TSA rolled out Gateside by PreCheck right before the 25th. No boarding pass. Apply one to three days out. One calendar day. Thirteen airports to start. Come cry at the jetway. The same circus that made your aunt dump her Ensure.
After 2001 the rule was simple. No ticket, no sterile area, unless the airline wrote you a gate pass. Now the agency that spent a quarter century treating Methodist grandmas like they packed a box cutter in a bra will wave a Known Traveler Number past the magnetometer for a send-off hug.
The hijackers bought tickets like everybody else and then murdered almost 3,000 people. The American answer was to humiliate a white lady from Wichita so nobody had to say the pattern had a complexion, a passport stack, and a book.
That is not security. That is etiquette with a wand. You want to wander the sterile area with no boarding pass on the anniversary? Cute. The 19 did not need Gateside. They needed a country that was not terrified of being called racist for asking why a man from Saudi Arabia is taking flying lessons and skipping the landing chapter.
PreCheck for Nana. Prayer rugs for the ideology. Use your whole ass brain.
