"Can someone please explain how else you check these places without touching them? "
You don't. It isn't appropriate to paw at people in this manner, so you simply don't do it.
"No 'intimacy issue' is worth an explosive decompression at 35,000 feet, or death. "
No paranoia or phobia on someone else's part is worth dismantling the U.S. Constitution. The stakes are too high. Liberty is the highest form of security. Anything else is merely an illusion of security.
"It's irrelevant whether they have caught someone or not yet. We don't know when the first incident will happen.
Perhaps the solution is to have a two tiered system. Planes with security, and planes without. I know which one I'd rather be on. And i know which one would make the more likely target for someone wishing to bring the plane down. "
I really like that idea. You see, I really do know which will make the more likely target for someone wishing to bring the plane down. It will be the plane with more security or the security checkpoint itself - without a doubt. If you analyze real terrorist acts, you'll find that the terrorists prefer security checkpoints and buildings or events where the security is high. The terrorists do not want you to trust the government. Each time they provoke the government into treating citizens badly, or prove that the government cannot protect its citizens, terrorists succeed and governments fail.
So I agree with you. It would be absolutely lovely if realists could segregate ourselves from the sheeple and their precious "
security
". Please lobby for this two tiered system. It may be the only thing we can agree on, and it would make me and mine safer than ever before.
"I don't get the need to stroke someone's face though. I would still like to see the written links that the OP mentioned to see the circumstances under which this happened."
If you have the initiative and drive to escape a wet paper sack you'll research readily available videos of actual T&A pawings for yourself. Our species didn't escape the stone age by standing around slack jawed waiting to be spoon fed.