Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 4 • August-September 2007

STRANGE TIMES

A modern tale Kafka would love: guilty of flying while rational

by Henry Noble

Credit: Gordon Frazier

Only humans laugh. The mirth of oppressed people tends toward gallows humor as the encroaching police state walls in other expressions of speech and movement. Like John Yossarian in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Josef K. in Franz Kafka's The Trial, people in the U.S. today find themselves in totally absurd situations without rational explanation.

Here's a bizarre instance: on a July 2007 morning, U.S. newspaper readers discovered that their country might go to war again — with Canada. The northern neighbor plans to send warships to defend its claim of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, a region of Canada that is buried under ice year-round.

Or was. The U.S. is disputing Canada's claim because, as it turns out, global warming is melting the ice. This could make the passage a viable new shipping route, one with access to nearby oil and gas deposits. Some Seattleites I know are hopeful that, if it comes to war, Canada will win — and forcibly impose its healthcare system on our city.

Also in July, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out an ACLU suit against Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program, the part of the National Security Agency that secretly monitors domestic calls and emails. The judges said that the ACLU's plaintiffs failed to show they've been personally harmed. But, in a Catch-22 Yossarian would admire, this would be impossible, since nobody who is being secretly spied on knows it.

Such was the political climate on a recent day when Eric K. boarded a plane at Boston's Logan Airport. Cheered that his section to the rear was loading first, he loped down the aisle, tossed his carry-on in the overhead, squeezed his lanky frame into 26A, and thereby slid into a web of surrealism.
No sooner had K.'s posterior hit the cushion than the cushion hit the floor. A scientist and tinkerer, K. tried to assess the extent of the problem even as he summoned the flight attendant. When she arrived, he had examined both his cushion and the one on 26B and discovered that his seat's Velcro strap had lost its capacity to grip.

F.A. "Stop tearing up the seats!"

K. "My cushion is broken and comes off when I sit."

F.A. "It's supposed to come off; it's a flotation device."

K. "It's a safety hazard."

F.A. "I'll call the station manager."

K. "Great!"

The airlines station manager reached 26A as the plane began to fill up.

S.M. "I hear you're causing trouble, tearing up all the seat cushions and spooking the other passengers. If you're not comfortable sitting in this seat, perhaps you need to find another carrier."

K. "My seat's broken — take a look."

S.M. "I don't need to look at the seat. I just need to know if you're going to keep causing trouble. If this plane needs to make an emergency landing because of you, you'll be dealing with a lot rougher people than me."

K. assured the man that he wouldn't cause trouble. It was the last flight out of Boston that night, and he didn't want his name put onto a no-fly list. He returned to his unsafe, broken seat. But that didn't end it.

The senior flight attendant came down from the front of the plane and demanded K.'s. removal from the flight. He was then ordered to remove his bags, walk through 25 rows of anxious, staring passengers, and leave the plane.

Once in the terminal, however, the station manager's demeanor changed radically. Instead of being marched to a stockade, as had many other bearded people of Middle Eastern visage in previous months, K. was placed in the first-class section of a flight that had been delayed for mechanical problems.

K. was very perplexed. Having been told he was too dangerous to sit in the cabin of one plane, why did the ministers of public safety seat him near the flight deck on the next aircraft out?

K. wrote to Northwest Airlines management seeking answers: "What should be the correct response of the flight crew when a passenger notices a mechanical safety hazard on board an aircraft? Next time, should I keep it to myself and hope a mechanic happens to correct it before someone is hurt?"

Maybe Northwest Airlines was just trying to avoid another blemish on its wretched on-time record. Or perhaps, as was true for Josef K., Eric K.'s questions are unanswerable.

One post-revolutionary day, when the newly liberated working people of the U.S. comb through the archives of the secret police, they might discover a thread linking covert operations in Canada, NSA snooping, and the seat cushion on 26A. Until then, we can only laugh through our tears at the insanity of it all — and loudly protest every encroachment on our civil liberties.

Experienced labor activist Henry Noble, national secretary of the Freedom Socialist Party and father of K., is an avid birdwatcher. He can be reached at hjnoble@igc.org.