The Collectivists

[James Brody]

Primo Levi – an Italian Jew and Auschwitz inmate – had a number, 174517.

You will, too.

“Real ID” is a response made by George Bush to identify every American citizen. Bush is gone but the program lives.

- The driver’s license is to have a chip that contains his biological information and in a format compatible with a United Nations project. Pennsylvania has until May 2010 to “opt out” of this project but stalls, apparently promised $40million for participating. Oddly, there are leftists such as Babbette Josephs and conservatives such as Sam Rohrer who oppose Real ID and I would like to find principle rather than principal in their motives. But the evidence is as yet unclear.

- Your DL may carry a transmitter that signals your license status when you pass a cop. Or for that matter, whether you are current with your taxes, child support, or library fines.

- You could hit your DL with a hammer or a steam iron but the next generation of computers could well signal “no signal received.”

- The DL is a training step: chips already are implanted into your dog, cat, or horse “for their protection” and you will next tolerate being ratted out by your wallet just as your cell phone now betrays you to your spouse.” Your children are the next tagged after your pets. And then you. Instead of God knowing the feathers on your wings, the NSA and IRS will listen to the chip in your temple.

- The chip next becomes not an informant but a regulator that tells not only what you do but also tunes your emotional apparatus if your feelings are out of kilter.

I would be more optimistic except that a hundred million of us spend large parts of our day feeding and fertilizing computers while talking to our children an average of nine minutes.

A not-so-fantastic example: Matrix showed us as confined in cells, kept alive by tube-feeding and self-generated fantasy, while the world computer – in a replay of pleasure for money – used each of us as a battery.

It’s already true, accomplished by data streams from your OnStar (it can shut down your engine and deflate your tires!), GPS, computer, credit cards, and cell phone. And you never noticed what was happening to you. Some truckers enjoy having a black box that monitors and makes decisions for them instead of for the truck’s engine. You could too…

Sweet irony: all this data vanishes after the explosion of one nuclear-tipped missile in the sky over Chicago. But so do your personal records, transistors in your car engine, TV, radio, and personal computer, and the inventory and delivery schedules for your grocery store…freedom and responsibility return.