Real ID and the Empty Promise

By someone who’s witnessed more than one kind of government stampede.

Now then, gather ’round and let me spin you a yarn of modern America, where the gears of government grind not toward sense–but ceremony—and where, twenty years after a great howl went up in Congress, we still find ourselves fussing over a gold star on our driver’s license like it’s a passport to the Pearly Gates.

It all began in 2005–when the Real ID Act got passed by the fine folks in Washington who reckoned that a fancier ID card might keep the bad guys at bay. Never mind that the hijackers of 9/11 had perfectly legal papers or that none of this folderol would’ve stopped a single one of them from boarding a plane.

That didn’t trouble the minds of our elected betters. Nope, they got set on doing something—anything—so long as it sounded official and came with a deadline far enough in the future that none of them would have to explain it when it failed to make a lick of difference.

Fast-forward two decades, and here we are in Nevada, with local TV folks pacing around half-empty DMVs, asking why folks aren’t stampeding toward compliance like cattle at branding time. A pleasant DMV spokeswoman, Miss Hailey Foster, assures that appointments are going faster than hotcakes on Sunday morning and that folks are panicking appropriately. She says the lobby may look calm, but don’t get fooled—it’s just the quiet before the bureaucratic storm.

They say more than two million Nevadans have done their civic duty and gotten their Real ID, leaving nearly 600,000 souls still flapping in the breeze. Those poor unmarked masses will soon be unable to board a flight or stroll into a federal building without raising suspicion, all because their license lacks a golden star.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I reckon if a terrorist was looking to sneak onto a plane, he wouldn’t be too troubled by a DMV appointment.

The requirements to get this sacred document are enough to make a schoolmarm weep—birth certificates, Social Security cards, bills from the water company, and proof that your name didn’t once belong to someone else. And if you miss the deadline? Well, don’t fret too much. You can still get your Real ID later, which makes one wonder what the fuss is about in the first place.

The whole business has become a kind of modern-day morality play. The government insists you must comply to be safe while offering no evidence that this twenty-year-old notion has made us any safer than the day when once signed into law. They keep kicking the can down the road, moving the goalpost, and congratulating themselves on their vigilance. And all the while, we stand in line, clutching our birth certificates and utility bills, praying that this time the system won’t crash before our number gets called because nothing says national security like verifying your water bill.

So come May 7, remember this–if the Real ID is the key to America’s safety, then we’re already knee-deep in folly. But if it’s just another golden calf for the bureaucratic faithful to worship, well then—mission accomplished.