Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Drew

Drew’s line lands like an offhand aside, but it’s doing the work of an eyewitness: a New Yorker (and a photographer trained to notice systems, not just scenes) calling out the performance aspect of American “security.” The word “joke” is blunt on purpose. It isn’t a policy memo; it’s a gut-level verdict that implies theater, complacency, maybe even civic denial. He’s not arguing that airports are unsafe in the abstract. He’s saying the rituals meant to reassure the public once felt unserious, especially in the country that likes to brand itself as hypermodern and hypervigilant.

The comparison to “European or Middle Eastern” airports is the quote’s quiet provocation. Those regions carry different histories of political violence, border scrutiny, and public tolerance for inconvenience. Drew leverages that contrast to suggest the U.S. learned the hard way: security culture is shaped less by technology than by memory. “Things are a lot tougher” isn’t admiration so much as a measuring stick, implying that American airports had been protected by geography and optimism until events forced a recalibration.

Coming from a photographer, the subtext is also about visibility. Airport security is a public spectacle staged in fluorescent light, where authority is most persuasive when it looks efficient. Drew punctures that illusion, hinting that before the post-9/11 overhaul, the U.S. was selling reassurance more than readiness. His intent feels less like global one-upmanship than a grim audit: what a society chooses to take seriously shows up first in the places designed to manage fear.