As far as I can tell, "the terrorists" have won. Fear of terrorism has warped our society so much that I think it's fair to describe it as a fundamental change for the worse. This latest horrible incident involving the TSA—reported by WREG Channel 3 News—illustrates the point.
19 year old Hannah Cohen was brutalized and arrested by TSA agents at Memphis International Airport last year. On June 30, 2015, the metal detector beeped as she passed through. TSA agents tried to take her aside for secondary screening but when she resisted she was tackled and her head bashed against the floor, leaving her injured and bloodied.
Sadly, such TSA assaults—supposedly to protect us from assaults by "the bad guys"—aren't uncommon and we've grown used to the invasions of privacy as well as the risk of triggering a violent confrontation with our so-called protectors every time we need to board a plane. This instance was more of the same, yet there's a twist that should make us all once again take notice and voice our disgust.
Hannah is partially deaf, blind in one eye, partially paralyzed, and was on her way home from treatment for a brain tumor at Memphis' famed center for healing gravely ill young people, St. Jude Children's Hospital. Her mother tried to tell the TSA agents that her daughter is physically and mentally disabled, ill, and didn't understand what they were doing but she was ignored. Instead, they treated this young woman with serious medical conditions as though she was a potential deadly threat and acted as if she was insolently refusing to yield to their authority.
I eagerly anticipate the TSA's statement explaining how we all were made safer by throwing this unfortunate teenager into jail overnight. So far, their response has been crickets to a suit filed recently by Hannah's family.
Watch the video at the WREG link at the top of this story. It's shocking but we can't shy away from acknowledging the abuses that have become all too common in our post-9/11 nation.