By John Loftus

Copyright dailycaller

We’ve all experienced headache-inducing experiences thanks to TSA agents, the sorts of ordeals that make you never want to step inside an airport and fly again, no matter how short, long, or pressing the journey.

Unnecessary gropings. Snappy attitudes before the crack of dawn. Or the opposite: a fecklessness that borders on negligence. Once upon a recent time, the forced removal of shoes.

And maybe all of that is a necessary sacrifice. Even if TSA agents fail to act like hawkish, vigilant preventers of mass terror events 24/7, that does not mean they do not serve a vital purpose. I submit that a big part of having TSA is that it serves as a deterrent against bad people, much like the National Guard troops deployed in Washington, D.C., who, though they seem to be idling around with no clear purpose, may actually contribute to making the environment safer solely because of their presence. (RELATED: Trump’s Armed National Guardsmen Could Hang Out Feeding Ducks All Day — That’s Still A Good Thing)

The problem is, they can sometimes act hawkish and vigilant toward the wrong people in ways that are painfully, mind-bogglingly obvious. So much so that the TSA’s misguided attention makes you feel as if you are stuck inside some demented dystopian story, a Franz Kafka fable, or a George Orwell novel.

I felt such anger and frustration Sunday evening, when my wife and I were flying out of Tweed Airport, a tiny airport right outside New Haven, Connecticut. Tweed is so small, in fact, that there are only three gates and two TSA lines: one for standard flyers and the other for pre-TSA check passengers. You would think that this airport would make for a smoother, calmer flying experience, compared to the likes of LAX or JFK. But oh no.

Upon arrival, we hopped into the TSA line, which actually snaked out of the building and outside onto the sidewalk drop-off area. We waited in line for over 30 minutes before TSA agents arrived. Granted, we were early to the flight, as were a dozen other passengers. And I wouldn’t have minded waiting, as we were in no rush, and it was rather nice to be able to float outside for fresh air if need be.

But the wait in line was a 30-minute rollercoaster ride of paranoia and anxiety, owing to two sketchy passengers, one of whom was clearly either strung out on drugs or had, somewhere along the line, lost his marbles due to being strung out on drugs.

The two men were doing pretty much everything that hammers the alarm bell in your mind that goes something to effect of … DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER DANGER.

Both of them were very agitated. They were breaking all the unspoken social rules that people in public spaces quietly abide by, such as not yelling and not acting like lunatics. One of the men kept aimlessly walking around, talking to himself, laughing to himself, trying to throw up in the trash can.

Meanwhile, my wife and I were making a point to keep our distance and never let either of them get behind us in a spot where we could not see them. The other flyers all seemed on edge, as well. Eventually we just moved to the back of the line to give ourselves as much distance as possible from the pair.

After the line progressed into the airport, we made it to the metal detectors, where I witnessed the man remove a lighter from the possible drug addict’s baggy sweatpants. Of course, TSA agents barely reacted to their antics, allowed both men to stroll through the metal detectors without a hitch or modicum of suspicion, and waved them on into the airport as if they were as normal as the rest of us.

The TSA agents did, however, stop an old man in a wheelchair provided to him by the airport to pat him down and inspect his wheelchair after he passed through the metal detector.

It was the TSA’s absurd logic in a nutshell: utter nonchalance for the one potential person who was a threat to public safety; theatrical vigilance for the one person who was definitively not a threat to public safety.

I was outraged. And to make matters worse, the crazy person/potential drug addict kept roaming around the airport gates with his partner in crime for the next two or so hours before their flight.

As we have witnessed with the horrific train stabbing in Charlotte and the assassination of Charlie Kirk, I’m well aware that the world is littered with lunatics. I have been around homeless people plenty of times before in my life, probably more than the average person, as I have lived in or worked in two major cities, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. I know that it is next to impossible to live in a society where there are no crazy people or public threats to safety. At least it is impossible insofar as we want to live in a free society with civil liberties. (RELATED: MR. RIGHT: Justice For Iryna, Shame For The Men)

At the time, though, the incident Sunday was still jarring, even if I shouldn’t be surprised at all. As taxpayers, we spend billions a year on TSA security and even more on the modern security state in the CIA, FBI, ATF, etc. Some of that money is worth it. But when TSA agents can’t perform a basic duty or pat down the one person who is likely to cause a scene or harm somebody in the airport, it makes you wonder whether all that money is worth it and whether things would be different if, instead of relying on the government to provide security services in the airport, we privatized it all.

Regardless, all the money spent on public safety will go to waste if people in positions of power, whether they are TSA agents, city officials in Charlotte, or the Secret Service the day of Donald Trump’s near-assassination in 2024, don’t their their basic due diligence. Billions mean nothing when the person on the ground who is supposed to be doing their job doesn’t care at all and simply shrugs their shoulders.

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