Civil Disobedience Gone Horribly Wrong

Anyone who’s been at an airport lately probably agrees that those new TSA bodyscans/patdowns suck. One woman, however, apparently reserves some very special wrath for this procedure, because it infuriated her so much that she assaulted a female TSA officer. Not in the usual shoving/punching way, though:

TSA staff said Mihamae refused to be go through passenger screening and became argumentative before she squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands. Police said Mihamae admitted to the crime and was arrested on a felony count of sexual abuse.

Just in case this isn’t bad enough, there is now some sort of movement to keep Miyamae (that’s the actual spelling of her name; the media outlets got it wrong) from being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It’s a Facebook page called “Acquit Yukari Mihamae” and it has currently been liked by 4,694 (and rapidly counting) people.

That’s a lot of people who think that physically assaulting someone is a fair response to a policy they dislike.

Here are some of the comments I found on the page:

“I love the story about this those disgusting TSA pigs need a taste of their own putrid medicine. I hope everything goes well I will offer all the support possible. NO PARA-MILITARY a.k.a TSA”

“GOOD JOB!!!! you should have twisted those bad boys right off!!!! show them punk asses a case of trading places… they think this is bad wait till they push us so far into a corner that the only option left for us is to revolt!!!!!!!!!!!”

“THANK YOU, Yukari for standing up to the TSA and for doing what I have always wanted to do!! You are a true hero and you show that resistance ios NOT futile!! I hope everyone will learn from your example and resist the senseless groping. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your courage and bravery!!”

“Thank you Yukari for your courage. You are the modern day Rosa Parks”

“Well, if somebody doesn’t stands up as Yukari did ,the world will be destroyed already… kudos for you!”

“TSA is to the United States as The Gestapo was to Nazi Germany!!”

“I live in Australia and was thinking of vacationing in the US. Until TSA follows the Inquisition and the Stasi into the dumpster of History, I’ll go elsewhere.”

“Keep twisting Yukari-san.”

Perhaps nothing disturbs me more than the comparisons of Miyamae to Rosa Parks and of the TSA to the Gestapo, the Stasi, and the Inquisition.

As for the suggestion that what Miyamae did is somehow equivalent to what the TSA does, that’s preposterous. Whether or not you agree with the actual method, the TSA has been charged with keeping airline flights safe. They’re not scanning/patting people down in order to make them uncomfortable, molest them, or embarrass them. They’re doing it because they’re trying to stop potential terrorists.

Furthermore, last I checked, we don’t do “an eye for an eye” here in America. We don’t rob convicted burglars, we don’t rape convicted rapists, we don’t punch kids that we catch fighting with classmates.

It seems that people have, as usual, fallen victim to black-and-white thinking. To them, the TSA’s screenings are “bad.” Therefore, anyone who resists them in any way must be “good.” Even if that resistance takes the form of an assault on someone’s body.

The supporters of Miyamae, particularly the ones who compare her to Rosa Parks, also seem to neglect the fact that real civil disobedience is powerful precisely because it harms no one. The image of Rosa Parks quietly sitting on the bus and refusing to stand is completely different from that of Miyamae forcefully grabbing and twisting the breast of another woman, a woman who is simply doing her job and trying to make a living.

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Civil Disobedience Gone Horribly Wrong
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4 thoughts on “Civil Disobedience Gone Horribly Wrong

  1. 1

    Something has got a massive portion of the country convinced that the only proper response to not getting exactly what you want is violent rebellion. I don’t know what it is, but I’m hearing the rhetoric in everything from politics to, well, this.

    Anyway, all my air-travel-related wrath is reserved for the airline that would’ve charged me $100 for a bag that was 3 pounds overweight, if I hadn’t done a last-minute repacking job in the middle of the airport.

      1. And worse still, we’ve been seeing what happens when particular individuals, for whatever reason, are susceptible to taking that rhetoric seriously. The incident you cover here is almost the best-case scenario…

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