In many, many cases, trains are simply infeasible. Family across the country? Budget a week just to get there to visit them, with all that awesome plentiful vacation time American companies are known for? Come on. Modern life makes flying necessary for a ton of people. They have to fly or they don't go. That is de facto control of your travel: risk assault and detention if you're brown. Control of your travel is a major aspect of every modern authoritarian state, and that's why people are alarmed.

I think the reason people are incredulous because your claims are blinkered. You're a sharp dude. I like most of your posts. But you are just not aggressively shortsighted enough to be excusing this with a straight face.

And your argumentum ad leaderboardum sucked transcendentally. You are totally, totally better than that.

I don't think the U.S. is a police state.

But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train". It is true that the train will probably not have as onerous security requirements, but then that isn't really the point either.

If we put restrictions on a mode of transportation those restrictions should in general be in keeping with some legit governmental goal. "Airport security" does meet this, but I don't think we can say the same for all of the treatment OP actually received.

> But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train".

It should be at least part of the answer; a big part of the idea of the TSA (and one of the reasons the airlines got on board to help lobby for it) was that it moved the responsibility and potential liability from the airlines to the government (who, incidentally, has a whole host of immunities to deal with the "liability" aspect.)

Voting with your dollars away from industries whose services require being subjected to the TSA sends a message -- not directly to the government, but to the industries involved.

That's not to say its the only response, but voting-with-dollars ought to be part of the response.

Take the bus? Drive? as a suggestion to avoid the TSA is not valid, I am not sure whether you are aware of this, by the way train travel is covered too:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/02/29/the-tsa-is-c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_Intermodal_Prevention_...

(EDIT: I misquoted you from memory)

I no longer fly since the TSA started. I have also looked into taking the train, once from Ft. Lauderdale (where I live, close enough) to Las Vegas (where some friends of mine live). To say the results were amusing is an understatement.

First, it was easily three times the cost of a round-trip ticket. Okay, I'm willing to pay. Second, we're talking about four or five days worth of travel, which, again, might be okay, except that I end up at Salt Lake City (yeah, that far north) on a bus headed south to Las Vegas.

So much for a train to Las Vegas.

Okay, how about Seattle? The company I work for (in Ft. Lauderdale) is headquartered in Seattle. That was an easy $2,000 train ticket taking a week to travel one way.

If I wanted to take the train to Washington, D.C.? No problem there. Same with a train to New York, New York. Boston. In fact, if you are somewhere along the east coast of the US and want to head to the major northeast cities, you will probably have no issues taking the train. Elsewhere? Probably not.

And before anyone asks, taking the bus. I just did a quick search for a bus trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Las Vegas. It was $430 one way, taking two days. Better than the train, but three times the price of an airplane. (http://www.rome2rio.com/s/Fort-Lauderdale/Las-Vegas)

There has been a noted increase of posts containing "lol" and other indicators of decline.

Edit: If you think posts with lol are a good thing please say why.

run a grep for el oh el on your post there before and after the edit.