Why you can't get there from here

As someone who travels regularly -- for fun, for work, for necessity -- I accept many of the processes and procedures that have been implemented prior to and since 9/11 with a sense of resignation.

But the story of Carol Gotbaum has caused me to reflect again on all that we have chosen to give up in the name of "safety".

I admit that at the airport my moods vary. I'm more cheerful in the middle of the day, and in the morning I'm too exhausted to care, and at night I just want to get home and have everyone leave me alone.

But I know in my heart the one thing I absolutely MUST do: I must stay mellow because it's just not easy to get from here to there anymore. Frequent traveling is a bit like combat. It grinds your edges down until nothing phases you, and you are re-built and capable, focusing only on the one single most important mission of your day.

After all, god forbid I am viewed as making a scene and they don't let me board my plane.

I realized today, I'm so lucky. I'm pretty healthy for the most part and I travel just about every week, so there are few mysteries left to me in the space between the airport door and the airplane gate. Processes change and new, sometimes apparently silly, rules are implemented. I simply adapt. I put my head down and get through it.

But we aren't always so lucky. And we aren't always so healthy. We aren't always so inured to the stress that we can focus simply on our mission.

And Carol's case highlights for us all that sometimes, it isn't just, god forbid they don't let me board my plane... the end of that sentence can be far more terrifying and far more fatal.

This is the world we have created together, the terrorists and the free, the frightened and the faithful, us and them, all of us, together. Every day we exchange more of our basic freedoms in exchange for the promise of safety. Do any of us believe we can ever be safe? Truly safe?

Sometimes our worst enemies are those who we charge with caring for our safety. Sometimes they are the ones we name as evil or bad. And sometimes our worst enemies are simply the demons inside our own souls.

There are enemies at every gate. We need not wait for Hannibal to knock to know he is and has always been here, waiting to take something we value away.

A free society is measured not by the way it treats its celebrities, its princes, or its most powerful citizens. A free society is measured by the way it treats its criminals, its poor, and its most vulnerable citizens.

We do not yet know all the facts surrounding Carol's situation. We do not yet know who to hold responsible -- or if it was more than a scary, tragic, wrong accident. But we do know that Carol wasn't a celebrity, a princess or a very powerful citizen. She was a traveler, apparently one on her way to an alcohol treatment facility, to seek help against a disease.

From the surveillance video at the airport, she apparently raised her voice, became animated with police, and was deemed a disturbance. She was shackled and locked in a holding cell, again apparently and until it is proved otherwise, in concurrence with correct policy and procedure.

And now, Carol Gotbaum is dead.