Try looking HERE , and HERE where I explained that my opinions on this topic were based on personal experience.

What basis do either of you have for these opinions? Extensive first hand experience? Or an apparent willingness to accept cultural stereotypes as facts and regurgitate them in the form of unquestionable absolutes on cue?

Well this thread has been totally derailed by the PC police.

To be clear:

I did not say anything like "all people in the military are unintelligent". I said that across the board, it does not tend to mix into its recruits from the higher end of the intelligence spectrum.

Yes, there are many intelligent people in the military. Yes, many have gone on to great accomplishments both within and outside of the military.

Bart, after agreed me, then became defensive and deflective.

Others bring up the examples of situations which require the best of the military (submarine service, etc.)

I state my opinion - and opinion is all I ever claimed - based on personal experience. Stroll through the offices of Google or a typical bank branch let alone head office and you will find people more flexible in their thinking - IMO - than you will find in most barracks.

Though Bart chooses to distort what I have said - and it can only be purposefully - I did not try to categorize "them all as dummies". Not the screeners nor military personnel.

Knee jerk PC is knee jerk PC whether it comes from the right or left, from the anti-military or the pro.

For the record, I am not anti military. We need them. We need to take better care of them. We need to use the military properly, that is better than we have recently.

For the record, I am not anti-TSA. We need real security administered by the proper mix of capable policy setters and well trained front line people chosen for their capabilities of thinking on their feet and not just robotic enforcement of silly rules. We would be safer.

There are many studies in the field of industrial psychology that show that it is a mistake to place imaginative, creative, intelligent people in jobs that require rote performance. The military quite rightly tires to recruit or promote intelligent, creative, imaginative people for the jobs that require those characteristics. It quite rightly finds and uses those better able to take orders and accept limitations on independent action to fill the huge majority of slots in those organizations that require those characteristics.

And though it will likely fall on deaf ears, I will also say that intelligent does not equal better. Intelligence is merely a single characteristic or group of them, perhaps.

My comments were limited to my observation that the TSA employs too many who do not seem to have the ability to think on their feet, to use simple common sense as a part of good judgment.

Yesterday, flying from ORD I brought a pre-packaged sushi meal through screening. Included was small packet of soy sauce - a few cc's at most. I overlooked taking it out of the "to go container" and putting it in my ziploc bag. It was removed from my meal and discarded.

I did not protest. It was clearly my "fault". I do not believe in acting out on front line personnel no matter what I think of their intelligence. They are doing their job according to their instructions to the best of their ability and understanding. Still it took several minutes in a long line. Would not this time have been better used talking to pax, watching pax, paying attention to what might actually be a potential threat?

The screeners involved - and three got involved all of their own accord - seemed to really think this was not merely an infraction but an important one. There was no need to take all these resources. I realized that I had overlooked something and was in no way protesting or making an issues of it. It could have been handled in seconds with my apology and either letting it go or simple removal.

I was civil and polite. The screeners were, well, sorry, stupid.

I see this misunderstanding of what safer actually means all the time.

It is all very banal.

Perhaps the recent failure at Newark of screeners to detect 22 of 24 test threats was in part due to slavish attention to the wrong (and stupid) things. Perhaps.

Perhaps the next successful attack will be due to a service which has its eye stupidly somewhere other than on the ball.

Let me point out a few things before I answer the questions. I have a distant relative (cousin of my late father) who served in the US Army for quite some time. And yes, even at his tender age, he is quite intelligent, having served in several capacities around the world, largely in Europe where he served on patrol there. However, when he comes here to visit he is just like Bart -- powers down to everyone around him in the family, but is still willing to share his experience in the military with us from time to time. So this will serve as the basis for first-hand experience from observation of a family relative.

I flew through SFO last Thursday -- I forgot to take the loose change out of my pockets before the detector, and I promptly asked a TSA screener for the appropriate container to put my change in. They brought it over after I repeated the question once more. Like Teacher49 points out, some people at the checkpoints do not think on their feet (and I must add, don't act promptly when asked a question for an answer in return).

Also, I asked a question, never made an statement, after the only statement I made about intelligence. It is important to read the whole question instead of just snipping parts of the question in whole. To answer your question about stereotyping and casting of people in those stereotypes: Sadly, the world happens to think that stereotypes should be the norm, and has to be corrected from time to time either with force or with subsistence of truth(or lies). Thus, the mold of truth becomes the problem when it is percieved as fact when it is a mere observation cast into a stereotype. See where its coming from now?

Thanks for the Q's, Slowtrekker.

Sanosuke!

Deleted

Your post#56 (linked above as the second "HERE") is barking up the wrong tree vis-a-vis me. ;)

Do I really need to get into the meaning of "at least"? :D At least = equal to or greater than. ;) "at least" does not equate with "just equal"; it equate with "equal to or greater than".

After reading this thread, I think "The Evil of Banality" might have better captured what's really going on.

Sanosuke,

You mentioned SFO and TSA. Was it the TSA or TSA-approved contractors?

The people manning the checkpoints in Terminal 1 where Air Canada flies from. If I recall correctly, they were TSA folks manning the point had the badge and uniform, etc.

Sanosuke!

The only true part of the above is what I bolded and underlined. All the rest of your assumptions about what I meant are just that.

Nonsense.
More nonsense. Anyone looking back will see both my qualifications about what I said and the context. Anyone looking back will see, in fact, that you agreed with me and in fact gave some stories of your own to support the notion that in some contexts intelligence is not the most valued of characteristics.

If you look at a group of rocket scientist and a group of factory workers, you will find the average intelligence among the former to be greater than the latter. This does not mean that all factory workers are not intelligent or that you cannot find even genius there. I'm talking averages.

There are many jobs that are above my intelligence ... and so what? All here should be glad that I will never be their neurosurgeon or aeronautical engineer for that matter.

I simply acknowledge that and don't whine and pout. As I said before, intelligence is just a simple characteristic and not - in my mind - one that defines the worth of the person.

Bart, you are being dishonest here and it is you, my friend who should be squirming. Your attempts to play yourself and the military as victims is as valid as the kaffufle over using the word ".....rdly".

Wipe your nose, dry your tears and get a grip.

OK. Screeners are not idiots, but they could be smarter. That it ?

^ ^ to this post.

However, with regard to your statement:

There is absolutely no need for anyone to apologize to any screener, (let alone 3, although maybe it took 3 of them to come up with one partially functioning brain) for doing something as stupid as taking away your package of soysauce. By doing so, you are affirming the idiocy of their rules as well as the screeners' perception of themselves as being on the front line in the "war on terror."

That is true of most stereotypes. In fact, the stereotypes develop usually because, on average, they are true of the majority of members in the group. The irrationality or prejudice exists in assuming that, merely because one is a member of that group, s/he possesses the stereotypical traits. However, over time, the PC police have determined that it is prejudice merely to recognize the stereotype, regardless of whether it applies. That said, it depends whether you want to look at it reasonably, or to be politically correct and not even acknowledge the averages.

For why and how stereotypes are routinely little more than impoverished thinking that hides more than it reveals check out Amartya Sen's Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, which shows the new PC of "stereotypes are true of the majority of members in the group" is full of holes.

Nothing to worry about in the way of a police state, folks. Nothing to worry about being in the hands of dumb people. Just read this: link

....and I thank you Sanosuke, for a reply that I fear was much more civil than my question. :o