Light ironies -- I practically grew up on the subway... was taken on it to nursery school and kindergarten... took it to high school and college... rode it to work for a couple of decades... and now that it's the center of attention -- all that first-day coverage about bag searches -- I'm not on it. At the moment I have a flex job that puts me either in my home office, or on the other side of Trenton, which means that I won't be affected by the whole new security thing, Summer of '05 version, until somebody tries to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel and they start searching trunks.
Keeping that possibility in mind... I still can't say I mind being aboveground right about now.
I did try to keep an eye on the first-day coverage. Pretty predictable, the reactions. Some acceptance. Some grumbling. Some idiocy. Which, factoring in my old neighbors on the Upper West Side, and their compatriots on the Lower East Side, is about par.
About this whole invasion-of-privacy, you're-violating-my-civil-rights tune -- look, guys. It's called public transportation. You use it, you don't have an absolute right to privacy. It's sort of like, you know, living in society -- we all give up things (such as absolute rights) in order to get things (such as, for example, protection from the nice gentlemen with of-course-understandable grievances who are trying to exercise their first-amendment right to self-expression by trying to blow us up). And as long as those trade-offs are managed reasonably -- through good police policy and the courts and the Civilian Complaint Review Board -- we all get through our days.
CNN quoted one of my neighbors this morning to the effect that "I feel like we're living in Russia." No. You're not living in Russia. You're living in New York -- which fact, by itself, makes other people want to kill you. Look -- I'm not thrilled by the searches. Nobody is. I'd love to go back to September 10. If you know a way, please advise. Otherwise, this is what you're in. How about you try to avoid absolute positions (which are a big part of what landed us in all this) and try to consider the value of trading some elements of your viewpoint and a certain degree of inconvenience for the added value that the guys with the plastic explosive are going to be inconvenienced, too?
Full disclosure -- at some point in the next couple of weeks I'm going to wind up in the subway, and if there's a search going on, I'm going to be irritated. But I'm going to try to keep in mind who to blame.
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