Invasion of Privacy to Invasion of Bodies

A quote that often haunts me is by Josef Mengele: "The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it." Only recently did the Department of Justice fess up to providing safe passage to many Nazi's post WWII, although books have been written about Operation Paperclip. Former Nazi, Wernher von Braun became the head of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and no one seemed to blink an eye. We needed his knowledge of rocket science, right? Did you also know the Nazi who ran lethal experiments to test the limits of compression on the human body was also ushered in? As was Josef Mengele. The report didn't admit to much specifically but it gave survivors of abuse at the hands of these monsters in the U.S. our first glimpse of validation.

In the name of national security, the means to the end was justified. The children of the Cold War were in their prime in their 20s and 30s but are now falling apart from the torturous abuse to create dissociated couriers, spies, soldiers, and whatever else might benefit from a person unable to recall a deed performed on command.

Fastforward to 9/11/2001. In the name of national security. Abuses by Homeland Security, bypassing the Geneva convention regarding rights of prisoners for certain crimes, and increasingly more invasive searches of our belongings and now our bodies at airports.

Soon all of the country will be "used to" our government telling us how we must submit our bodies to them. The option not to fly keeps citizens in the U.S. So many are repulsed by this new tactic, they don't know what to do. As a survivor of abuse, I speak likely for all in that category that these body searches so violate our healing. We lose our empowerment to say "no" to strangers touching us in ways we do not want to be touched.

A young girl trying to say "no" as she was taught to do if accosted by a stranger is brought to tears. A man with a catheter is completely humiliated when a TSA agent broke his catheter bag. A woman who had undergone a mastectomy was told she needed to show the agent her prosthetic breast. Is this okay? Why are we allowing the government to do this?

We are responding to every fear tactic as if putting out one fire at a time instead of working on a greater solution to the problem. And with my perspective of the world, people like the man with the shoe bomb and the explosive diapers were plants by our government to be used as justification for further invading our lives.

I'm sick of this encroachment. I'm not proud of our country for taking such actions. The government is for the people, yes? Then why are we not standing up to this instead of giving in. It's wrong.

Man up on flight marshals. And where are the profilers? Like the Criminal Minds profilers who read body language. Hire one for each airport for heaven's sake. That's profiling I think we can all live with and would want to live with. Take the ones out of line advised by the profiler and leave the rest of us alone!

I DO believe they are doing it, referring to U.S. special citizen Josef Mengele's quote. I write mostly about dissociation, which is not being aware of one's surroundings. Have we become a nation blind to what is happening to us? I fear we have.