I don’t know about you, but unless it’s my significant other, I don’t want to get felt up and out, irrespective of whether or not the person’s another woman or has on the thickest gloves possible. The pat downs I used to get in the club are intrusive enough; I can only imagine the thorough job our federal government does to ensure that I don’t have a plastic knife, hand-sanitizing gel, or the ingredients for a Molotov cocktail. And other than my clothing, my iPod, my books, my magazines, my cell phone, some gifts, and some toiletries that’ll make it on the conveyor belt, what else could they want from me?

All I have is my word and my balls.

Since the TSA is intent on busting those for many in this country, people had to make a stink, no matter who the president was. The recent uprising about the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) new security measures is exactly the way people should have responded … years ago. When we lost the freedom of association, freedom of information (except when people want to print the names and “scores” of public school teachers), freedom of speech, right to legal representation, habeas corpus, freedom from unreasonable search, freedom to a speedy and public trial, and thousands of human lives all over the world over the expansion of the “free market,” we might want to put things in perspective.

We should have protested when law enforcement have a tabula rasa on their records whenever they push their own line of demarcation a little too far, when the US Coast Guard selects who they’ll let through our borders and serve open sentences for murder on whoever they deem expendable. We should have protested when our own media has gone from actually informing us to molding what the general public says about whichever topic their corporate sponsors deem best for their agenda. We should have protested when we the average American haven’t seen our tax money jump back in our wallets since companies are now churning record profits.

But that’s too hard. Protesting about someone feeling up your hotbox is much easier, even though we’ve had people digging into our rights year after demoralizing year. People with short memories also forget that this is really just an extension of the PATRIOT Act, a law of the land that we all but acquiesced to the minute that we shouldn’t have. The same moment that has a security agent ready to either take pictures of my nakedness or willing to pull out the gloves to feel my balls.

If they take away that and my word? I’m done.

Jose, who can’t wait for someone else to argue that words don’t matter when they clearly do …