Incidentally, what is the right argument to make in your mind? You say it's "retarded" to talk facts and that you're annoyed that anyone's even talking about this issue in the first place, so what's the tptacek-approved rhetoric, here?
That the explicit goal of terrorism is to coerce us into punishing ourselves with inane security measures, which allows 1-2 people to wreak billions of dollars of damage on society? That it doesn't matter if there's some combination of innocuous-looking liquids that will detonate an airliner?
Yes, there's an argument that changes minds by the millions. All the people who are willing to do damn near anything in the name of "security", because "you can't be too safe", will understand that it doesn't really matter whether a danger exists.
Apparently (from upthread), most Americans would be fine with overt strip searches at the airport, because they have nothing to hide and they'd rather be safe. So if you're conceding this argument, I have a hard time seeing where your argument about the chemistry of specific liquid explosives will get you.
Look, all I'm saying is that the both the (lame) comic and the discussion here are missing the point of the actual problem. It's not that 6 ounces of clear fluids could or couldn't be more dangerous than batteries. It's the orgnanizational dynamics that allow debates like this to shape policy.
Seriously, tell me you honestly believe that a highly publicized argument about the safety of laptop batteries on airplanes wouldn't simply get laptop batteries banned at this point.
That would require me to have been actually arguing that argument.
People want security. They will not abandon the desire for security, they will not recontextualize the role of security in their society to your liking. Your only hope is choke down the overweening mania of the security apparatus during periods the public isn't actively panicking.
You point out where security is dumb, inconvenient, and - here's the big point - not making them safer. You prod them out of the cognitive dissonance that keeps them accepting what they already suspect are useless security measures because some authority told them to. You have a hard road ahead of you, but then life is pain.
Incidentally, what is the right argument to make in your mind? You say it's "retarded" to talk facts and that you're annoyed that anyone's even talking about this issue in the first place, so what's the tptacek-approved rhetoric, here?