose power was too deep and too wide to escape and legal plunder became a way of life.

and past a point, you cannot fix that from within a system.

and past a point, you stop trying.

past a point, you “go bukele” and start arresting judges and senators along with the other criminals and frogmarch them to prison in their boxer shorts. people start saying things like “these people are stealing 15% of GDP and hamstringing the rest. the trains do not run on time. our culture and way of life are dying. these artisos hate us and care only for themselves. ‘caesar’ sounds fricking great right now if it will tear these parasites from my flesh and marrow.”

and rubicons get crossed.

just as the killings of tiberius and gaius gracchus normalized violence as politics in rome, it will normalize here. many are already seeking this. many have already tried. some have succeeded.

what once were weapons of last resort: government shutdown, endless impeachment over absurdities (this was true even of clinton), judges flouting law, and congress playing at the politics of rage and fear because it makes them rich are now the norm. we can barely muster outrage about political assassination. some bray for it.

be careful what you ask for.

politics has devolved and the american federal political system was never designed to handle this much power. it was supposed to be a staid place, mostly external facing, full of checks and balances that protected rights and interfered little in our lives, not the rapacious hydra cum leviathan DBA “the nanny state” that currently lies so heavy upon us all and upon our endeavors.

the dems will take congress, they will nuke the filibuster, and they will seek to ram through an agenda that few want in order to desperately entrench the rights of the aristocracy to remain an aristocracy whatever the cost to the rights of we the people. they will try to smash us back into alignment with the globalist davos denizens with whom the share interests but not nationality.

that’s what aristocracies do.

and it will be too big to hide. no lie will be sufficient to shelter it.

and rubicons will get crossed.

there are still ways to avoid this. calling a constitutional convention could avoid this.

the US senate was not supposed to be the voice of the people. it was intended to be the voice of the states nominated by them to defend their interests and the federalist structure that our framers intended from predation by a grasping center. the 17th amendment destroyed this and made the upper chamber into an overpowered version of the house. and it can and must be repealed. the senate was not designed for populism.

people see ideas like this as radical or impossible. perhaps they are.

but ask yourself: if not that, what?

because make no mistake: “american bukele” can and will happen here if this keeps ratcheting up as it has. dictatorship is the final line of societal immune system for high-function, high trust people when facing conquest by an aristocracy, especially one founded in abuse of legalism and supported by floods of foreigners. history speaks loudly on this topic.

the final check against aristocracy and corrpt politicla party is always “i’d rather just have a warlord. he could not possibly be this bad.”

something has to give and until something does, we are heading for the river that cannot be uncrossed.

and if it gets bad enough, many will be more than happy to cross it.

and if it gets bad enough, that may be the rational choice.