Trump’s Transportation Department Necessarily Brings Back Shaming, Thank God

The Federalist ^ | November 20, 2025 | Eddie Scarry

[E. Pluribus Unum]

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The Trump administration’s Department of Transportation has brought back shaming, and anyone who flies even just once per year should fully support it.

Back in December 2021, aboard American Airlines to Cancún for a Christmas-time family vacation, I asked the flight attendant if the airline had started serving alcohol again. “No,” he said, “not until the passengers start acting right.”

I felt so bad for the dude. I knew exactly what he meant. He was referring to the blow-up of in-the-air confrontations that took place in the immediate aftermath of totalitarian, pandemic-era lockdowns, as seen on social media — travelers screaming at each other and fighting with the air crew. (Spirit Airlines flyers, you know who you are.)

He said those problems were largely caused by drunken passengers, many of whom would drink in excess at the airport before boarding their flights. “I wish there was some accountability for the bars and restaurants,” he said, “because that’s where they’re getting drunk.”

A new ad this week from the DOT addresses the tragedy in spectacular fashion. “Flying was a bastion of civility,” a voiceover says in the video, which strings together older clips of a not-too-distant past when people felt no entitlement to berate flight attendants for simply requesting that they not show up an intoxicated mess or physically accost others for being a minor nuisance. And then it fast-forwards to recent weeks, months, and years with clips of belligerent high-fliers now unbothered to be seen letting their odious butts hang out for a national audience, or otherwise behaving on commercial flights like feral animals.

“Things aren’t what they used to be,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says at the end of the ad. “Some would call it the golden age of...

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS:

[DIRTYSECRET]

The problem is the punishment dished out. Not firm enough.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

How come I never see the police come on board to arrest a miscreant, or an outraged Karen making a scene, or a brawl in the airport, or somebody screeching at gate agents or flight attendants? I just see normal people wanting to get to their destination acting like responsible adults, waiting their turn in line, taking their seats, begging pardon of anybody they bump into, properly stowing their carry-ons and being civil. I

I feel deprived that I don’t see the horrible behavior we see on the vids.

[posterchild]

But seriously though - modern ‘flight attendants’ aren’t the model of virtue and service one might expect from a paid job.

[posterchild]

BTW, I am not old enough to remember a time when ‘flight attendants’ were helpful or pleasant.

[RummyChick]

whats this alcohol thing about? I am flying first class due to a dirt cheap upgrade and am expecting to try bourbon cream and coke while i try to keep it from curdling.

[piasa]

Nothing a little Singapore style caning couldn’t fix.

[Dr. Sivana]

The resolution and color fidelity on that vintage VHF only NTSC TV in the clip was astounding!

[ScottHammett]

“Things aren’t what they used to be,”...Indeed

My knees are closer to my chest, the overheads are overflowing, the seat backs recline about 5 degrees, the flights are overbooked, TSA is a joke..I’ll stop.

The airlines’ quest to fund their retirement funds bears no small responsibility to the demise of the friendly skies.

[yelostar]

The decline of civility almost makes you want to drive more, fly less.

Then again, maybe not..

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/border-patrol-monitoring-us-drivers-detaining-suspicious-travel-127699704 (November 20, 2025)

Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' patterns

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.

The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.

Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects. Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of both drugs and people, it has expanded over the past five years.

The Border Patrol has recently grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies have asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.

This active role beyond the borders is part of the quiet transformation of its parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, into something more akin to a domestic intelligence operation. Under the Trump administration’s heightened immigration enforcement efforts, CBP is now poised to get more than $2.7 billion to build out border surveillance systems such as the license plate reader program by layering in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

The result is a mass surveillance network with a particularly American focus: cars.

This investigation, the first to reveal details of how the program works on America’s roads, is based on interviews with eight former government officials with direct knowledge of the program who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media, as well as dozens of federal, state and local officials, attorneys and privacy experts. The AP also reviewed thousands of pages of court and government documents, state grant and law enforcement data, and arrest reports.

The Border Patrol has for years hidden details of its license plate reader program, trying to keep any mention of the program out of court documents and police reports, former officials say, even going so far as to propose dropping charges rather than risk revealing any details about the placement and use of their covert license plate readers. Readers are often disguised along highways in traffic safety equipment like drums and barrels.

The Border Patrol has defined its own criteria for which drivers’ behavior should be deemed suspicious or tied to drug or human trafficking, stopping people for anything from driving on backcountry roads, being in a rental car or making short trips to the border region. The agency’s network of cameras now extends along the southern border in Texas, Arizona and California, and also monitors drivers traveling near the U.S.-Canada border.

Border Patrol’s parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said they use license plate readers to help identify threats and disrupt criminal networks and are "governed by a stringent, multi-layered policy framework, as well as federal law and constitutional protections, to ensure the technology is applied responsibly and for clearly defined security purposes.”

Today, predictive surveillance is embedded into America’s roadways. Mass surveillance techniques are also used in a range of other countries, from authoritarian governments such as China to, increasingly, democracies in the U.K. and Europe in the name of national security and public safety.

“They are collecting mass amounts of information about who people are, where they go, what they do, and who they know … engaging in dragnet surveillance of Americans on the streets, on the highways, in their cities, in their communities,” Nicole Ozer, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law San Francisco, said in response to the AP’s findings. “These surveillance systems do not make communities safer.”

There is much more to the article.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The decline of civility almost makes you want to drive more, fly less. Then again, maybe not.

And when you drive, there's always the possibility of this:

[jimtorr]

Yes, the airlines bear much of the responsibility in their quest for maximum profits. The last time I flew regular coach, sometime in summer 2001 I ended up with thighs that asked horribly for hours.

Deep Vein Thrombosis? Whatever........for the flight back across the country I upgraded to coach plus, and never had that awful ache again.

[jimtorr]

I could not figure out what my thighs were asking for. Maybe that’s why they were ACHING.

[Carl Vehse]

Things went downhill when airline travel became cheap enough so that planes now have pasengers who, as Jay Leno observed, “used to hitchhike or cling to the bottom of trains.”

Even when I was traveling by air a decade ago, the flight would typically have its share of the dregs of humanity wearing clothes that a beggar in the cold would reject.

[gunnut]

It goes both ways, there are some airline employees that treat people poorly and if you complain they threaten you saying you are disruptive. Airlines need to work on their customer service and get rid of bad employees.

[Not_Who_U_Think]

It’s certainly changed in the last five years. I remember an international flight on a 747 that not only had better seats, the food was excellent. Plus, people didn’t dress like they were going to Walmart.

On one early flight, I couldn’t sleep and read for most of the flight. A flight attendant told me to just let her know when I needed coffee - they’d just made a fresh pot in the galley.

[yelostar]

😳 😱 🤕

[grumpygresh]

I don’t drink alcohol before or on relatively short flights of 2 hours or less. If there’s any turbulence and you have to use the bathroom, you’re stuck. Not fun.

[Carl Vehse]

In the 80’s I had coach seat on a transcontinental flight with one-stop in Chicago. On the leg to Chicago I was served a steak dinner with real silverware. Then on the leg to the east coast with a new flight crew, I was served another steak dinner.

Today, I doubt I would even be served a small bag of 2 tasteless cookies.