One of the worst effects of the Transportation Security Administration's practice of pat-downs is that it has conditioned innocent people to easily and willingly surrender their dignity and privacy to authority figures--even in the private sector. The private-sector invasions of personal space have become most severe at sporting events.
If you have been attending sporting events during the last few years, you may have noticed a gradual increase in the aggression from the security guards and their increasingly intrusive pat-downs. Now, the NFL is recommending all game attendees be patted-down from the ankles to the knees and the waist up. Now, if you attend a lot of games, you have probably already had more intrusive pat-downs than that. You have probably had a security guard's hands way up near your crotch. Procedures must vary from stadium to stadium or perhaps some security guards are more frisky than others.
What is bad about the NFL pushing more aggressive pat-downs is that this measure will eventually lead to future requirements that could be even more intrusive. It would not be surprising to see aggressive acts of molestation happening at sporting events in a couple of years. We're talking a stranger's hand way up in your crotch and all over your genitals just half an hour before you are in the stadium singing the National Anthem. (How ironic is that?)
What is happening here is our rights are eroding. Or sense of dignity is vanishing. Sadly, the NFL has every right to conduct whatever searches they want. They are a business, and the fans are customers. If fans do not want to be molested, they do not have to go to games.
The football fans should rebel against these insulting pat-downs and boycott the games. If people stopped paying to see the games until the pat-downs stopped, the NFL would end the pat-downs immediately.
The problem is, the football fans are not going to stand up for their dignity. For a decade, they have been conditioned to surrender their pride and privacy by the TSA's intrusive searches. Since becoming felt-up by uniformed strangers is now commonplace in America, people have little trouble bowing to the NFL and allowing their bodies to be violated.
This NFL pat-down move should be a lesson to all. If you surrender your freedoms in one place, you will eventually lose them elsewhere until, someday, you find you have no more freedoms left to lose.
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