Tom Engelhardt on how the war on terrorism and the TSA is spiraling out of control:
Consider that a little parable about just how low this country has sunk, how psychologically insecure we’ve become while supposedly guarding ourselves against global danger. There is no question that, at the height of Cold War hysteria, when superpower nuclear arsenals were out of this world and the planet seemed a hair-trigger from destruction, big and small penises were in play, symbolically speaking. Only now, however, facing a ragtag set of fanatics and terrorists — not a mighty nation but a puny crew — are those penises perfectly real and, potentially, completely humiliating.