The pendulum is still swinging
Bob Collins said:
Now we're afraid of prayers and farts, and men who ask for seat belt extensions. Like I said, we need to get a grip.
There were a lot of criticisms of the adminstration(s) for failing to "connect the dots" prior to 9/11. Pre-attack intelligence briefings were cherry-picked after the fact to find proof that the current administration ignored evidence about the 9/11 attacks that should have been patently obvious to anyone that was looking, completely ignoring that these "dots" were surrounded by millions of others making it difficult to impossible to pick the critical ones out from the rest of them and taking action on them.
Back then, the pendulum had arguably swung too far to the side of laxity and complacency, and no one believed an attack of that magnitude could succeed against us. Post 9/11, the pendulum swung (as it had to) to the side of connecting any and all dots, often to the level of absurdity. To a large degree, that is where we still are. I think that through time we will see the pendulum begin to swing back to a more normal level. Hopefully we will never return to the level of disattention that we had pre 9/11, but we do need to get away from jumping at shadows.
That said, our responses will be tested and probed. There will be attempts to distract us, or to modify our security awareness via feints and lawsuits whenever they can provoke a response. We may have just seen one or both of those, or we may not have. But while life will never be completely risk free, it may be better to err on the side of safety for awhile longer until we can ahieve a better balance between awareness and over-reaction. All of which means, I think, that I agree with you for the most part, but I'm reading a bit more into the recent US Airways incident than you are. My internal pendulum is still kinda hanging over there on the scaredy-cat side.
BTW, thanks for the feedback on the videos. I'm hoping to get a better audio solution than those awful narrations before next year's flying season. I'm hoping to do some RVmentaries on places like Put-in-Bay and the other Erie islands in the spring.