> Maybe I am missing something and should be clued in?
>
> (And no, I am not agreeing with Republican disenfranchise efforts - in any
> state.)
>
> - Bill
I think what you are missing is the idea that we (the people) are supposed to deal with asshole public institutions to prove we are who we know we are, and that we exist and that we have fucking rights... period.
The same thing goes for education. A mexican looking kid has to prove where he was born? Fuck you. Oh, he speaks Spanish, so fucking what?
I mean the whole conceptual frame is totally fucked up. There is no liberal about it.
This guy came in the ER in a traffic accident bleeding all over the place. We are supposed to check ID? Screw you.
I know you get it by now, so ...
I'll explain how I came to see the ridiculousness of this ID bullshit. I needed to get transcripts from my state college for some reason I forget. They would not accept a driver's license (this was before picture id's) They required a birth certificate. Go ahead and see what bullshit you have to go through for a birth certificate, which also has to be notarized. So I came back with my official LA General photocopy--nothing less will do---with its official stamp, and then the little student jerks in the office made me fill out and sign a bunch of forms and the transcripts were sent to where ever. I did get a copy---stamped applicant copy---just in case I was up to something funny. As if the applicant copy was suspect.
Sorry. I just finished B. Traven's The Death Ship, where ID is the twist of events and fate that follow. The central character is a merchant seaman whose ship leaves without him, but with his passport and seaman's card. He is totally fucked. A stateless person with worse, no money. He discovers where stateless people end up, on ships set to sink with all hands (no witnesses with unproven identities in any case) for their insurance premiums.
The novel was written in the early 1930s when there was still a living memory that at one time (prior to WWI) nobody needed papers (except Jews) to cross borders. The sense of nation state was still ambiguous.
Now look at us. Who asks for Capital's passport and birth certificate?
CG