If I can speculate, this kind of attitude was inherited from US Customs, which has always had a My Way or the Highway attitude towards travellers. TSA is more of the same. Their jobs is pretty binary, to keep attackers and attacks off of airplanes, which requires a clean perimeter. Judging from a recent pass through the GSA warehouse people are still bringing stupid things through security - chainsaws, knives, pepper spray. We are going on 7 years since 9/11 and the real advent of serious security. This doesn't go away. What are people thinking?

Still, what is the alternative, how would you make a better (friendlier) TSA? I travel often enough, I've never been met with anything but courtesy, even in SeaTac which is reputed to have fairly slow and somewhat difficult TSA. Not always friendly, but courteous. My experience must be the exception to someone else's rule though, to hear people talk about it. I think Americans have something deeply inbred, lets call it a love of freedom, and hate to have that infringed. Bully for that. TSA takes away our freedom to board a flight with lighters, knives, bear spray, chainsaws, all sorts of goodies. We stand in lines and wait for them to do their jobs. We're sometimes met with an infuriating amount of stolid but necessary adherence to regulations. But its the regulations that keep the perimeter clean, and we would be jumping up and down on TSA if something got through and someone was able to take down another flight as a result. Its a binary issue - either you keep the stuff out, or you let it in, and we know what the consequences could be if things make it back onto planes. If someone has a better alternative I'd really like to hear it.