“It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.”
—Étienne de La Boétie, The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
—Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, Collected Poems: 1957–1982
I haven’t written political letters in a long time because, frankly, I no longer believe in political solutions.
I don’t believe in politicians, I don’t believe in political parties, and I don’t believe in any other aspect of the political clownsh*t show we are commanded to fix our eyes, minds, and hearts on while the philanthropaths, cruelites, WEFfers, corporations, organizations, governments, agencies, tyrants, kapos, and colluders are ramrodding through their bipartisan blueprints for our totalitarian enslavement behind the circus curtain.
That’s why I call myself politically agnostic. I’ve freed my mind of the ingroup/outgroup cognitive biases used to menticide, manipulate, and cleave us into perforated binaries we aren’t supposed to think outside of let alone tear up altogether.
What I do believe in is people—both as individuals and as groups of individuals with shared values and purpose rising up in a bombora of love against injustice, tyranny, and democide.
And that is why I’m asking you to join me in voicing our opposition to REAL ID, which is the United States version of papers-please digital ID.
Naturally, they’ve only given Americans until October 15, 2024, in the midst of what may be the most thermonuclear election in US history to submit comments on the latest action related to REAL ID.
So what’s wrong with REAL ID? It’s just a convenient way of identifying yourself, right?
Yes, it’s convenient.
It’s also unconstitutional, tyrannical, an infringement on our privacy, a threat to our freedom, a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and a digital prison—especially when combined with biometric surveillance, AI, facial recognition technology, and the global panopticon the technocrats have gotten the inmates to build as Andre describes in My Dinner with Andre:
“I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result, they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.”
This San Francisco Chronicle article titled “Boycott Real ID: It’s Not Worth Surrendering Your Privacy” lays it out clearly:
“Do you love your freedoms?
“Then defy your state and national governments—and refuse to get a Real ID.…
“Such requirements may sound like they boost security, but the opposite is true. New security risks are created when people submit more identification into databases searchable by a government already surveilling our calls and digital communications. Real ID provides new ways for hackers and terrorists to steal our identities, and for governments to discriminate against us.
“By tying Real ID to travel within the country, the American government is creating an ‘internal passport’ of the sort that oppressive regimes (like North Korea) use to limit their people’s freedom of movement, and to create distinct classes of citizens.…
“With state governments—including, disgracefully, California’s—encouraging people to get Real IDs, the best defense is defiance. If enough Americans opt out, Real ID can’t become the standard.…
“Defiance isn’t easy, but it’s the best strategy we have. And it’s necessary, because Real ID is incompatible with life in a free society.”
Describing their 2022 report Paving a Road to Digital Hell? A Primer on the Role of the World Bank & Global Networks in Promoting Digital ID, the NYU School of Law’s Center for Human Rights & Global Justice writes:
“We first compile evidence from around the world, providing a rigorous overview of the impacts that digital ID systems have had on human rights across different contexts. We show that the implementation of the dominant model of digital ID is increasingly causing severe and large-scale human rights violations, especially since such systems may exacerbate pre-existing forms of exclusion from public and private services. The use of new technologies may also lead to new forms of harm, including biometric exclusion, discrimination along new cleavages, and the many harms associated with surveillance capitalism. Meanwhile, the promised benefits of such systems have not been convincingly proven. This primer draws on the work of experts and activists working across multiple fields to identify critical concerns and evidentiary gaps within this new development consensus on digital ID.
“The report points specifically to the World Bank and its Identification for Development (ID4D) Initiative as playing a central role in the rapid proliferation of a particular model of digital ID, one that is heavily inspired by the Aadhaar system in India. Under this approach to digital ID, the aim is to provide individuals with a ‘transactional’ identity, rather than to engage with questions surrounding legal status and rights. We argue that a driving force behind the widespread and rapid adoption of such systems is a powerful new development consensus, which holds that digital ID can contribute to inclusive and sustainable development—and is even a prerequisite for the realization of human rights.”
On September 111, 2024, the Transportation Security Administration posted a proposed rule called “Minimum Standards for Driver’s Licenses and Identification Cards Acceptable by Federal Agencies for Official Purposes: Phased Approach for Card-Based Enforcement” in which they state:
“DHS expects individuals who may not be aware of the deadline to be incentivized to obtain a compliant DL/ID when they experience the consequences of enforcement. During the phased enforcement period individuals will experience varying levels of consequences including warning notices and progressive enforcement (as part of a phased enforcement plan), or full enforcement (where agencies transition to full enforcement on the deadline). These consequences will incentivize individuals who experience them to obtain a REAL ID. Further, because the individuals who most frequently use their DL/ID for REAL ID purposes will be the most likely to experience consequences, DHS expects that phased enforcement will especially incentivize increased adoption amongst this population. This will in turn lessen the likelihood of disruption when agencies transition to full enforcement because the individuals who most often use State-issued DL/IDs for REAL ID official purposes will have been motivated to obtain a REAL ID during the phased enforcement period.” (emphases mine)
That’s right. Buckle up for another ride on Biderman’s Chart of Coercion. Wheeeee.
They don’t even try to disguise the behavioral science and emotional manipulation tactics being used to nudge the public into tolerating increasingly totalitarian encroachments on our rights and liberties.
The fact that they go to so much trouble to engineer our opinions, beliefs, and actions means We the People have more power than they want us to believe.
Our greatest power only takes two letters to spell but a lorryload of badass bravura to say and even more to live by.
Here’s where I would normally share my public comment objecting to REAL ID, but the deadline is fast-approaching, and I felt it was more important to alert you immediately so you can compose your own submission (feel free to share yours in the comments).
What I feel like writing is:
I’m tired; I’m grumpy; I’m grieving; I’m sick of watching people die and get hurt; I’m fed-the-sh*tf*ck-up with your dystopian sh*tf*ckery; and I’m saying NO.
NO.
NO.
NO.
FECK NO.
Jim Davidson has an even simpler formula:
I don’t consent.
I won’t comply.
The end.
Follow me for more recipes for more freedom.
A more diplomatic, equally succinct approach might be:
It’s unconstitutional (specifically, it violates the Tenth Amendment).
It’s digital slavery.
It’s a violation of our civil liberties.
Repeal the REAL ID Act and every other authoritarian desecration of our rights and freedoms.
Fortunately, Citizens Council for Health Freedom has done the legwork for us by writing their own public comment summarizing the legal and humanitarian concerns associated with REAL ID. You can peruse their letter and repurpose as desired if you don’t have time to write an original comment (it is always advised to vary the template at least a little so it isn’t dismissed as a copy/paste job). Then go here to submit your comment.
I started out this piece with some bleak, “Apocal” reflections by both Étienne de La Boétie and Wendell Berry on the tendency of the masses to mindlessly submit to tyranny.
Now let’s return to those Apocaloptimistic prophets for the empowering, “optimistic” parts of those same texts:
“You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
—The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
—Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
In 1982, Judas Priest recorded the song Electric Eye, whose farseeing lyrics you’ll find below.
Electric Eye
by Judas Priest
Up here in space
I’m looking down on you
My lasers trace
Everything you do
You think you’ve private lives
Think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape
I’m watching all the time
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
Always in focus
You can’t feel my stare
I zoom into you
But you don’t know I’m there
I take a pride in probing all your secret moves
My tearless retina takes pictures that can prove
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
Electric eye, in the sky
Feel my stare, always there
There’s nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
I’m made of metal
My circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean
I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye
I’m elected electric spy
I’m elected protective, detective, Electric Eye!
Forty years later, Apocaloptimist Lukas Lion penned his own prognostications about this same technocratic surveillance state in Digital Age, the video headlining this article. Below are the lyrics to his awakening call to resistance.
Here’s to “living life free” ✊
Digital Age
by Lukas Lion
Transhumanism is the new religion.
Metaverse, welcome to the newest prison for you to live in.
It’s a war on your essence, the warnings are present but who will choose to listen?
They sell virtual reality like you can like your fantasy
but that’s all part of the strategy
to plug you in and take control.
Microchips replacing souls, that has always been the goal.
Ayo, check the methods they’ve been using.
Slow and steady they’ve been grooming
projecting their illusions,
sending messages in movies.
Predictive programming, they’ve been telling us the blueprint.
Why is everything connected to computers?
This path that we’re treading is abusive.
Venomous and ruthless predators are looming,
weapons aimed at anything that’s human.
They want a digital age.
But I ain’t gonna be a digital slave.
They ain’t gonna put a chip in my brain
and I ain’t ever gonna give my spirit away. Nah, nah.
Can’t digitize me, can’t digitize us, can’t digitize we. Nah, nah.
Can’t digitize me, can’t digitize us cuz we’re living life free.
Artificial intelligence is the devil’s development,
they’ve been cooking up malevolent recipes.
Man or machine, the definition’s getting blurry.
Organic till death, I’ll never let em convert me.
I think this is what they’ve always been planning,
get us hooked on the gadgets, don’t worry ’bout the damage.
The younger the better, get em on a phone while they’re in nappies,
that’s how you create a population of addicts.
They set traps for the masses.
These black mirrors are black magic, programming, yeah.
I see cyborgs, caught in a mind war.
Silent weapons, this is what they were designed for.
Smart watch, smart phone, smart city, smart home,
I don’t really see how this is smart though, nah bro.
Mass surveillance and monitoring.
Digital cages, they’re locking you in.
They want a digital age.
But I ain’t gonna be a digital slave.
They ain’t gonna put a chip in my brain
and I ain’t ever gonna give my spirit away. Nah, nah.
Can’t digitize me, can’t digitize us, can’t digitize we. Nah, nah.
Can’t digitize me, can’t digitize us cuz we’re living life free.
Kids these days can’t survive life
without a device in their eyesight.
Deep human connection has gone bye bye
cuz they’d rather connect to the Wi-Fi. My, my.
The world wide web.
The spider’s caught us, we’ve been cursed by them, yeah.
They’ve been building tall, prison walls
from everything digital
so they can grip you in their claws.
Digital ID … Social credit.
If you don’t play nicely they’ll make you regret it.
Digital currency, they’re coming for your cash
cuz they want it all tracked so that you stay trapped.
I am not saying that I don’t use devices,
I’m just saying, know what the price is.
Don’t let it get a tight grip that leaves you lifeless.
Man or machine, don’t forget where the line is.
They want a digital age.
But I ain’t gonna be a digital slave.
They ain’t gonna put a chip in my brain
and I ain’t ever gonna give my spirit away. Nah, nah.
Can’t digitize me, can’t digitize us, can’t digitize we. Nah, nah, man.
Can’t digitize me, can’t digitize us cuz we’re living life free.
© Margaret Anna Alice, LLC
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Note the date of posting is September 11, the pretense used to initiate the slide into totalitarianism under the George W. Bush administration. Bush signed REAL ID into law on May 12, 2005, after it was smuggled in as a rider on HR 1268, the omnibus spending bill Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief 2005 (just a few months before Hurricane Katrina, incidentally). The cruelites are surely trolling us as they chortle away while chomping on their Gurkha Royal Courtesans.
The Politics of Disobedience: Just Say NO to REAL ID Before October 15, 2024