The Lie of No Identification Voting

There is a meme, probably it would be considered a "conservative" or "alt-right" one that goes around Facebook from time to time that lists all the things for which we must provide identification. It is a long list. The only thing that we are told should not, must not, require identification is one of the most critical and personal things, one that deals with personal, community and national security, voting. This is because asking some of our citizens or groups to obtain identification is voter suppression.  This is the one thing apparently for which some of People of America are incapable of providing verification of their identity. 

What made me think of this today? I decided, that though I have a passport, I should get the Real ID before the following reality becomes unremitting law. Here it is.

Starting October 1, 2021, every state and territory resident will need to present a REAL ID compliant license/ID, or another acceptable form of identification, for accessing federal facilities, entering nuclear power plants, and boarding commercial aircraft.

If you don't plan on driving everywhere in the Continental United States, or Hawaii or Puerto Rico or Guam you either are going to need a passport or one of the following items to visit the far flung relatives or one of the following:

• Driver's licenses or other state photo identity cards issued by Department of Motor Vehicles
•  (or equivalent)Beginning Oct. 1, 2021, if you plan to use your state-issued ID or license to fly within 
• the U.S., make sure it is REAL ID compliant. If you are not sure if your ID complies with REAL ID,
•  check with your state department of motor vehicles.
• U.S. passport
• U.S. passport card
• DHS trusted traveler cards (Global Entry, NEXUS, SENTRI, FAST)
• U.S. Department of Defense ID, including IDs issued to dependents
• Permanent resident card
• Border crossing card
• State-issued Enhanced Driver’s License
• Federally recognized, tribal-issued photo ID
• HSPD-12 PIV card
• Foreign government-issued passport
• Canadian provincial driver's license or Indian and Northern Affairs Canada card
• Transportation worker identification credential
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Authorization Card (I-766)
• U.S. Merchant Mariner Credential
• Veteran Health Identification Card (VHIC)

In coordination with its DHS counterparts, TSA has identified acceptable alternate identification for use in

 special circumstances at the checkpoint.

A weapon permit is not an acceptable form of identification. A temporary driver's license is not an

 acceptable form of identification.

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I assume that the same people who are unable to get identification to vote, many of which above would be sufficient to show that they indeed have the RIGHT to vote, will be unable to fly or enter public buildings after October 2021. If it is impossible and unfair to ask them for identification to vote, it is impossible and unfair to ask them to get Identification to fly or enter federal buildings.  Logic would dictate that this, and any other form of identification requirement, if a suppression of rights for voting is also a suppression of right to engage in interstate travel. It is also unfair and perhaps even discrimination by a private business to ask for identification to ask for identification for anyone buying, say, liquor. If I, clearly an elderly plump woman announce to my local liquor store well over the age of 21, announced to the clerk that I don't have identification, that I cannot be discriminated against for lack thereof, they would no doubt throw me out, but isn't that a discriminatory practice against a person who has no identification? 

Are you really going to tell me that there are an abundance of CITIZENS who do not have identification for the multitude of ORDINARY things for which it is required, like getting electricity for the home, or other services of daily life?  As one article I found said, ID, actually even photo ID is required for nearly EVERYTHING in our lives.

 https://www.wbfj.fm/fact-photo-id-required-almost-everything-life/

Nothing I am saying here is new. It is insulting and demeaning to the people who are told they are so inept or so in need of the paternalism of politicians that they can't go out and get for VOTING what is needed everywhere else. Ot that many of them haven't presented ID for those lesser things on the lists of everyday requirements to prove yourself. So, here's a recent example. . . . .to go into a hospital these days for visits in the year of Covid, you have to show identification and get a badge. How can a hospital deny the same people who can't produce identification to vote a visit to mother or father because they don't have identification to get inside during the pandemic? 

The fact that something is hard to do is also not a reason to say, "Oh you don't have to do it." I can tell you, trying to get a Real ID, using the system on line and THEN having to go to DMV anyway, is hard. And it IS a tracking device. for every group and individual in the nation. And unlike showing ID for the right to vote, one might argue that REAL ID is truly an invasion of rights. People have so argued. But apparently it is happening.

https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/real-id-faqs

Clearly that is the logic behind requiring ID to fly. It is a matter of safety, security, that very thing for which all this year we have been told requires us to do a variety of unpleasant and difficult things. It is a matter of logic and safety and security and fairness for ALL that we ALL provide proof of WHO WE ARE when we vote. Would it be ok with you if I walked into the bank, said I was you, and got your money? We call that ID theft. When someone who isn't entitled to vote, does so, they take away other people's rights as citizens. Does that matter? 

The inconsistency over what is fair or unfair, easy or hard is so manifest it is hard not to spit in frustration over it. But don't worry, given all the things that are happening in this country, just like it happened in so many other places, voting won't matter any longer. We will have transformed ourselves into yet another dead civilization. 

And so it goes in this best of all possible worlds in the hands of human beings. 

The Little Mask of Horrors

The Novella by John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men" somehow just came to mind as I began to write this entry. The story, of which I had to remind myself just now, is about two migrant workers in the Depression, one of whom. Lennie, is mentally challenged and potentially violent. The men dream of being able to settle down one day and to own a piece of farm land where they will raise animals, especially rabbits. When Lennie, and George, his friend and traveling companion need to tell themselves things will be all right for them in time, Lennie will say, "Tell me about the Rabbits, George."

Suffice it to say, the dream never happens, and the end, for Lennie and George is sad. For Lennie, it's a killer.

Somehow our year of masks has an odd comparability. Masks were part of the dream, the dream of "Flattening the curve" of Covid-19. It was "just an inconvenience", we were told. It's all about public health, not seeing Grandma on her deathbed, not shaking hands or going for a family and friend picnic. 

Vaccination.  Yeah, that's the ticket out! Give a little, take a little is the motto of our leaders. Except the public is giving a lot, and the leaders are TAKING even more. You don't see it? What can I say? You don't see it. Poor the rest of us. 

Vaccination means diddly squat in terms of freeing us. It has created a new industry. Vaccination passports. Whether these will become mandated by governmental or private industry ("You don't have to go to places that require it, you say?" But what if every private industry requires it? Well, then, tough, you do have to have the proof.) A vaccination card caste system. 

And then there is the mask. I have had both vaccinations. It is more than two weeks. I am, referencing my last entry, purportedly "safe". One of the CDC "experts" said that someone vaccinated was unlikely to spread the disease to anyone. Was she squashed? I don't know. Apparently others haven't heard her words of expertise in favor of the expertise of the "science we like better." And yet, I have to wear a mask as if it were the beginning of the pandemic. At Trader Joe's they have raised separating the cashier from the customer to an art. The cashier takes your wagon. You must stay behind a line, and not even approach the barrier of plastic, until your items are bagged and you are ready to pay. The cashier I had the other day backed away from me, in my mask and in my vaccinated state (of which admittedly he did not know) as if I were a Leper in the time of Moses. But he was very nice. 

Parenthetically, have you noticed something about all of us mask wearers? Even more than in the early days of our compelled anonymity, we pull at our masks all the time. You see as you breathe, sometimes the things kinda catches on your mouth and you have to pull it away. Oh, but there is another industry that can help you, one that makes a plastic thing you can wear INSIDE the mask to keep it away from your face (which seems to me then to defeat the purposse of the mask, to keep germs inside). Every time. Watch your friends. Watch them pull the mask away when they can't breathe. I do it. If I don't I begin actually to feel panicky. 

Now, imagine a person who has had the misfortune to have to go to a hospital during these marvellous days of the protection of public health for our good. An older friend had a stroke and ended up in the hospital. Before she was diagnosed as having had a stroke, we spent hours in the hallway of a hospital as it was packed, packed I say, with. . . .sick people. And of course the many doctors, nurses and staff people a hospital contains. She was prodded and poked and forbidden water because they were going to run tests and did run tests that somehow water would have affected, and they kept passing by and putting a mask back on her face. I dutifully wore mine. You can imagine my thoughts. People, already strangers to her, came at her, their faces covered with the ubiquitous mask. She has been in hospital or rehab now for nearly three weeks. She hasn't seen an actual face in all that time of the people who are tasked with making her better. Imagine. You have had a stroke. There is this thing, particularly in the elderly, called hospital psychosis. Why? Because you don't know day or night in a hospital. Because even without masks people are coming in and out of your room at all hours to take blood, or check on you, or whatever the series of things are the protocol.  At least now, she doesn't have to wear the mask in her room. Naturally, the one visitor allowed every twenty four hours for the window of between 5 and 8 p.m. does. It's all for the public health good. Yes. I know.

Perhaps in the future, some expert (if he or she is allowed to do so) will write an article, "The Mask as Torture Device in the 21st Century". Our politicians know that now, as do our scientists. Can you think of any who got caught NOT wearing theirs where we are required to do so? Can you? Or has that been erased from public and private memory by the fiat of the know everythings? 

My friends and I were pretty avid movie goers before the pandemic lockdown. Some are already eager hearing that the theatres are being opened, and there has been discussion of our going when there is something we want to see. But you know what? When I go to see my friend at hospital, I wait on a line just to go inside to get checked in, to sign in that I don't have symptoms, and to have my temperature taken. I stand on the warning blotches--six feet distance. But do I want to pay 20 dollars plus popcorn to see a movie doing that? Oh, once or twice, I have risen above my principles, for a birthday dinner outside, most recently. When I was standing at the check in, I wore my mask. When I sat down I was allowed to take it off. Those germs are smart!! Today, I also rose above my principles and went to a local place for breakfast after running errands that has a patio. But you know what? I was the only one in the patio area so the mask was not much an issue, and there was no temperature check. 

You want to know what I think?  If you have gotten this far in my diatribe, you are probably not a "pro-masker", so maybe you do. I think the mask is a killer. Social. Moral. Physical. Psychological. Great, if you have a profession that requires it, like being a surgeon, that's the condition you have agreed to accept. But the rest of us, living our stupid little lives, really? And have people stopped dying? 

I just read that a woman, a mother of five, was killed when a tree fell on top of her car.  Death will have its day and this pretense of perfect safety is insane. 

When will reasonableness return to the society? I fear that the answer is "never". Our dream, just like that of Lennie and George, is never going to happen. 

And Masks are just the beginning of our nightmare.