A sort of continuation of the budget culture article I posted a few months ago. This article goes over the absurdity and sheer usefulness of the TSA PreCheck system. I've had Pre for a long time now because I got it as a perk with my fancy points credit card. Actually, that allowed for Global Entry, which is kinda like PreCheck except for international flights, letting you get through customs a lot faster when returning home. I was doing a bunch of travel to speak at conferences and whatnot back then, and Pre and Global Entry were awesome, especially when traveling with the family.

This whole thing is, of course, another example of people who don't really need the perks, or would be able to afford them, getting them for free. If you have never used Pre, the experience is basically this: if you're old enough, remember air travel before 9/11? You can almost experience that again by paying the government $85 to get your fingerprints and do a background check so you can go in a (usually) shorter line and not have to take off your shoes and belt.

Put another way, remember Cool Ranch Doritos? Of course you do. Remember when they first came out? They were amazing, right? New flavor, and plenty of it. Then, over the years, they didn't have the same kick that they once used to. But never fear! Now there's COOLER RANCH, with more XTREME flavor!

But, I'm fairly certain they just slowly tapered off how much of the magic dust they put on the chips over the years and then returned it to the original formula and reintroduced it as COOLER. I think this is a pretty common playbook, especially when they can charge more when they return to their original glory. Shrinkflation, Walmartization, etc. Start out with something good that people love, get them hooked, and then slowly remove what they love until competition isn't a problem and you can raise the prices to return them to your original selling point.

So yeah, PreCheck. Stripping away your dignity in the name of Security™ for 20 years so they can charge the people who can afford it (or who get it for free as a perk) to return a little bit of it, all while collecting a bunch of fingerprints and tracking people who haven't (yet) committed a crime.

It’s not a new observation that the American justice system has two tiers. The wealthy (and, often, the white) have the ability to warp and pervert it for their own gain, bending rules or financing the rewriting of regulations when they can’t be adequately tweaked for their purposes. Those who lack the means to distort the system for their own ends are subjected to the pitiless letter of the law. Nowhere is the bifurcated nature of justice more nakedly on display than in the presence of the TSA PreCheck line. While the general boarding class is subjected to all manner of indignity, the people with PreCheck breeze through while experiencing just the briefest overture of security theater.

And you better believe that it's fucking great. There is such satisfaction in showing up to the airport, consistently some of the worst, most human-hostile places on earth, and getting through the line a little bit quicker while not having to remove your damn belt. It's the small things. But it's also proof that all it takes is a slow trickle of continued bullshittery until we're ecstatic to return to … how things used to be before they got unnecessarily shitty.

By all logic, PreCheck shouldn’t exist. We should not have to sacrifice privacy for convenience, and we should not be allowed to pay to bypass “necessary” security measures for a small fee. Either no one deserves these privileges or we all do. “TSA PreCheck For All” would be an immensely popular political platform for a Democratic presidential candidate.

"TSA PreCheck For All" is an interesting idea… but that's just "return to the pre-9/11 world" which means nobody would be getting anything special. Which I guess is the point? If everyone could keep their shoes and belts on and not have to go through the porno scanners, things would be better and faster for everyone. But it also means you wouldn't really get anything "special" from the experience. No smug look at the proles in the long regular line putting their arms up while standing in the Rapiscan.

Maybe not, though. I suppose this type of program would still mean everyone who wanted to take advantage of it would have to register their info and fingerprints etc. to The Deep State to bypass the security theater. Which means, of course, that there would be a 40%+ contingent of people who would refuse to actually do it and would turn it into a massive conspiracy about government overreach and all that shit. So, perhaps it would still be a shorter line? I guess, kinda like the whole Covid vaccine thing, it would morph into the line where you don't have to take off your belt, and then the Other line where all the Patriots are taking off their red hats in protest, martyring themselves in the name of Freedom. All while their heroes from TV and the internet fly on private flights or, at the very least, go through the PreCheck line because, well, of course they are.