Why do people accept this reality when talking about the TSA, but not other government agencies? All government agencies are like this, especially the Federal ones.
The TSA is also an obvious waste. They aren't that much different before hand although, their function were covered by a hodgepodge of regulations usually dictated by the FAA and private airport security employed at airports US wide.
The upper-middle class tends to set the agenda for the media in general. They're also the archetype of what are depicted in TV shows and so on. Why the recent school shooting became a national outrage is probably because they were a middle class school. The death toll also added to it.
Airport security in the US is now significantly worse than anywhere else, and it has nothing to do with class.
The systems set up to serve the poor are significantly worse than the TSA in every way, and I say this as someone who hates the TSA with a white hot passion. But the blogosphere isn't filled with tirades about how stupid, ineffective, wasteful and absurd the process is for obtaining food stamps, for example. Or getting a menial job, or getting adequate legal representation, or fighting slumlords, or getting police protection, or any number of things.
We hear about the TSA much more often because it overwhelmingly affects the wealthy.
I'm not saying it's not true that some topics get more attention because they affect a certain class, but that if the problems are real (and we agree the TSA is a problem) and do not depend on class divide (and the TSA does not, at this point, depend on that), in strategic terms there is no point in bringing up the topic.
We don't talk about stop and frisk over and over again on HN because most of us don't live in areas where we are subjected to that police behavior every time we go out for a walk.
It's really true that the media uses the upper-middle class as the focus group. The upper class, the %0.1, is too alien, too small, too smart, too international and thus too unrelatable for most Americans, so the upper-middle sets the tone instead.
You also have to separate UCSIS, the scary border organization with teeth and a horrible attitude, and the TSA, the organization that takes your water bottles away.
Also, you need to have money to fly a lot, and that starts around upper-middle class.
How many people do you know that have complained that the CIA was spying on them, vs. how many people do you know who have complained that they got government-groped?
And many other agencies aren't _actively_ working against things we care about -- that is, obstruction per se isn't generally their goal. But they're still obstructive just the same.
Unsurprising, really; there are entire political parties based on the premise of not caring about those things, and in many countries. ;)