HOW FAR UP ITS OWN ASS IS THIS ADMINISTRATION? WELL, THEY CAN SEE THEIR TONSILS FROM THE INSIDE.
⚠️ Satire & Swear Words Ahead — The “Don’t Sue Me” Clause: What you’re about to read is political satire — sharp, loud, opinionated, and occasionally rude enough to make a Puritan faint. It’s commentary, not legal advice; hyperbole, not a subpoena; metaphor, not a moral indictment of your cousin who still thinks chemtrails cause eczema. Any resemblance to real motives, plans, or anatomical mishaps within the current administration is purely intentional on the part of my big sarcastic mouth. Proceed with humor, outrage, and zero expectations of objectivity — and understand that if anyone tries to haul us into court over this, the only thing we’re guilty of is having better jokes than the people in charge.
Hey! Quick question.
Did you dance with Death this past weekend? That is — did you fly home for Thanksgiving?
And you LIVED?
HOLY SHIT, my friend — go buy a lottery ticket. You have defeated the gods. You have cheated the reaper. You have threaded the needle of American aviation and come out with all your limbs and half your sanity.
Statistically? You should be in a flaming pile of aluminum somewhere outside Louisville.
Because let’s be honest — getting on a plane in 2025 is like spinning the big wheel on The Price Is Right except all the spaces say “MAYDAY.”
You board a metal tube held together with duct tape, corporate greed, and Boeing’s “we swear this one won’t explode” PowerPoint slides.
You pray the UPS cargo jet on the next runway doesn’t do another surprise firework demonstration.
You buckle into your seat and whisper a quiet prayer: “Please, FAA, let the 1970s radar system still be working today.”
And somehow — SOMEHOW — you lived through it.
Congratulations. Survivor’s badge unlocked. Go do the scratch-offs.
Because clearly the universe likes you.
Or maybe the pilot does.
Or maybe the plane didn’t have enough loose bolts this time.
Meanwhile…
AND NOW WE RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM: THE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION TRYING TO FIX AIR TRAVEL WITH MISS MANNERS.
Planes are crashing. Airlines are delaying. Pilots are aging out faster than the FAA can recruit. Air traffic control is running on hardware older than Disco and less reliable than RFK Jr.’s immune system.
We got radar systems designed when rotary phones were high-tech. We got glitchy communications running on copper wiring that predates the moon landing. We got controllers working double shifts in rooms that smell like stress and depression.
And the DOT looks at all that and says: “Clearly the real problem is… YOU PEOPLE AREN’T WEARING ENOUGH KHAKIS.”
That’s right, baby — the bold, visionary, multi-million-dollar solution rolled out by Transportation Secretary Sean P. “I Googled ‘leadership’ once” Duffy is:
**Be nicer. Dress better. Mind your manners. Say please and thank you.**
Because when a UPS plane explodes on takeoff, obviously the passenger wearing Crocs is to blame.
When ATC delays hit 90 minutes because the radar rebooted like Windows 95 with a hangover, the real culprit was that toddler in Terminal C who cried too loud.
When a Boeing door plug yeets itself into low orbit? Clearly Karen in 12A should’ve worn a more elegant blouse.
This administration looked at:
Decades of blocked ATC modernization bills
Chronic staffing shortages
Airlines gaming refund rules
Mechanical failures
Outdated infrastructure
Supply chain issues
And planes literally disintegrating mid-air
and decided, “Let’s fix it with a campaign about… civility!”
Great job, Sean. You’ve solved aviation. The Wright Brothers are applauding from Heaven.
THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRAVEL STARTS WITH YOU — AND ENDS WITH AN AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVE
They didn’t build new radar. They didn’t fund new control towers. They didn’t audit Boeing. They didn’t shore up pilot pipelines.
They gave us a moral questionnaire:
Are you dressed with respect?
Are you saying please and thank you?
Are you helping pregnant women with their bags?
Are you controlling your children?
Are you being polite to your flight attendants?
Oh, and my personal favorite:
Are you behaving well?
Buddy — we behave great. We behave BETTER than great. We behave like people trapped in a giant pressurized metal Pringles can praying we don’t end up as a National Transportation Safety Board statistic.
You know who isn’t behaving?
The goddamn government that let the infrastructure rot.
But sure, let’s lecture the passengers.
WHEN ASKED WHAT THEY’RE DOING TO FIX AIR TRAVEL, THE SECRETARY SAID: “I can’t blame anyone else for how I dress.”
Sir. Sean. Sweetheart.
We don’t care how you dress.
Put on a suit, a bathrobe, clown shoes — whatever helps you focus.
Just fix the fucking radar system.
Fix the ancient ATC facilities. Fix the pilot bottleneck. Fix the maintenance oversight. Fix the corporate greed that hollowed out the industry like a pumpkin on November 1st.
We don’t need a fashion show. We need a functioning aviation system.
Because guess what?
No amount of saying “please” is going to keep a plane in the sky if the altimeter goes on strike.
No amount of “thank you” is going to calm a flight attendant who’s been assaulted five times in a single year because the government refuses to enforce passenger bans.
No amount of “common courtesy” can correct the fact that the FAA’s telecom backbone has been a tug-of-war between Verizon, Starlink, and “lol nobody wants this contract” for a decade.
But yes, Sean, tell us more about how jeans are the real problem.
PART II: WE NOW ENTER THE TURBULENCE PORTION OF TONIGHT’S FLIGHT
You asked how far this administration has its head up its ass? At this point they're wearing their own small intestines like a feather boa.
Because while they’re lecturing passengers about etiquette like it’s 1962 and everyone’s boarding a Pan Am luxury liner…THE REST OF THE AVIATION SYSTEM IS FALLING APART LIKE A ROTTEN LEGO SET.
Let’s take a little tour, shall we?
BOEING: THE AIRBORNE SLOT MACHINE
Every Boeing flight is now a live demonstration of Schrödinger’s Engineering: the plane is simultaneously safe and a fiery hole in the tarmac until proven otherwise.
Things fall off. Panels blow out. Wires fray. Doors eject themselves like bored interns. Half the fleet is held together by the power of prayer and three zip ties.
And what does the administration do?
“Hey passengers, maybe wear a nicer shirt.”
Sure, Sean. Because my choice of footwear is definitely the reason the fuselage is shedding bolts like a Siberian husky blowing its winter coat.
AIRLINES: THE “HEY, IT’S NOT THEIR FAULT” EDITION
You want delays?! We’ve got delays that could win endurance medals.
The airlines repack the schedule so tight you’d think they were trying to smuggle time itself through TSA.
You get stranded 12 hours in Dallas eating pretzels made entirely out of salt and despair.
You finally board at 2 AM.
You sit on the tarmac for another hour while the captain apologizes for “operational issues,” which is pilot-speak for: “Corporate cut our staffing again and the union is five minutes from rioting.”
And what does DOT do?
Repeal the refund rule. You heard that right.
If the airline screws up? You don’t get your money back. You get a coupon. Maybe. If you sacrifice a goat during a full moon.
But please — tell me more about how my yoga pants are ruining aviation.
ATC: THE MEN AND WOMEN KEEPING YOU ALIVE USING TECHNOLOGY FROM THE CARTOON NETWORK ERA
Ah, yes — air traffic control.
The people who literally guide giant metal sky whales through three dimensions using:
hardware from the Ford Pinto era, radar that was state-of-the-art when Elvis was STILL ALIVE, computers running software written by a guy named Carl who retired in 1987 and whose code comments say “FIX ME LATER”, and radio systems that occasionally pick up Spanish telenovelas
Oh, and staffing? We’re short thousands. Not dozens.
Thousands.
Thank you, Ronald Reagan, for firing 11,000 striking controllers. We’re still trying to recover from that fiasco. And the ones who are left? They’re pulling double shifts, triple shifts, triple bypasses, and filing paperwork to see if burnout counts as a medical leave.
Why? Because every time there’s a bill to modernize ATC systems… the GOP blocks it.
Not once.
Not twice.
For FORTY. STRAIGHT. FUCKING. YEARS.
And now — NOW! — they’re floating contracts between Verizon, Starlink, and “whatever company will let us pay them in expired Chuck E. Cheese tokens” to upgrade the system.
But sure — let’s talk about whether I remembered to say “thank you” to the flight attendant while the cockpit instruments reboot like a Windows Vista toaster.
MEANWHILE TSA IS LECTURING YOU ABOUT DRESS CODES
You know what would improve civility?
Planes not bursting into flames like a Michael Bay audition tape.
You know what would help Americans behave better?
Aviation infrastructure that doesn’t feel like it was stolen from a Cold War museum.
You know what would make travel more pleasant?
A national government that gives even 1/10th of a damn about safety before lecturing the public about manners like we’re all children at Thanksgiving dinner.
We don’t need etiquette lessons. We need functioning hydraulic valves.
We don’t need dress codes. We need inspectors not paid in “exposure.”
We don’t need a civility campaign. We need new radar systems that aren’t powered by hamster wheels made of Reaganomics.
AND NOW, THE GRAND CARLIN-STYLE LANDING:
This right here is the whole American aviation story in one neat little tray-table-sized metaphor: **The government let the house burn down, handed you a fire extinguisher full of glitter, and said, “Have you tried being polite about it?”**
They blame the public for “being unruly” after forcing us into seats designed for hobbits, on planes built by accountants, guided by 1970s relics, operated by airlines that collapse if a butterfly flaps its wings wrong over Atlanta.
They want courtesy while they give us chaos.
They want respect while they give us risk.
They want manners while they give us metal fatigue.
And then they wonder why people are pissed.
So yeah — if you survived Thanksgiving air travel this year?
Buy a lottery ticket, sweetheart.
You’re clearly chosen by the gods.
Because this administration?
Their heads are so far up their own asses that if you lit a match, they’d do shadow puppets on their own tonsils.