Everyone knows that if we can’t keep ourselves safe, the terrorists win. Hence we must strive to eliminate all threats to air security. Like T-shirts and necklaces.

Via BoingBoing, Heathrow security forced a guy to change his shirt and threatened him with arrest if he put it back on. Was the shirt a call to armed insurrection on a plane? No. It was this:

The transformer has a gun, you see. And guns are not allowed on planes. Airport security is not reliably familiar with Magrite, so at this point “Ceci n’est pas Optimus Prime” was probably not a winning argument.

Don’t worry. They’re not focused only on two-dimensional images of guns. It would be wrong to devote all of their time to one artistic medium. Three-dimensional artistic depictions are a no-no as well:

“How do you know it wasn’t a real gun?” asked Guy, a security agent with the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, who also declined to provide his last name.

“Who knows if there is a gun that small that can shoot bullets? You don’t know that. They followed the rules.”

To be fair to Guy — who, this being Canada, probably pronounces it “Gee” — he may have suffered some indignities involving Lilliputians in the past.

Some people argue that small incidents like this are a minor price to pay for better security. Others claim it’s unfair to ridicule the minimum-wage guys who commit such atrocities against logic.

I disagree.

This sort of thing normalizes tolerance of government idiocy and thuggery. When we are told to suck it up and just endure such incidents, we are being encouraged to adopt an attitude or servility towards our government — when our government should have an attitude of servility towards us. We should not allow ourselves to become hardened or indifferent to unreasonable or unfair behavior by public servants. We should not accept, as an excuse, “Hey, it’s not our fault — it’s these guys we gave badges to, they like to throw their weight around.” That’s how they get us to file meekly into the cage, my friends.

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