XPost: rec.travel.air, alt.politics.usa.republican, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   Air travel (particularly within the U.S.) has been a traveler's nightmare   
   for decades. Unlike those photos from the '50s where airports looked like   
   visions of the future and everyone on the plane was dressed to the nines   
   and flying in luxury, modern air travel, including the airports, often   
   leaves much to be desired. In the words of the wonderful Douglas Adams:   
      
   'It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever   
   produced the expression 'as pretty as an airport.' Airports are ugly. Some   
   are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the   
   result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full   
   of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their   
   luggage has landed in Murmansk ... and the architects have on the whole   
   tried to reflect this in their designs.   
      
   They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with   
   brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business   
   of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to   
   confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows,   
   distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky,   
   and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is   
   functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on   
   the grounds that they are not.'   
      
   Sigh ... we miss Douglas Adams.   
      
   But even through the end of the 20th century, air travel was still   
   tolerable and efficient. We're pretty sure the real hell started with the   
   inception of the TSA. Like most government-mandated alphabet   
   organizations, the TSA has proven to be utterly useless and just an   
   endless suck of taxpayer money. Post-TSA, everything has seemed to just   
   start careening downhill. Fast.   
      
   But up until very recently, at the very least, you could usually count on   
   air travel to be (mostly) safe.   
      
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   Today, as every airline seems to embrace the destructive force known as   
   DEI, even safety seems to be flying out the window (sorry, bad joke in   
   this context).   
      
   For instance, take a look at this recent Virgin Airlines flight from   
   Manchester, UK, to New York City:   
      
      
   Beg your pardon? It took the PASSENGER to notice that something was wrong   
   with the wing?   
      
   We could have sworn the airplanes had maintenance crews for that sort of   
   thing. But maybe not so much.   
      
      
   Probably not a bad idea. We'd suggest a screwdriver as well, but TSA would   
   just end up seizing it from you.   
      
      
   Actually, we're pretty sure they were watching the CEO of United Airlines   
   in one of his classic drag shows.   
      
   Oh, you may be saying, but that's just one flight. It happens. 'Pobody's   
   nerfect,' right?   
      
   Yeah. About that ...   
      
      
   Uhh, were they counting on a water landing? Do 757s come equipped with   
   pontoons now?   
      
   We're not entirely sure that is not the goal here. [Puts on tinfoil hat.]   
   Making air travel unsafe would go a long way towards restricting people to   
   15-minute cities, just like Klaus Schwab always dreamed of.   
      
   But wait. The Delta incident was even worse than you imagine.   
      
   Sweet Jesus, save us.   
      
   To further illustrate what is happening with air travel, let's not forget   
   the recent adventures of passengers on Alaska Airlines where, just this   
   month, a door blew off a plane mid-flight, another engine caught fire in   
   mid-air, and today, more great news:   
      
   The FAA has now grounded all Boeing 737 Max 9 planes and ordered a full   
   safety investigation. (Just in the nick of time, guys, as usual.)   
      
      
   It's been a helluva month for Boeing, hasn't it? But don't worry,   
   everyone. The New York Post has 'assured' us that airplane crashes are now   
   'safer than ever.'   
      
   We feel SO much better.   
      
      
   It's a good question. And, in all fairness, it's probably not ALL related   
   to DEI.   
      
   Except that it kind of is.   
      
   Conservative political commentator Matt Walsh talked about all of these   
   incidents recently and while a direct line to DEI is probably not there   
   for all of them, there is a very clear indirect line.   
      
   Because, as Walsh noted, when DEI eliminates all merit from hiring   
   considerations in favor of 'identity hiring,' every employee (regardless   
   of their race, sex, sexual orientation, etc.) becomes completely   
   disengaged. Their performance simply does not matter to their employer.   
   So, accordingly, they stop caring as though it mattered. They become, as   
   Walsh states it, totally 'checked out.'   
      
   It is difficult to argue against the logic there.   
      
   And, as Walsh concludes, it's one thing when the person in the drive-thru   
   window at McDonald's or the barista at Starbucks is 'checked out.' All   
   that's going to happen there is that they get your food or drink order   
   wrong.   
      
   It is something else entirely when employees who are responsible for the   
   safety of thousands of passengers every day, hurtling through the air at   
   500 miles per hour on a 120,000-pound explosive projectile, stop caring.   
      
   Maybe we should stop focusing on DEI and start focusing on 'making air   
   travel great again.'   
      
   https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2024/01/23/virgin-atlantic-flight-   
   missing-bolts-n2392060   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)