It’s over folks.  The age of civilian air travel is coming to an abrupt end.  It’s time to mothball our jets, shut the airlines, and go back to trains and ocean liners as our primary means of long distance travel.  The United States as a country simply cannot fly anymore.

Why? Because of terrorism you ask?  No, not because of terrorism.  It’s because we’ve become a nation of panicky pussies.  That’s why.

To be sure, on Christmas day 2009, a terrorist did try – we think – to blow up a plane.  Hiding a syringe with chemicals and incendiary devices in his underwear, he ignited his payload as the flight he was one prepared to land in Detroit.  The only immediate casualties, fortunately, were his crotch and – we hope – his ability to procreate. In this case, Darwin may have prevailed.

Shortly thereafter though, I realized that one other casualty resulted from this incident: our common sense.  It started right away with Republicans and politicians in Washington.  Rather than actually caring about the safety of the public and working towards learning from this experience to see how we can adapt reasonably and safely to this threat, if it IS a threat, they chose to pounce on this as a media stunt and politcal scare tactic.  That’s right, because some silly Nigerian chose to roast his crotch on a flight, to them this clearly meant that Obama failed us.

So, while Washington was busy wrestling with that idea and preferring to focus on the potential political fallout of whether “the system” was working or not, the people who are allegedly tasked with protecting the public good and safety basically stopped focusing on protecting the public’s good and safety.  Inevitably, this means “the system” that everyone was so busy arguing about has pretty much begun to break down all on its own anyway. That left the general public with the impression that they must now pretty much fend for themselves on the matter.

The result?  Now we must get molested before we board an airplane, even though it probably won’t help the situation anyway.  We now also have to deal with air travel being more erratic and unpredictable than before, ranging from the cut off of internet access and other in-flight amenities, to denying passengers the use of bathroom facilities.  Because we all know that terrorists won’t possibly consider blowing up the plane if they will be denied those last couple minutes of facebook-time, or are unable to take a leak before the big moment, right?

Of course, none of these measures really add to the security of the flights.  The hope, everyone agrees, is that maybe it’ll just help people feel a little safer, even though we’ve already told them, through the powers of twitter, cable TV news and the iReport, that these measures are fruitless and ineffective.

So, what happens when you tell a sick patient that the medicine you’re giving them is a placebo?  Simple.  They go apeshit crazy and panic.

And, boy, have we panicked!  In the past three days, jet fighters have been scrambled to escort two  flights because passengers on these planes were perceived to be unruly and possibly threatening.  And not threatening in the they-just-told-people-we’re-going-to-blow-up-the-plane kinda sense, either.  We’re talking threatening in the OMG-that-guy-beamed-remotely-negative-thoughts-at-me-and-OMG-I-think-he’s-crazy! kinda way.

Take, for instance, the case of poor Joseph Hedlund Johnson.  Yeah, his mugshot makes him look a little creepy, but the guy is clearly no Al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist.  He just got a little cranky because he was told he couldn’t put his carryon bag under his seat… the same bag they probably would’ve charged him $20 for the mere privilege of checking into the cargo hold of the plane.  Naturally, he wasn’t happy about this and decided to tell the airline of his annoyance in a comment card he filled out and handed to a flight attendant.

The flight attendant, being a nosy little snot, opened the card and read the following:

“I thought I was going to die, we were so high up,” the card said. “I thought to myself: I hope we don’t crash and burn or worse yet landing in the ocean, living through it, only to be eaten by sharks, or worse yet, end up on some place like Gilligan’s Island, stranded, or worse yet, be eaten by a tribe of headhunters, speaking of headhunters, why do they just eat outsiders, and not the family members? Strange … and what if the plane ripped apart in mid-flight and we plumited (sic) to earth, landed on Gilligan’s Island and then lived through it, and the only woman there was Mrs. Thurston Howell III? No Mary Anne (my favorite) no Ginger, just Lovey! If it were just her, I think I’d opt for the sharks, maybe the headhunters.”

I don’t know about you, but I read this card and think to myself “wow, this guy is a jerk with a really, really bad sense of humor.” But the nosy little flight attendant though differently.  Instead, the thought that crossed HER mind, it would seem, was “OMG THIS GUY IS GOING TO BLOW UP THE PLANE JESUS CHRIST IN HEAVEN SAVE US OMG OMG OMG!!”

That kinda conclusion was a bit of a stretch if you ask me.  But apparently, the head flight attendant and even the pilot of the damn plane agreed that it was time to scramble the jets!

So now, everyone on the flight has to bear the inconvenience of fighter jets scrambling, the plane turning back to its starting point, and everyone being molested and cavity searched while the poor creepy jerk faces felony charges.

Moral of the story: if you don’t like the airline’s service, don’t you dare complain about it. Because if you do, you might be branded a terrorist.

And if you think this was one single, isolated incident, they did it all again just two days later with a totally different guy.

(CNN)—In the second such incident in three days, fighter jets escorted a diverted commercial flight on Friday after an unruly passenger caused alarm onboard.

The military sent up two F-16s in response to reports of an unruly passenger aboard AirTran Flight 39, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a statement.

The passenger had become belligerent and refused to leave the restroom, airline spokesman Tad Hutcheson told CNN on Friday. The passenger appeared to be intoxicated, he said.

This just goes to show you: we don’t need actual religion-crazed hijacking, bomb-wiedling jihadists to disrupt our way of life and cause irrational mass panic, endangering the lives and safety of the public and costing taxpayers millions in spurious costs in the sake of “safety.”  We can do it all buy ourselves, thank you very much!