I’ve never understood the airport security thing since 9-11.  They are looking for weapons, when I think they should be looking for people.  People, for example, like the Texas synagogue terrorist, who had a history of criminal behavior, mental illness, and anti-Semitism.  But Muslim terrorists killed thousands of people with box-cutters, so now I have to take my shoes off to get on an airplane?  I’m a 53-year-old Lutheran from Ohio, not a 23-year-old Muslim from Pakistan.  What do my shoes have to do with national security?  An article in The New York Post touched on this yesterday:

American travelers put up with a vast amount of security theater: millions of man-hours lost each year to unpredictably long TSA lines; intrusive pat-downs; the whole take-off-your-shoes-and-belt rigamarole. Yet the vast security apparatus can’t screen out a mentally ill Muslim extremist?

Americans need to demand that our Homeland Security apparatus be completely redesigned.  They should be looking for people, not weapons.  Which will be difficult politically, because a lot of those people (although not all) will be Muslims.  But saving lives can be difficult.  Regardless, the first thing we need to do is recognize the existence of reality.  We need to agree that what we’re doing right now makes no sense whatsoever.  Let’s start there.  Perhaps this latest synagogue attack will start the discussion.

And perhaps Joe Biden will recognize the destructive impact of his policies, and sign an order reverting everything back to Trump’s policies, while riding a unicorn through a sea of cotton candy.

The simple act of recognizing reality has become an absurd fantasy.

It’s amazing how complex and difficult and dangerous reality can become when we attempt to ignore it.  It really is much simpler to acknowledge the existence of reality, even if we don’t care for it at times.

But we’re Americans.  We don’t have to do that.  We have a Constitutional right to whatever version of reality we prefer.  That’s a pretty good summary of the Democrat Party platform, come to think of it.

Even if it doesn’t make any sense.  Criminally insane Muslim extremists are not a threat to us.  My shoes are.  That seems nice.  And really, you’ve got to admit, that would be nice.  It’s much easier to deal with my shoes than a criminally insane Muslim extremist.

But ignoring reality does not make it go away.  It just makes it more complex, more difficult, and more dangerous.  Which we see over and over again.  But we never learn.

But difficult decisions can be difficult.  Conflict can be unpleasant.  Maybe this time, just this once, we can just look the other way.  Can’t we all just get along?

That’d be nice.  It really would.

I wonder how that will work out?  You never know, I suppose…