Recently I heard an airline gate agent reading the familiar announcement that active-duty military personnel were welcome to board before everyone else and I asked myself, why?
Imagining a Better World Isn’t Really That Hard
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I’d put the journalists after the rich pigs. At least most of them. I sure as hell hate Nazis, but I hate even more the collaborators who aided them.
Have to agree with Alex, but I’d let the journalists – especially those of the type that Rutger Bregman has famously characterised as «millionaires funded by billionaires» – board together with their sponsors….
Henri
Love it! Although I’d seat the rich pigs nearest the door, just in case it “accidentally” opens during the flight.
oopsie!
(The most efficient way to load a plane is to start from the back & staggered. Left side row 99 and right side row 100, then Right side row 99 and left side 100… putting First Class last)
I believe the most efficient way is actually to let people do it for themselves. It seems odd, but has been looked at.
Whoops. I misremembered.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/11/theres-a-better-way-to-board-planes/383181/
yep – that’s basically the same idea I described, but a more refined model. The very back row is the first to board so other people don’t block their way, but you don’t want people on one side stowing their bags preventing people on the other side from stowing theirs – so you stagger.
(I suffer from multiple diseases, among them math, engineering, and puzzle solving.)
Yes. This is a really nice diagnostic of the state of our culture. I think 35 years ago and certainly 60 years ago, it would have been exactly the other way around. Soldiers would have considered themselves as in service of their fellow citizens and would have waited foro others to sit first. But I suspect that was possible because their role was understood and they were appreciated as part of a national effort. Now they’re basically mercenaries, most people have zero connection to them, and so….what?…there needs to be this propping up to give them…prestige?
Indeed, not hard at all.
Imagining a better world is to getting a better world as
Imagining how to spend a massive lottery pot is to winning the massive lottery pot.
At this point, it appears that winning the massive lottery pot has a much better chance of occurring.
Julian Assange was just arrested.
Will the beheading be televised?
Will HRC be granted the honor of
pulling the trigger of the guillotine?
I like the comparison. And just like a lottery win, a better world is *possible* … just not very likely.
Sorry to see Assange arrested. He’s a whistle-blower not a criminal, doubt he’ll get a fair trial even if he does keep his head. (which actually works in both interpretations…)
Fair trial — chances on the order of that for
“a better world” — by next Tuesday afternoon.
As a European who spent some time in Canada (but not the U.S.), I haven’t come across that particular travesty. Then again, Heinlein aptly distinguished citizens – who performed military “service” – to civilians who did not. As a corollary, having shirked their duties, citizens would not share in most public functions such as the right to vote. (Verheuven could not help to turn such source material into an anti-fascist satire when he shot Starship troopers).
Of course, boarding planes first really is just symbolism, unlike, say, decent mental health facilities.
Boarding is revealing, though, as actual societal stratification is made manifest as nowhere else: peerage get the fast lane, steerage only according to need (i.e. elderly, small children, etc.).
Of course, the really poor hardly fly at all, and the really rich can charter a plane themselves to keep out of the reach of the merely rich.
The super-rich maintain private jets to actively negate the existence of anyone else but themselves (and servants trained to stay invisible).