I was heading home to New York from London’s Heathrow Airport earlier this month and carried three boxes of Swiss chocolate-covered biscuits that my wife craves. They are impossible to find in the United States, but oddly enough can be found in U.K. duty-free shops. Before I could board the plane, British Airways personnel warned me that the cookies were a security violation because of their gooey centers. I was lucky — instead of being strip-searched, I had time to return the cookies for a refund. But then I was caught between the rock of antiterrorism logic and the hard place of my wife’s implacable chocoholism.
The Transportation Security Administration announced Monday that it was easing the Draconian anti-liquid carry-on restrictions previously imposed, and that health and beauty products in liquid and gel form under three ounces would be allowed after separate screening. And so would liquids and gels bought in airport stores beyond security checkpoints.
Obviously, this is only the first chapter in our surely endless dialectic about terrorism, living in a free and democratic world and the importance of moisturizers and emollients.
Which brings up a tantalizing question: Will the plot to down civilian airplanes with liquid explosives serve as one of the tipping points in the war against terror? It’s one thing to attack innocent civilian targets, but a line was crossed when my wife was deprived of chocolate covered biscuits with a gooey center.
Show me an American woman who must justify to armed security personnel each and every container of make-up, shampoo, body-scrubbing lotion, anti-aging cream, wrinkle eraser, exfoliating scrub, after-bath lotion, or grapefruit-gelato energizing body gel and I’ll show you a woman whose terrified husband is hiding in the cargo hold. As every married man knows, anything that goes wrong, anywhere, any time, from terrorism to bad weather to the stomach flu, is our fault. I am still paying the price for my failure to deliver the cookies, by the way.
Terrorists rejoice in flouting the rules of law, but there is one law they cannot escape — the Law of Unintended Consequences. We in the West can absorb the shock of a terrorist attack and return to our status quo, but when our everyday rituals of life are disrupted, we are like sleeping giant shaken from a nap, woozy and angry and itching for a fight.
The security countermeasures to the liquid-bomb threat do not represent a frivolous deprivation of liberty. What about healthcare products such as lubricants, antifungals, antibiotics, and anti-itch applications? If you suffer eczema, poison ivy, pinkeye or diabetes, and you have not packed properly, you might be forced to endure a 37-day cruise to New Zealand. Surely your district manager will approve the paperwork for a 5-1/2 week vacation?
The upheaval over carry-on items does not mean that Western women are narcissistic. Shampoos, conditioners, and botanical extracts are an essential expression of femininity and a woman’s freedom as a consumer. Capitalism insures women their inalienable right to a citrusy sweet, laugh-line-reduced, freedom.
Meanwhile, the average midwestern guy can wash his hair with bovine anti-tick soap and be happy. In this way the liquid-terror scheme is an inadvertent assault on Western female sexuality, and, by extension, male virility, because if my wife lands in Seattle with clammy pores and dehydrated legs she will feel unattractive and grouchy and combative, which will deter any of my free-floating amorous intentions and push me deeper into my football-season antisocialism.
At first glance, men should easily adapt to the ever-changing web of travel restrictions. As long as we have access to beef jerky, salted nuts, chips, and candy, we’ll drink the water out of the bathroom sink. But wait — laptops, iPods, DVD players and GameBoys are still banned, a clear and present danger to our gender that leaves us naked and helpless in the maw of our attention deficit disorder. If I can’t watch Goodfellas 17 times between O’Hare and Kuala Lampur, will I be forced to sit and read a book? That thought frightens me beyond anything in Osama bin Laden’s twisted dreams.
The broader question is whether inconvenience, instead of outrage, will slowly tip the public’s support for the war on terror. It’s not that the war in Iraq has been bungled, but, more simply, that Americans don’t stay angry for long. We express our anger in short bursts — about the average length of an Ultimate Fighting pay-per-view special or the invasion of Grenada — but then we want a return to peace and quiet and the kids back to the basement.
On the other hand, we can remain irritated indefinitely. According to brand-new psychological and neurological research, humans adapt well to tragedies, such as the death of a loved one or the loss of a job, but are more prone to become depressed and enraged at day-to-say insults like discovering that our spicy Buffalo wings are undercooked after driving them home in the rain and putting on our big sweatpants and turning on the HDTV.
This is not a sign we are shallow. It’s a biological imperative to see our blood pressure skyrocket if our baggage inexplicably enters the ninth dimension but react more calmly if someone bombs the White House. After all, we can always rebuild the White House, but if I get bumped to a middle seat, my trip to the ashram in Nepal will be totally ruined.
Americans are a logical and linear people, yet we hate to stand in lines. This is not an intellectual contradiction. We understand the reason for the line’s existence, but our expectation of ever-increasing competency demands that every line naturally evolves into a not-line. The fact that small lines are now evolving into hellish, wheel-spinning graveyards betrays our Darwinian instincts and abrogates the Moore’s Law of infinite progress that we sloppily generalize across every aspect of our lives.
Impatience is the rocket fuel that drives our greatness. Waiting in line is one of the great poxes of modern life, and the fact that a small group of suburban, British-born Muslims can cause millions of Americans to waste hundreds of millions of man-, women- and baby-hours in spleen-churning idleness represents a kind of sacrilege. Convenience and instant gratification are our religion. A line that does not move is a subversion of our most deeply cherished beliefs.
We can adapt only so much. Removing one’s shoes is so absurd as to be amusing, but boarding a 24-hour flight to Aukland armed only with a wrinkled copy of Real Simple stolen from the dentist and a low-fat oatmeal-raisin bar is an abomination against everything we hold dear, and if Thomas Jefferson isn’t turning over in his grave it’s only because he knows this would violate some arcane environmental law and he is dutifully serving his Republic from the great beyond, where, presumably, the lines move smoothly and the diet soda situation is more flexible.
And even if we suppress the liquid explosives threat, what deadly innovation will emerge next? Will someone figure out how to mix the hydrogenated oils that coat the Deluxe Tropical Fruit-Nut Mix ($11.99 per half pound) with French fry grease and ignite the mixture using a hearing aid?
We are waging a war for our future, and that future will be deadlier, delay-prone and snack- and-beverage free.
— Bruce Stockler is a public-relations consultant and writer.