Jet travel still strikes me as slightly miraculous, and despite having visited over forty countries, I still get a certain gee-whiz feeling whenever I'm headed for the international terminal at Logan airport (even though the terminal itself is nothing for Boston to boast about).

As you've probably noticed, however, the Powers That Be are doing their best to destroy that pleasant tingle of anticipation. Just when you thought they couldn't find another way to make air travel more annoying and degrading, somebody comes up with a new method to drive us crazy.  So having just flown twelve-plus hours from Boston to Kuwait (via London), I'm going to indulge in a short rant: the Top Five Things that Make Air Travel Infuriating.

1. The Whole Irrational Transportation Security Nightmare.
I have no objection to certain reasonable precautions about jet travel, but we've gone way, way, overboard in our effort to eliminate any and all risks. I'm with Yglesias here: The amount of time being wasted in TSA lines is unconscionable and is probably not making us significantly safer. Not only is an enormous amount of valuable time being wasted, but there's also the sheer indignity of being herded like cattle, forced to partially disrobe, and then poked or patted to make sure we don't have a box cutter or a lump of plastique hidden in our shorts. 

And what about the creepy symbolism of the latest scanner machines? You enter the booth and are told to assume the classic "hands-up" position. It's a nice way of making the entire traveling population feel like suspects, thereby feeding our collective paranoia and giving al Qaeda and its ilk another symbolic victory. Osama may be hiding in a cave somewhere, but he's still got us trembling in our socks, clutching our beltless pants, as we go through the checkpoints. And you just know that it's going to get worse: no bureaucrat or elected official will ever relax the current procedures (for fear that a terrorist plot might succeed and make them look really, really, stupid). Instead, we'll just keep adding layers and restrictions in response both to future attempts and to new dangers that we just dream up for ourselves.

But I'm a reasonable guy, and I understand that others have different cost-benefit calculations than I do. I'd be willing to walk through naked if they could just get us all through in a reasonable amount of time. At Logan yesterday, it took nearly 20 minutes to get through the TSA checkpoint, and this was at 6:45 in the morning and the line wasn't even that long. And none of this is preventing a repeat of 9/11, because locking the cockpit doors has eliminated the danger that a terrorist will commander the aircraft and fly it into a building. It's mostly our elected officials covering their tails: they don't want to get blamed if one day a plane does go down due to terrorist action. But making it nearly impossible to attack an airplane isn't going to stop terrorism, it will just lead them to go after other, softer targets.

2. Marginal Pricing Run Amok.
I'm hardly the first person to complain about this, but airlines have become masters at charging us for everything while doing less and less themselves. We check ourselves in at "self-serve" kiosks; we carry our own bags on and off the plane, and most of the time we bring our own food too. Having cut services to the bone, airlines do more "upselling" than a sleazy car salesman. I checked in at a self-service kiosk a few months ago, and was given three options for "upgrading" my flight (each for a different fee). If I had been willing to pay enough, those generous folks at the airline would have moved me to first class, let me check my bag for free, and zipped me through the VIP express line at the security checkpoint. This is another reason why the situation is only get worse: make air travel unpleasant enough, and some people will pay extra to reduce the irritation back to a bearable level. We are in effect being asked to trade money for sanity.

And then there's my personal favorite: charging you a hefty chunk of change to go on an earlier flight. You show up early for your flight, and there's an empty seat on an earlier departure. Nobody is going to use that seat if you don't take it. It's in the airline's interest to put you on the earlier flight, because that will open up a seat on the later flight and maybe somebody else will want it (i.e., they had to make an unexpected trip, or they missed a connection and need a later flight). So everybody wins if they just put you on the earlier plane, except the airline will going to charge you at least $50 bucks for doing something that is already in their interest. Of course, they do have to cover the cost of printing another boarding pass, which means the net profit on this transaction is probably about $49.99. And yet still they keep losing money. And don't get me started about the impenetrability (from the consumer's point of view) of the whole ticket pricing policy...

3. The Nanny State Rules the Air.
Has anyone done a study of the number of fatalities that have been produced by someone landing with their seat backs reclined, or with their tray tables not in the "fully closed and locked position?" I doubt it, yet airlines keep going to enormous lengths to protect us from the most unlikely contingencies.  Airlines have long insisted that you can't use PDAs during takeoff, landing, or in flight, based on the unverified idea that this might somehow affect the operation of the aircraft. Except that some carriers now want to equip airliners to allow people to talk on cell phones doing the flight, which I predict will eventually lead to fisticuffs at forty thousand feet.

And the latest indignity is the demand that you remove earbuds or headphones before takeoff or twenty minutes before landing. Presumably this is so you can hear the crew shout instructions in the event of a crash. Plus, the flight attendants now insist that you turn off your Kindle, presumably so that you're not so engrossed reading when the plane goes down that you fail to heed the crew's instructions. I don't blame the flight crew; they are just doing their jobs and enforcing the rules. But can they just meet me halfway?  If the plane crashes, I promise that I'll drop what I'm reading, take off my headphones, and do whatever you tell me.   Really.

4. You DON'T Control the Channel; You DON'T control the volume.
One feature that makes airports less and less appealing are those ubiquitous video monitors, usually set to either CNN or Fox. Instead of being allowed to read or converse in peace, you get bombarded by loud and grating announcers instead. There's no escape unless you can go to a business class lounge, although sometimes you'll find a TV on their too. Last week I was forced to sit through an entire episode of CNN's "Parker/Spitzer," because that's what was on the set above my seat in the waiting lounge. Moving does no good, because there are monitors everywhere. At least it wasn't O'Reilly or Wolf Blitzer.....

The Brits, by the way, have a much better idea. At Heathrow's Terminal 5, there are big video screens reporting the latest BBC news, with a video crawl providing text along with the images. You can watch if you want, but your eardrums don't get pummeled while you're either catching a nap or trying to concentrate on your book.

5. Forty pounds of Carry-On in a Twenty-Pound Overhead Compartment.
Now that airlines are charging us to check bags, it naturally makes more sense for people to use carry-on bags and avoid the fee. You also miss waiting around for your luggage and eliminate the chance that you end up in Seoul while your bag enjoys an unscheduled visit to Stockholm.   But the size of the overhead bins didn't change along with this new pricing policy, and despite some half-hearted efforts to regulate the size of carry-on bags, every flight I'm on these days seems to feature a bunch of unhappy passengers trying to cram duffle bags the size of Madagascar into the overhead bin. Tempers flare, nerves fray, and it takes twice as long to get on and off the aircraft as it should.

Granted, none of these complaints are as significant as issues of war, peace, national prosperity, and the like, and I'm sure I'll be less grumpy when my jet lag wears off. I fully realize that it's a hell of lot easier and safer to visit far-flung places now than it was a few decades ago, to say nothing of a few centuries ago. So I'm genuinely thankful for what transportation technology has wrought. But now I'd like some geniuses to get to work on making the whole experience a little less corrosive to the human spirit. Like I said, I still like to travel, and even like to fly. But I have the distinct fear that by the time I retire, getting on an airplane will involve more preparations than open-heart surgery, and recovery will take about as long. 

I had dinner a couple of weeks ago with a group of Harvard colleagues (and a visiting speaker), and we got into an interesting discussion about America's future as a world power. Nobody at the table questioned whether the United States was going to remain a very powerful and influential state for many years/decades to come. Instead, the main issues were whether it would retain its current position of primacy, whether China might one day supplant it as the dominant global power, and whether U.S. standards of living would be significantly compromised in the future.

One participant (a distinguished economist), was especially bullish. He argued that the United States enjoyed a considerable demographic advantage over Europe, Russia, and Japan, largely due a higher birth rate and greater openness to immigration. These societies will be shrinking and getting much older on average, while the United States will continue to grow for some time to come. He also argued that the United States remained far more entrepreneurial than most other societies, and a better incubator of technological innovation. Despite our current difficulties, therefore, he was optimistic about the longer-term prospects for the U.S. economy and for America's position as a global power.

But then came the crucial caveat. After reciting this long list of American advantages, my colleague remarked: "of course, our political system could screw it all up." And everyone around the table nodded in agreement.

Read on

The late George Carlin was a brilliant comedian and social critic, especially in his obsession with how language can be used to distort or deceive. He's also a lot funnier than Derrida or Bourdieu.  

In one of his best routines, Carlin began by noting:

You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American english is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. "

He then proceeds to trace how the same combat-induced condition once known as "shell shock" (two syllables, clear and evocative), gradually evolved into "battle fatigue" (four syllables), then "operational exhaustion" (eight syllables) and then into today's "post-traumatic stress disorder." (eight syllables plus a hyphen!). And in the process, its nature is concealed and its impact is quietly diluted.

The spirit of Carlin is probably smiling ruefully right now, because this tendency appears to be alive and well. According to the Associated Press, the Army has now dropped the term "psychological operations" (nine syllables, unless you use the two-syllable label "psy-ops").

The new term is -- are you ready? -- "military information support operations" (a whopping fourteen syllables).  Both the old term and the new one are euphemisms, but the latter is precisely the sort of bland and neutral phrase intended to conceal what is really going on.  

You know, just like saying "enhanced interrogation" (seven highly misleading syllables), instead of "torture" (just two syllables; clear, on point, and illegal).

We've all had the experience of suddenly realizing what we should have said, but long after the opportunity to say it has passed. (On Seinfeld, George Costanza was once obsessed with this problem). Anyway, it happened to me last week, during a seminar with Special Representative for Afghanistan/Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, prior to his public appearance at the Institute of Politics Forum here.  

During the discussion, I asked Holbrooke a less-than-inspired question and he gave a perfectly reasonable if not especially illuminating answer. (It was an off-the-record session so I can't tell you what I asked or what he said. But trust me, it wasn't a very good question). And then an hour later, as I was traveling home, I realized what I should have asked him.

Some of you may recall Holbrooke's remark at a conference in DC last August, when he defined success in Afghanistan with "the Supreme Court test: we'll know it when we see it."  (The reference is to Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography). That's a bit vague, as several critics noted at the time. But it raises the question that I wish I had asked: How would Holbrooke identify or define failure? In other words, what developments or events in Afghanistan and Pakistan would lead him, in his best professional judgment, to advise President Obama that our efforts there were not working and that it was time to disengage? 

To ask the question is not to hope for an unsuccessful outcome; or even to suggest that one thinks failure is likely. But unless we are willing to stay in Afghanistan forever no matter what, we need to be as alert for signs that our efforts aren't working as we are in looking for signs of success.

I missed my chance, but maybe a reader out there will get the chance to pose the question down the road. I'd love to hear what he says.

I'm no expert on health care, so I don't have strong views on how to reform the current U.S. system. But watching the lies, chicanery, and sheer wing-nuttery of the "debate" on health care reform (along with the birther controversy, the revelations about "The Family," and various other manifestations of what Richard Hofstader called the "paranoid style" of American politics) led me to wonder about possible foreign policy implications.

Here's my question: What impression do people in other countries get when they observe the divorced-from-reality nature of contemporary American political discourse? American pundits like to talk about how "irrational" our adversaries are (usually when they are trying to scare us into spending more on weapons or launching preventive wars), but do they ever stop to think about how goofy and irrational we appear to be to others? And I don't just mean the buffoons on talk radio and Fox News; I'm talking about Senators, Congresspersons, and other prominent politicos. When I see some of these folks in action, even a realist like me begins to question the validity of the "rational actor" assumption.

The United States doesn't have a monopoly on extremist politicians, of course, but it is a lot more powerful. No wonder unpolarity makes even our allies nervous.