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[this woulda been friday night's post had i been able to manage it]
they're arrayed around their semi-circular booth as usual when i enter the break-room, their day half over and mine just beginning--crocheting their afghans, stuffing their faces with lunch and chattering incessantly over one another.
"the bitches", i call 'em, even though they're really not. individually, i can happily deal with any one of these women, but as a group? fuhgeddaboudit--if you're not careful you'll get sucked into a conversation about scrapbooking that'll never end.
knowing this, moving purposefully and avoiding eye contact, i make my way to the fridge as usual, dump my shit, stop at the icemaker and then the water cooler for a refill, and just as i'm about to head out the door--a clean getaway--i hear from their table the following which stops me in my tracks:
"listen, if they have to swab my hands to keep me and my kids safe, then i say it's a small price to pay."
[sigh]
somebody tell me: what is it about the prospect of a commercial airliner smashing into the earth in a flaming ball of pyrotechnic carnage that reduces most otherwise rational human beings to helpless, easily-manipulated mush? i dunno, but boy, the terrorists and the government sure seem to, and these days i'm really not sure which group americans should fear more.
i know i shouldn't but i can't help myself, so i turn away from the door, walk over to the booth, face the bitches and say,
"so just because some grubby, semi-literate dumbass muslim tries and fails to blow up a bomb he's managed to slip past whatever half-wit minimum-wage cretin we have guarding the gates, every american should forevermore have to bend over, take their shoes off and have their hands swabbed every time they have to board a plane? really?
startled by this direct assault, the bitch in question bravely answers, "if it will keep us safe, yes."
i move in: "so tell me something, [insert individual bitch's name here]--how many plane crashes you imagine this bullshit will prevent every year?
she's still game, if a little scared [she's never seen mkf drop his jovial mask--none of 'em have]: "if it's even one, that's enough."
i push it: "so let me understand this: you're willing to trade the balls of a nation--reduce us all to passive sheep--in order to maybe save 350 lives a year, right?
she obviously hadn't thought about it in that way, but after a moment's reflection, says "yeah," and her fellow bitches nod in firm agreement.
i then look her in the eye and say, "lemme rephrase the question: you're willing to throw every american's civil liberties under the bus in order to maybe save one planeload of people, yet at the same time you're happily willing to sacrifice 40,000 of your fellow americans a year for the sake of your own convenience--right?"
every eye at the table widens at this wild accusation and she says, "no--what are you talking about?"
when i inform her that most of the 40,000 deaths which occur on america's highways each year could easily be eliminated if we reduced the national speed limit to, say, 25 mph, the table erupts in derisive laughter--"if we all drove at 25 miles an hour, nobody'd get anywhere!"
when i reiterate that 40,000 lives could be saved every year, they remain unmoved--hell, you gotta get to work, right?
as it has throughout most of recorded history, liberty takes a backseat to convenience--and as with most of america, irony is obviously lost on the bitches.
