[AnthonyMouse]

> Terrorism is never about how many people you kill. It’s about instilling fear and sending a message and the downstream economic harm.

But again, what does it have anything to do with it being a plane? If they were to blow up a train instead of a plane, are people going to be like "haha you idiots, that only works if it's a plane"?

> Look no further than 911. Two costly unnecessary wars (that even republicans don’t defend anymore) that caused an entirely new generation

It sounds like you're saying that inhibiting overreactions to terrorism would lessen its effect and act as a deterrent to it.

[raw_anon_1111]

(I edited my above comment. I didn’t finish my thought “caused an entire generation to hate America”).

My wife and I fly a lot so we don’t think twice about it. But I’m sure you know how many people are deftly afraid of flying. Can you imagine how reticent people would be about flying if planes start blowing up? Much more economic harm comes from a disruption of air travel than if mass transit stopped in one city.

No one in America to a first approximation cares about trains or mass transit. They are mostly popular in those left leaning cities that are infested by criminality any way. I can see it now “what did they expect when they elected a socialist Muslim” (please note sarcasm).

[AnthonyMouse]

> Can you imagine how reticent people would be about flying if planes start blowing up? Much more economic harm comes from a disruption of air travel than if mass transit stopped in one city.

There are more than four times more riders of the subway in NYC alone than there are plane tickets sold nationwide.

Meanwhile if you're actually worried about deterring people from flying then what does it do to force them to risk missing their flight if they don't waste two hours getting there early, or subject them to warrantless suspicion, scary radiation, uninvited groping, nude body scanners and senseless humiliation?

And all for nothing because it can't be the thing preventing people from blowing up planes when tests consistently show that they're still letting through three quarters of contraband.

[raw_anon_1111]

You realize every single country has similar procedures? The only difference in my experience flying out of LHR (London) this year and flying out of ATL is that you don’t have to remove your shoes and they allow liquids to pass through security after a secondary screening. SJO (Costa Rica) was about the same earlier this year except they also don’t aloud liquids.

You also have to go through screening and metal detectors to get on the train between London and France (the “Chunnel”)

If NY gets disrupted - no one cares outside of New York. Do you remember how people were stuck after 911 or more recently when a bad software update took out airlines nationwide?

There is a reason that the government set up a fund to protect the entire airline industry from collapse from liability after 911.

[AnthonyMouse]

> You realize every single country has similar procedures?

The US has a way of setting bad precedents or pressuring other countries to adopt its inanity, yes. Another reason not to do it here.

> If NY gets disrupted - no one cares outside of New York.

The very large number of people in New York probably care though. Also, why would someone blowing up a train in New York be less scary to people in DC than someone blowing up a plane in New York would be to people in DC?

> Do you remember how people were stuck after 911 or more recently when a bad software update took out airlines nationwide?

Less than a quarter as many people as get stuck when the NYC subways are offline, presumably.

[raw_anon_1111]

If you haven’t noticed, “the people in DC” right now don’t care about the US outside of red states. And the reason a plane is different because people think it could happen to them if they got on a plane. If you don’t live in NYC, it’s easy to avoid the NYC train system. If I want to get from ATL to Seattle - what am I going to do drivers two or three days?

>Less than a quarter as many people as get stuck when the NYC subways are offline, presumably.

There plenty of ways to get from Manhattan to Queens if the train system went down then to get from California to Florida.

Is it really that hard to see the difference between a localized transportation system in NYC and a worldwide network of planes? Especially since airline security doesn’t just affect domestic flights it also affects flights leaving the US.

And you think the US pressured England of all places to have higher security? Did you forget about all the bombing they use to have? Did they also irsssye countries to have higher security security measures for domestic flights and their internal train system?

Or do you think that Israel would have less security if it weren’t for US pressure or Central America?

Why would the US care for instance if there were screenings to get on the baby Sansa propellor plane that flies from San Jose Costa Rica to Manual Antonino?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport

The plane they use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_208_Caravan#Variants

Yes the terminal is a hut and I’ve flown into there before.

[AnthonyMouse]

> If you haven’t noticed, “the people in DC” right now don’t care about the US outside of red states.

I feel like you're failing to see the symmetry at all. We have direct historical evidence on point that they cared about some New York City skyscrapers, and those were definitely Republicans too. Do you really think they wouldn't care about the same thing today regardless of whether it was a plane or a train?

> And the reason a plane is different because people think it could happen to them if they got on a plane.

But if it happens to a train people don't think it could happen to them if they got on a train? Either that's not true or those people would have such a disconnected relationship to logic that there is no use pandering to them anyway because they wouldn't see the connection between your policies and the results.

> There plenty of ways to get from Manhattan to Queens if the train system went down then to get from California to Florida.

Spoken like someone who hasn't seen the days when it goes down. What happens when you take the 4 million people who ride the subway every day and tell them it isn't there? Impassable gridlock.

> Is it really that hard to see the difference between a localized transportation system in NYC and a worldwide network of planes?

All of the transportation systems are interconnected. What does the connectedness change? If something happens on a train in New York, does it materially affect San Francisco but not Honolulu because trains connect New York and California but not Hawaii?

Planes are even less affected by this than other things because you can damage train tracks or road bridges that act as a bottleneck but the only infrastructure air travel requires is airports and planes, and airports are widely distributed and planes are easy to move around.

> Especially since airline security doesn’t just affect domestic flights it also affects flights leaving the US.

Which is another reason it's a farce, because it also affects flights entering the US and then it doesn't matter what the TSA does when you can go through airport security in the country of your choosing with the weakest or most bribe-accepting security that lets you get behind the checkpoint on a plane to the US.

> And you think the US pressured England of all places to have higher security?

Your original claim was that all other countries do this. Before 9/11, they didn't, and now you're having to resort to only the countries with the most stringent checks. Obviously Israel where bombings are practically a daily occurrence would need more than countries where that is much less common, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?

> Why would the US care for instance if there were screenings to get on the baby Sansa propellor plane that flies from San Jose Costa Rica to Manual Antonino?

Are you saying that the screenings to get on that plane are the same as the ones imposed by the TSA, or are you now conceding that this is wrong:

> You realize every single country has similar procedures?