Brilliant:
If the TSA Were Running New York
- All vans or SUVs headed into Midtown Manhattan would have to stop and have their contents inspected. If any vehicle seemed for any reason to have escaped inspection, Midtown in its entirety would be evacuated;
- A whole new uniformed force -- the Times Square Security Administration, or TsSA - would be formed for this purpose;
- The restrictions would never be lifted and the TsSA would have permanent life, because the political incentives here work only one way.
... The point of terrorism is not to "destroy." It is to terrify. And for eight and a half years now, the dominant federal government response to terrorist threats and attacks has been to magnify their harm by increasing a mood of fear and intimidation. That is the real case against the ludicrous "orange threat level" announcements we hear every three minutes at the airport. It's not just that they're pointless, uninformative, and insulting to our collective intelligence; it's that their larger effect is to make people feel frightened rather than brave.
It always strikes me that Israel, which has actual, ongoing terrorism, doesn't x-ray people's shoes.