re: “Give someone an ID badge and a badge and they’re like the Gestapo”
YES, that is the point! The people who turned the TSA into the organization they are today knew that.
The famous academic study which described how to change people with the use of uniforms and fake authority is known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment,” but real life precursors of the TSA include the Sturmabteilung, which was eventually folded into the Gestapo. The first large scale action of the Sturmabteilung was setting up checkpoints in front of private businesses, changing both the Sturmabteilung members and the general public in the process.
Not unlike those traffic wardens in the UK and Australia. Cops had other things needed done so they turned over parking and other mundane jobs to these wardens who wear a uniform and a badge and then think they’re high almighty and people are really really upset over them; cops don’t like them either.