The State of Texas let me vote today. Honestly, I’m surprised.
I have a lot of problems with “legal” ID.
I haven’t had a Social Security card in my possession since 1969 and don’t particularly want one, except that it would help me get a Texas ID, which I really only want so I can vote, get a card at the Moody Public Library, and have library privileges at Baylor. So, when I applied online recently for a new SS card, the SS bot informed me I don’t exist.—even though I set up an online account years ago and successfully applied through it for SS and Medicare—which I get. If I had a Texas ID I would exist according to SS; but getting a Texas ID isn’t that simple. See, due to the Covid lock-down the BMV is closed. You can get in by appointment only, (made online) and there is a 4-6 month waiting period. My appointment is in March 2021.
Oddly, I was allowed to register to vote by mail with no ID, though I furnished the last 4 digits of my SS number. It worked. I received a Voter Card a few weeks ago. I did, however, schlep a big envelope full of other supposedly legal ID over to the poll at Moody Methodist Church where we were serenaded in line by canned praise music . All I had to show was my birth certificate.
I tend to believe that voting, especially on the federal level, is a waste of time. But I always vote. I can’t help it. It’s my degree in Political Science screaming at me. .(Back in those heady undergrad days I believed this degree would put me on the road to the Court of St. James.) I nearly always vote for somebody that loses. I couldn’t even vote for president until I was 24 since back then voters had to be 21, and my birthday was just a few days short of voting in 1964—but who was the choice? LBJ or Barry Goldwater. In 1968 I did a write-in for Gene McCarthy, In 1980 I voted for John Anderson. Who?
I can’t say I’ve ever taken any great satisfaction in voting since my politics are outside of the 2-party system. But I did today. I took great satisfaction in doing my 1/153 million part to vote the fuckers out. I voted a straight Dem ticket, though I had to gag at checking that box for Biden-Harris—the warmonger and the cop. They are on my shit list, already, and if they win, then I can treat them with the utter contempt with which I treat Trump and his crime syndicate now.
I really hate the idea of government-mandated ID cards. It’s all a racket. Control, Snooping. Meddling. Spying. A government income stream that nobody but hardcore off-the-grinders can’t avoid. I don’t consider myself off the grid. . I just don’t like the idea of paying the government to surveil me. My job is to surveil the government.
Perhaps it’s about being adopted. The birth certificate is the breeder document for all other “official” government and quasi-government paperwork you may be hounded to obtain Without that certificate, you don’t exist as far as the state and its subsidiaries are concerned. The birth certificate acts as a deed of identity. Of course, in the case of adoptees, we don’t exist as our born, natural selves. We have government-approved identities and government-issued amended birth certificates that are full of lies to prove it. I once ran across the ABC of someone who was adopted as a teen by a young couple. According to the document he was born to parents who were 8 and 6 at the time. Precious! 8 million fraudulent birth certificates. Call Homeland Security!
And don’t get me started on the new-fangled scheme now being pimped, known as an “integrated birth certificate,” that isn’t a birth certificate at all. The integrated cert is a wackadoodle government genealogical document that would list first parents, adoptive parents, surrogates, and God knows who else. I saw it suggested somewhere that your marriages and divorces if you have any, would be included. (I have a couple of old friends who have each been married 6 times. Wouldn’t that be a fun read ?)The cert would be mandated for everybody, but of course, its purpose is to single out adopted people, “for their own good, ” which hardily makes us integrated into anything. Do-gooders, claiming this abomination is an adoptee rights issue, tried to run a bill through Maine last year and got shot down.
Whatever it is, the integrated birth certificate not a birth certificate which is ,,, well,, defined as an official record of a person’s date and place of birth and parentage …not a family reunion or ancestry.com file. It sounds like a pedigree issued by the American Kennel Club. What next? Nurenberg Laws and Mischling Tests? A scarlet B?
I need to write up a Bastard Nation policy paper on integrated birth certificates since it seems to be a trend-in-progress. Maybe I’ll do that today while I’m in a good mood.