I’m about to fly again, which means I’m about to say I “prefer” being groped — oops, I mean “patted down” — rather than run through, like cattle, one of their weird, idiotic, and most likely dangerous “scanners.” And of course, a part of me is glad to see that at least one of these infernal machines is about to go out of order. But: what does that really mean?

Frankly, I canot help but think it means that, like all products subject to “planned obsolescence,” the TSA will then order new stuff, “new and improved” scanners! And if the costs of the new ones are like the old ones, the backscatter scanners, according to wikipedia, cost between $250,000 and $2,000,000 apiece.

I imagine RapeScan — oops, I mean Rapiscan — is clapping its hands and chomping at the bit to get yet another new profit-center product out there. Reminds me of the aerospace industry, which needs new wars to test new products, and then they go obsolete immediately, making way for ever new, ever-more destructive, more remotely controlled, more profitable, versions of the same.

Do I sound cynical? Or just realistic.

In any case, good use of our tax money, eh?

The problem is not the scanners — or the guns, by the way — the problem is the mind-set of casual, insensitized violence of all kinds that, like a boomerang, has slammed home from our “foreign” wars against others to infect our own society to the point where we have no choice but to wake up and transform our own minds, first.

Replace distrust with trust, fear with love, and denial with awareness. No matter what. No matter how foolish and unrealistic and seemingly impossible. Return to our original natures! We are not evil, not flawed, not unworthy! The “garden of eden” story is a joke! No original sin! Just ignorance, and conditioning, via our all-too-human tendency to want to be “liked” so much that we will follow others down the primrose path to oblivion.

Instead, cultivate trust, love and awareness. These three are the foundation upon which we can begin re-member who we really are: a single species, our hearts and lungs beating and breathing as one, our lives entangled with both each other and this beautiful planet that, despite our clueless, careless destructiveness, continuously regenerates life from death. We are so very fortunate to call Earth home.

So yes, let’s put this “major victory” in perspective.

Major Victory: TSA to Remove Naked Body Scanners from ALL U.S. Airports