Okay, I'm sorry but I've gotten sick of this.
<snip of enormously long rant>
Whew! Feel better? :wink2:
So, to sum your post up in one sentence: "It's always been this way -- suck it up."
Sorry, that's not in my makeup. Until we stop treating our politicians like royalty, we will be rewarded with the insulated, out-of-touch people we've got running the country.
Specifically, this cult of personality toward our presidents is unAmerican, and needs to stop. These people are just guys, like you and me, and the reverence and majesty with which we are now treating the office is absurd.
Hell, the money spent every time a president wants to visit a fast-food joint is just astronomical -- it's nearly unbelieveable. We are now ringing them with more security than any Roman Emperor could boast -- and for what, again? To save the nation from... what, again? Another state funeral?
Well, you know what? If somebody takes a shot at a president, that's life, and it goes with the territory. To completely disrupt life for everyone else in the country every time the president wants to play golf, in an attempt to provide royal protection for a single man, is criminally absurd.
In short, it's stupid. And, no, it HASN'T "always been this way". Real people used to be able to talk to these folks, and there have always been crazy, violent people who "might" do evil toward a politician. Now, these cringing, fearful politicians live in a bubble -- ringed with razor-wire, and enormous, unwieldy, costly TFRs that screw up everyone around them.
Now, of course, the TFRs we pilots despise only impact a relatively small number of people -- but that's just one layer of this onion. EVERYTHING is disrupted when a modern president "invades" an area --
everything, cars, buses, trains, commerce, schedules, meetings, business, church, sports -- EVERYTHING is set aside, delayed or cancelled, for a SINGLE MAN to do whatever the heck it is that he decides is more important than ANYTHING ELSE going on? Crazy.
And although I'd like to fantasize that the November election will be the start of a new, more common-sense approach toward fiscally responsible national governance, I'm cynical enough to believe that little will change. It's going to take a heckuva lot more than a mid-term election to right this ship.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to take your fatalistic, "oh, well" approach. I'm not THAT "comfortably numb"...yet.