For those of you just tuning in, our nation is slowly realizing that the Transportation Security Administration is raping our civil rights, and we are coming to terms with that epiphany. When you go to fly somewhere, you either get scanned, or you get you get frisked in a way that leaves nothing to the imagination of the person frisking you. You might even get both of them, if you are really lucky.

The scanners show you naked, more or less. They use radiation to see through your clothes, kind of like an x-ray. The fun part is that the TSA has no idea of any of the long- or short-term effects of these scanners.

Don’t worry about it though; cancer is a small price to pay for security. You never know when one of the infamous “Taliban” is going to take a month off from being a goat farmer and cause mischief here in the states — oh wait, people that are dirt poor can’t afford to come to America, that’s why the idea of the Taliban being a threat doesn’t make sense.

The TSA said that the images aren’t stored, so it’s OK if you get naked via scanner for a random TSA agent. Isn’t this the same as the TSA forcing passengers to flash them? I say yes, the TSA would undoubtedly say no, but then probably wouldn’t let me watch the screens as their daughters posed for the scanners.

As for the pat down, welcome to our Orwellian America. A good frisking is something you won’t soon forget.

I’m pretty callused to both of these methods. The military hardens you to many things, one of them being a complete and blatant disregard for your privacy. If I got a thorough pat down by TSA right now, I’d be right as rain afterward. It wouldn’t affect me because I can make myself become detached from situations; I can make things easier on me by making it less real in my noggin.

I shouldn’t have to push feelings of violation and disgust out of my mind just to catch a plane. It shouldn’t have come to this, not even for a second.

The TSA is wrong, dead wrong. Each and every TSA action-hero-want-to-be who thinks that what they are doing is somehow morally justifiable needs to take a long look in the mirror and ask, “When did I sell out?”

I would wager that the answer to that question has to do with degrees of selling out, over time. The American public needs to ask itself the same question, along with every single congress person, veteran, police officer, fire fighter, teacher, doctor and especially the honorable President Obama.

When in the world did this become acceptable?

All in the name of security, so that people can believe the lie that they will be safe, that nothing will touch them.

I have a cold hard fact for you, dear readers: Every single day when you wake up you step out the door as either predator or prey. The chances are overwhelmingly high that you are prey.

The choice is yours, and a completely personal one. It is the responsibility of the individual to look after themselves and their neighbors’ immediate safety; the police are a reactionary force, and do not have the Clark Kent like ability to reach you when you scream for help.

The real question, the one that politicians like Ron Paul have dared to ask and answer is this: If the goat farmers, using Soviet technology from the 1960s to fight our troops who have occupied their land, aren’t a threat to us, then who is?

Who is making you get naked via a scanner for a complete stranger? Who is telling you that “it’s for your own good.” Who wants you to be complacent, to go with the flow, to be groped and not say anything?

Answer that question for yourself, and know your enemies.