I 100% agree that my feelings should be irrelevant to security policies. But the precautions taken by the TSA are completely disproportionate to the amount of risk we face while flying. It's a total joke to say that it's anything but "security theatre". That feeling of security is really all we're buying with all that money and inconvenience.
I agree; but what I meant here was that praising a different set-up for making you feel more secure risks implicitly suggesting that this feeling is the goal (rather than at best a pleasant by-product), thus playing into the whole security-theatre game.
