Today being a holiday, I have mentally taken the day off. I suppose I ought to be discussing something patriotic, although with the current state of things, any patriotic sentiments I might have could easily be misconstrued as anti-American, though they are merely anti-establishment. So it goes.

I was reading about the number of states who have passed laws or resolutions in opposition to the federal Real ID act. The Real ID is a set of federally-mandated guidelines to make government issued identifications more standard. There is a lot of controversy surrounding this. Real ID would be, for all intents and purposes, a national ID card. Even though the cards are being issued by the states, the information is to be entered into a national database, so it amounts to the same thing. Obviously, this raises privacy concerns.

I got to thinking that if any politician was serious about protecting their constituency’s privacy, they would have to go further than simply blocking new legislation that comes along. They should be working to reverse the trend. What I find interesting is that the number of laws that have been repealed in America is so small compared to the number passed, that every one seems like this huge victory. Prohibition comes to mind the most well-known law that was later repealed. Of course, we’re not usually talking about a law which effects so many people, but it does go to show that this sort of thing doesn’t happen on a regular basis. More evidence of this are the myriad antiquated laws that are still on the books, despite being absurd. On occasion, these are repealed en masse, but it always makes headlines because it’s so unusual.

“If politicians were truly concerned about increasing the privacy of citizens, they would be making IDs less secure.”

My point is this: if politicians were truly concerned about increasing the privacy of citizens, they would be making IDs less secure. There would be a push to get rid of barcodes and mag strips; certain pieces of non-critical information like ones’ signature should be removed; the photograph really doesn’t need to be on there twice, etc. This will never happen, for two reasons: one, there are people who would believe it makes America less secure even though it doesn’t by any measurable amount. And two, it means a loss of control, which anyone in charge just isn’t going to give up. It also means anyone who actually did this would lose a significant portion of votes, due to the misinformed trumpeting how much more terrorism we’re inviting in, now that our IDs have made us more private individuals.

I think this goes for a lot of things. If politicians were serious about tax breaks, they shouldn’t be passing more laws to give money back; they should be getting rid of the existing ones that penalize people now. If politicians were serious about carbon emissions, they shouldn’t be passing new laws to create incentives to buy more fuel efficient vehicles; they should be getting rid of the old laws that fine people for making their own biodiesel and not paying tax on it. If politicians were serious about cutting government spending, they shouldn’t be passing new laws to limit the size of various agencies; they should get rid of the laws that permitted the agencies to grow that large in the first place.

Of course politicians aren’t serious about doing any of these things, but it can hardly be considered their fault. Can you imagine the outcry from the laymen if any of these things were attempted? Any politician who tried this would be voted out in short order—thereby making it impossible to actually get them done in the first place. Sure, we can blame these guys all day long, but when you get right down to it, it’s what we sanction.

This is clear via the utter lack of support for third parties. If anyone thinks either major party is going to do something about all this, forget it. Neither will—but they don’t have to because they get the votes. How many decades of voting in Republicans and Democrats, back-and-forth, do we have to go through before enough people realize that neither party is actually doing anything constructive? Destructive, sure. They’re both good at that. But there is no major support for the guys who really want to change anything, because the majority of folks prefer the assurance of voting for a group with a shot. What these groups actually do in office makes great protest fodder, but protesting isn’t voting.

Of course, to vote you have to do the research and keep up with current events, and it helps to know history and some other stuff. It’s hard to keep up anymore.

This democracy sure is a hassle, but I think if we ignore it long enough, it’ll go away.

-Ted