Sexing up the police
state isn’t easy – but Lincoln’s trying.
Ford’s luxury line now offers –
scratch that, includes
as standard equipment– a “complimentary” membership in
CLEAR, which is the Department of Homeland Security’s “fast” and
“efficient” biometric cattle tag program, already in use at public airports and
other public-access venues.
But not, it’s worth a mention,
at private-access airports
– i.e., general aviation, where the Heimatsicherheitsdienst (that’s
Homeland Security Department in the more appropriate – and original – German)
does not fondle and grope, nor body scan travelers rich enough to avoid public
air travel. This includes, of course, the politicians who gave us the Heimat and the Sicherheitsdienst.
But not themselves.
Naturlich.
Just as they exempted themselves
from the strictures of Obamacare.
Which is, as Charlie Chan used
to say, very interesting.
Maybe
the ululating “enemies of freedom” we are constantly menaced by – so we’re told
– are too broke to afford a charter
flight for their evildoing. They fly coach. This, at any rate,
appears to be the thinking. If we
assume that preventing “terrorism” via airplane is the true purpose of the
TSA.
Which
of course, it’s not.
Anyhow.
Instead of presenting his
papers, old timey-style – and being interrogated (and felt up) by a
blue-uniformed government goon until he’s satisfactorily passed his Submission
Training session – the lucky Lincoln owner will be greeted curbside by a
helpful CLEAR “team member” – we’re all just one big team, you know – who
will then “escort” him to a “dedicated” CLEAR lane, where the “customer” (yes,
they actually use that term) will step up to a special kiosk for speedier processing via iris
scan and fingerprint.
Do
this just the once and your unique biological signature will be recorded forever – allegedly in
order to hasten your transit through the Heimat. In actuality, to make it easier for
the organs of the Heimat to
keep tabs on you forever – and not just at the airport. Once your eyes have
been scanned, you can
be scanned anywhere there is a scanner. Which is eventually going to be
everywhere – and already well on the way.
The
sell is that you’ll “bypass the usual long lines” and “walk through security in
minutes every time.” Temple Grandin – the famous animal behaviorist – developed
a similar technique, intended to soothe cattle making the transition from four
hoofs on the ground to sides of beef hanging in the meat locker.
Keep
them calm – and make the trip more enjoyable.
Two
hooves or four, the end goal is the same. And it’s not in the best interests of
the cows.
“We
are thrilled to be part of Lincoln’s vision to enhance its clients’ lives in
new and exciting ways,” exults CLEAR CEO Caryn Seidman-Becker. “There’s a
natural fit between our shared focus on making travel simpler at every step
along the customer journey.”
Mark
that. The “customer journey.”
Just
like Temple Grandin’s happy cows.
It’s
all logical, as inevitable as C follows B follows A. First, normalize the
outrageous. Get people used to affronts, most especially intrusions upon their
privacy and personal space without
cause.
Routinize
the rifling of their possessions, first. Then, compel them to accept being
routinely touched – again, without cause – by government workers; and not
merely touched, but violated in the most personal way imaginable short of actual insertion.
Make them endure this being done to their wives and children, while they stand
by, helpless and degraded.
Treat
people who’ve done nothing exactly as if they had. Take it a step further and
compel them to prove they haven’t done
anything as a condition of being treated – after the fact – as innocent.
It
was once the case that only those who’d been charged with a serious crime –
a felony–
were subject to being fingerprinted. Now, we’re being conditioned to accept
being fingerprinted and retina-scanned
as a luxury by
Lincoln.
Such
is life in the Heimat.
.
. .
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