{"id":8883,"date":"2011-04-18T11:02:58","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T15:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=8883"},"modified":"2011-04-18T11:02:58","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T15:02:58","slug":"oh-stop-worrying-everything-is-going-according-to-the-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/04\/18\/oh-stop-worrying-everything-is-going-according-to-the-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, stop worrying: everything is going according to the <em>plan<\/em>!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato-at-liberty.org\/all-part-of-the-plan-national-security-wisdom-from-the-joker\/\" target=\"_blank\">Julian Sanchez<\/a> notes a <em>fascinating<\/em> parallel:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Batman\u2019s archnemesis the Joker &mdash; played memorably by Heath Ledger in 2008\u2032s blockbuster <em>The Dark Knight<\/em> &mdash; might seem like an improbable font of political wisdom, but it\u2019s lately occurred to me that one of his more memorable lines from the film is surprisingly relevant to our national security policy:<\/p>\n<p><em>You know what I\u2019ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go \u201caccording to plan.\u201d Even if the plan is <strong>horrifying<\/strong>! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it\u2019s all \u201cpart of the plan.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>There are, one hopes, limits. The latest in a string of videos from airport security to provoke online outrage shows a six-year-old girl being subjected to an invasive Transportation Security Administration patdown &mdash; including an agent feeling around in the waistband of the girl\u2019s pants. I\u2019m somewhat reassured that people don\u2019t appear to be greatly mollified by TSA\u2019s response:<\/p>\n<p><em>A video taken of one of our officers patting down a six year-old has attracted quite a bit of attention. Some folks are asking if the proper procedures were followed. Yes. TSA has reviewed the incident and the security officer in the video followed the current standard operating procedures.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While I suppose it <em>would<\/em> be disturbing if individual agents were just improvising groping protocol on the fly (so to speak), the response suggests that TSA thinks our concerns should be assuaged once we\u2019ve been reassured that everything is being done by the book &mdash; even if the book is <em>horrifying<\/em>. But in a sense, that\u2019s the underlying idea behind all security theater: Show people that there\u2019s a Plan, that procedures are in place, whether or not there\u2019s any good evidence that the Plan actually makes us safer.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julian Sanchez notes a fascinating parallel: Batman\u2019s archnemesis the Joker &mdash; played memorably by Heath Ledger in 2008\u2032s blockbuster The Dark Knight &mdash; might seem like an improbable font of political wisdom, but it\u2019s lately occurred to me that one of his more memorable lines from the film is surprisingly relevant to our national security [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,84,10,13],"tags":[52,322,217,201,202,451],"class_list":["post-8883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-government","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-absurd","tag-nannystate","tag-rights","tag-securitytheatre","tag-travel","tag-tsa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2jh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8883"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8885,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8883\/revisions\/8885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}