I have a sense that without wide bi-partisan support from national leadership and all three branches of the government, profiling would be impossible to implement given today's socio-political climate. In other words, protesters would have to be shouted down, shamed into silence. What are the chances of seeing that? Look at the recent tempest in a teacup created when some clothing firm dared to produce T-shirts saying something like "Two Wongs Will Make it White!" A national scandal it was for a week or so!
I think that these days we Americans would rather die than to appear unfair. Unfair, yes that's the word. We have an exaggerated sense of fairness and believe that perfect fairness and perfect justice are achieveable in this world. Better 100 murderers go free than one wrongly accused man be imprisoned, we say?! (Well, talk to one Gerald Amirault about that piece of national wisdom.)
To continue, the stated aim of the current security system is of course to catch or deter potential terrorists, not just to bother people. We the people, i.e. our elected representatives, want to achieve this aim in an absolutely, perfectly fair way. As we are seeing, the perfectly fair way is to be unfair to everyone, infants, grannies, war heroes included. Everyone suffers equally and to the sheeple that appears to represent the closest thing to that reachable perfect fairness.
This is no different than norming educational test scores to achieve the same outcome for everyone regardless of cultural background. No different than affirmative action, no different than literary or movie awards to half-wits, no different than standing ovations for a no talent like Whoopie Goldberg wherever she goes. Why, she's suffered enough, first as a slave, then in the death camps of the Holocaust and finally in the back of a bus! The airport security measures in this country can't help but reflect the past 30 years of our absurd history.