This unbelievably unaware woman told on
acclaimed University of Pennsylvania economics
professor, Guido Menzio — who had been scribbling
a complex math formula in a notebook. Menzio
posted his experience on Facebook, describing
his encounter with the FBI after being briefly
pulled from the plane, writing: “They ask me about
my neighbor. I tell them I noticed nothing strange.
They tell me she thought I was a terrorist because
I was writing strange things on a piece of paper. I
laugh. I bring them back to the plane. I show them
my math.”
Menzio, to the unnamed woman, was guilty of
terrorism because his Italian ancestry gifted him
with darker complexion and hair, and because her
lack of education and state conditioning caused her
to see dark terrorist plots in mathematical formulae
— possibly, and disturbingly, because she mistook
it for Arabic.
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to cast off basic human rights through increasingly
invasive laws and governance.
Legislation, however, isn’t by far the sole vehicle
available to the government. In a culture so utterly
imbued in paranoia, neighbors aren’t only willing
to spy on neighbors — or complete strangers, to
that end — they’re willing to alert law enforcement
should they observe … Something.
One perfect example of the absurdity of the If You
See Something, Say Something citizen spy program
occurred this week when a woman, suspicious of
cryptic notes penned by the person seated next to
her on an American Airlines flight, decided to Say
Something.
The flight was delayed for over two hours, the FBI
was called, and an egregious commentary on paranoia and xenophobic profiling in the U.S. became
one of an unfortunate many for the history books.
Restrictions on travel aren’t limited to fearful passengers, either, as the notoriously invasive Transportation Security Administration has made air travel
an almost unbearably onerous task. A recent report
predicts grueling airport delays due to the combination of a 10 percent reduction in TSA staff and a 15
percent increase in the number of expected travelers.
Though a PreCheck program is offered by the TSA,
people simply aren’t signing on — likely because
they’re forced to submit to an even more invasive
background check. And it isn’t as if the TSA has a
stunning success rate in thwarting terror attacks, either — though it does have a successful track record
for restricting freedom of travel.
While the government would like you to believe TSA
safety measures protect the country from terrorism,
evidence lies with a far more laughable reality — like
the time a CNN journalist once had her container
of pimento cheese confiscated by agents. Another
report indicated the underpaid and understaffed
TSA is largely incompetent. Congressman Stephen
Lynch explained, “We had folks — this was a testing
exercise, so we had folks going in there with guns on
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