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Notes -
Like, on the spot? Nobody carries around proof of citizenship.
I have a drivers license that proves I’m a citizen because my state offers it so some people do…
That proves that you were a citizen (or a legal alien) when it was issued, it doesn't mean you are one now.
Legal aliens are not eligible for Enhanced IDs given one of the requirements is an ACTIVE US passport and the ID expires the same day the passport does.
I mean I suppose I could have given up my citizenship in the interim for all practical purposes it’s proof of citizenship.
Okay, sure, if you live in one of the five states that issue EDLs and you opt to receive one, you got me there.
A passport card, available to any citizen, has the same qualities (except that it doesn't serve as a driver's license). I have one because it was easier to do that than get a New Jersey RealID (which is not an EDL) in the case that the Feds do finally implement the RealID requirement for domestic air travel.
I agree that passport card holders can prove that they are citizens.
However, this has nothing to do with the fact that most people do not carry passport cards with them and so cannot use them to prove their citizenship if stopped on the street.
More states should offer them!
Passport cards are not offered by the states.
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Well this has been an impossible problem for a long time, at least as long as Byzantium deployed its first generals.
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Isn't that an impossibly high standard?
Like, you can prove that you were issued a driver's license, but you can't prove that you have a valid one now. I'm sure there's a way around that issue.
For a non-citizen, if you have only 6 months left on your visa and you have to get your drivers license renewed, then then that license will only be valid for 6 months. Moreover, if you go to a local courthouse to renew it, your number won't come up on a regular search. It is necessary to go to a DMV building to get a license renewed. The drivers license number database apparently flags when a license belongs to a non-citizen, or at least flags it when additional steps for renewal are necessary. I don't know if this flag is visible to law enforcement when they search a license number, but there's a good chance it is. I suppose if you violated the conditions of your visa, then you could be residing illegally while still appearing to have a valid license. However, I suspect since they can't issue a license that is valid beyond the expiration date of a visa, that violating the visa would then automatically void the drivers license
Legal aliens are not eligible for Enhanced IDs given one of the requirements is an active US passport and the ID expires the same day the passport does.
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The way around the issue is that the cop takes your DL back to the squad car and looks you up in the state database of drivers' licenses. There's no analogous database of citizens.
Then it's not so much "Nobody carries around..." as "There is nothing that could be carried for...". That seems like a bigger problem.
Yes. If you want effective in-country immigration enforcement, then you need a citizen register and either ID cards or a trustworthy biometric database so ID can be checked online. (Only Estonia has successfully implemented the latter to date, and it gets harder roughly quadratically as your population increases.)
Given the ubiquity of driving licenses as ID and that the SSA already has a de facto citizen register, this would be easy for the US to do - although a few long-standing illegal residents with fraudulently acquired SSNs (or genuine ones acquired on a now-expired working visa) will slip through the net. This is particularly true for the US because birthright citizenship makes the whole problem easier - the hardest part of verifying citizenship in non-birthright countries is verifying parent's status at the time of birth. But the people who are most committed to stronger immigration enforcement are by and large the same people who are deeply committed to the idea that the Anglosphere doesn't need no stinking citizen register and is not a papieren, bitte culture, nein und fock auf - so it doesn't happen.
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I presume drivers license numbers must be flagged in searches to show if the holder is not a citizen, because green card holders can't just renew their drivers license at a local courthouse. If they try, their number doesn't come up in the search. They have to go to a DMV building. The database knows they're not citizens (or at least it knows they have this special condition on renewing their license), so it's definitely possible to infer citizenship from a drivers license number search. I don't know if ICE officers are capable of conducting this type of search.
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Also, this is such a “be careful what you wish for” sort of thing.
Conservatives are now pushing for random passport/citizenship spot checks as you’re walking down the street, that’s what “freedom” and america means to you?
Don’t have immediate proof of citizenship, get detained? Who cares if you have an American accent, we can never be too sure and that can be faked. Russian spies go through strict accent training and speak just like you and I.
“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you got nothing to fear” lmao
Do you believe that Conservatism is a live political force? Do you believe America is a live political entity? The Constitution? In what meaningful sense would any of these be true?
I think you perhaps should consider taking a few steps back and reassessing the realities of the present situation.
We should keep in mind that it's basically impossible to roll back government programs rolled out in the name of national security (such as the TSA or the patriot act) and it would be a real shame to turn the US into a state where citizens have to carry their papers and present them on demand to agents of the state.
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This is the law in Japan for any non-Japanese. You must carry proof of your status at all times--the 外国人登録証 or popularly-known "gaijin card," which indicates your visa status. Everyone here who stays longer than 3 months gets one (students, those employed, etc.) except maybe diplomats. This is in lieu of carrying your passport, which visitors (under 3 months) are required to do. In the US, if I'm not mistaken, visitors can carry a paper photocopy of their (foreign) passports. Those who are born here but are not Japanese (e.g. Zainichi Koreans) have a 特別永住者証明書 card or "special permanent residency" card that they also must carry.
That said, Japanese nationals are not required to do this. The fact that all Japanese do not look exactly alike aside, it is obviously different in the US to some degree--American citizens cannot be easily dentified simply on what they look like (though jeans and a t-shirt isn't a bad profiling protocol). I would personally be at least wary of a law that by default would require everyone to carry not just ID but proof-of-citizenship.
"Reassessing the realities of the present situation" is a vague pronouncement, of the kind that is not your habit. It's also not a phrase that engenders trust. We should at least acknowledge the fact that all manner of shackles can be added in the name of "realities of the situation."
I feel like this is pretty standard for all the non-US countries I've visited worldwide, at least on paper. I will admit to, say, going for a run and leaving my passport at the hotel, but in theory I've been required to carry it with me at all times. As far as I know, this is true in the US too: green card holders are supposed to carry it with them at all times, and visitors are supposed to carry their passports, although citizens are not required to do so (but if you are carrying such ID, you may be compelled to display it). Actual checks seem less frequent outside of ports of entry (and the occasional border patrol checkpoint further from the border).
On one hand, I respect the American tradition of civil liberties, but on the other I have trouble being alarmed at backsliding into fascism by adopting policies that checks notes align with every other first world country.
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Vagueness is not my aim. Broadness is.
I've argued for years now that the Constitution is dead. By this, I mean that I personally do not expect the Constitution, as a codified legal document, to protect me in any meaningful way, either now or most especially in the future. This is not a novel perspective, but it seems to me that it is an increasingly common one, often tacitly and increasingly explicitly, among millions of my fellow tribesmen. Since we have no reasonable expectation that the Constitution will in fact protect us when we need protecting, we have no particular reason to accept appeals to Constitutionality when they are raised against actions we consider needful.
I used to be a fairly doctrinaire conservative. I certainly am not one any more. I am not particularly interested in "fiscal responsibility" as it is traditionally formulated, or in limited government as an end unto itself for reasons that might be summarized as "nature abhors a vacuum". I am increasingly skeptical of free markets, free trade, and economics as a discipline. I have neither interest in nor patience for wars abroad and large-scale military alliances. To me, the question "What has Conservatism conserved" was fatal to any allegiance I still held to the ideological pillars of my youth. Again, I do not perceive my political metamorphosis to be particularly unusual; much of my tribe has gone through the same.
I do not consider myself an American in any deep, meaningful sense. Largely, this is because I no longer perceive America as a coherent concept, much less a live, meaningful political entity. People appeal to a "Nation of Ideas", but the collective mind which contains those ideas is best modelled as a schizophrenic with dementia. I think America's political history is best understood as a succession of philosophical errors and misapprehensions which, once corrected by practical experiment, have resulted in the nation's accelerating dissolution. I do not believe that I share some core set of fundamental values in common with a supermajority of my fellow countrymen; in fact, I perceive abundant evidence that the opposite is the case. Ozy's magnum opus is valuable and should be read and understood because their views pretty clearly generalize to a significant portion of the population, Red and Blue alike. I am quite convinced that Red and Blue tribal values are mutually incompatible and incoherent, and I do not believe that this mutual incoherence is in any sense temporary or amenable to reconciliation. Blue Tribe values are both deeply alien and deeply repugnant to me, and I am entirely aware that large and growing numbers of them feel likewise about my values. I do not trust Blues to rule me fairly, and I do not expect them to trust rule by people like me, or to acquiesce willingly to it. I do not believe that coexistence is likely to work out well for anyone involved; our differences are irreconcilable, and we need a national divorce before our growing mutual hatred gives birth to large-scale tragedy.
When Crooks' bullet missed Trump's brainstem by an inch or less in Butler, PA, a significant portion of the American population experienced acute angst and disappointment. Likewise when Rittenhouse was acquitted. When Mangione murdered a law-abiding husband and father in cold blood, a significant portion of the American population experienced joy and elation. Likewise when Antifa publicly celebrated the cold-blooded murder of Aaron Danielson in Portland, as evidenced by the glazing journalists provided to his murderer. We are more than a decade past the start of our most recent wave of widespread, organized political violence condoned and facilitated by significant portions of our institutions and local, state and federal governments. Calls for the murder of Elon Musk are frequent and widespread.
I appreciate that much of the above is bitter and immoderate. It seems evident to me that our present situation is likewise bitter and immoderate. People who have not internalized that reality are not, I think, paying sufficient attention to what has been happening in the world around them. Appeals to "freedom" and "America" are not going to cut it, and I would never under any circumstances be so foolish as to deploy them in an attempt to persuade my outgroup. They are, at this point, a punchline, like Freeze Peach.
Jesse James was a living folk hero in his time. Fallen, impoverished rebels with the resentment of defeat wanted to believe in his legend. Folks out on the frontier had their own reasons to entertain themselves with his story. Banks and railroads, like cops and insurance companies, generate societal grievances that make them easy to hate. Even at the end of his life and career, when more people were tired of his story and reputation, people still wanted to believe. Jesse was famously betrayed and murdered by a compatriot who then received a pardon for shooting him in the back. Ford himself was murdered for the act some years later.
There's a good movie about Jesse's later days that film nerds will rave about in film nerd ways. It's a pretty good slice of history in addition to the cinema perverts interest. Stiles argues in this book that Jesse provided an avatar to help make sense of their reality. He was not really Robin Hood, but he was a good story. In the aftershocks of the real war Jesse became a #resistance icon in the culture war. The real war ended, but the culture war kept on.
The rapidly changing, modernizing nation kept on rapidly changing and modernizing. Mangione is no Jesse James. He is not cool enough or famous enough or a talented enough criminal. Mangione is not interested in reconciliation, no. Disgruntled bushwhacker outlaws weren't interested nor the yellow journalists crafting the narrative.
We can find a hundred exceptions that support why we are exceptional people in exceptional circumstances. We can also find plenty to demonstrate how we are not so different. Radicals and anarchists celebrating political murder is not new. Journalists making folk heroes out of criminals is not so new. Wielding the Constitution as a weapon is not new, though the acceptance of disregarding it totally is new-ish. Like the gossips and rebels of the late 19th century -- partaking in true crime entertainment, folk hero memes, and #resistance efforts -- we live in a rapidly changing, modernizing world.
The things you list, such as support of political murders are useful for forecasting, but I don't share the weight you give them. Maybe I'm blind or I am not equipped to make such connections. I will note that Ozy wrote that post in 2018. Here we are 7 years later. You say stuff is clearly more bitter and immoderate. Maybe. This post and that post may have fit in somewhere as early as 2012. The stronger case for doomerism lies in the fundamentals you mentioned. The degradation of a national identity and loss of a shared cultural values. Which, near as I can tell, is rolled into your perspective, but the weight put on something like Mangione becoming a fun Eat the Rich rallying cry is not nearly as important an indicator for me.
The fact no one in a position to address these concerns is interested or capable of addressing these concerns is itself concerning. America can probably trudge along with half the country hating the other half for a good while longer. Perhaps with enough additional ties it can do so in perpetuity. "American" may not be enough, but it staves off the worst. If we are headed to the reality where kids from Nebraska don't want to be "American" anymore we are doomed, but we are not there yet.
Generational changes are a thing. Our children may find our problems silly, esoteric, or boring. If we manage to not throw it all away. If you consider the project failed rather than failing, fair enough. We can't go back to the 90's, or the 1890's for that matter, and I don't expect anything like a national healing anytime soon. But, we will face possibilities of going somewhere other than national divorce. I don't know how or what possibilities we may face, but a national divorce sounds fundamentally difficult enough -- and costly enough -- that avoiding it should garner widespread support.
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I cannot rise to your cynicism. It would feel like trying to reason with KulakRevolt, who I do not admire and will not engage with (this is not true of you). I appreciate the long, considered response, but as a rule I dislike tribalism, and your talk of tribe loyalty flies by me. You're entitled to your wholesale rejection of everything, of course, I will not deny that to you. But I am far from that. An ocean away, as it were.
I don't particularly want you to. I am not writing the above as a way to say "others should think as I do". I am writing it to point out what I see actually happening in the real world, and to hopefully offer some building-blocks toward insight as to why it is happening. Unlike Kulak, I would strongly prefer moderation to win, for us to find a way to extend the peace and plenty, to keep the Belle Epoch running as long as we can. And even if it does not win, I am committed, at some personal cost, to rejecting motorcycle-warlord-ism and all its works.
In order for that to have any chance at all of happening, Moderates need to understand the fact that moderation is currently losing, and put together some workable model of why and what to do about it. Ideally this would happen before something breaks that none of us can fix and we can't actually do without.
I am glad that you are an ocean away, in a place where perhaps moderation fairs better. You have always come across as a fundamentally-decent person, and I hope your life remains a pleasant one.
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For clarification: is this still only randoms on social media, or are there notable figures/organisations taking this stance as well? (Not saying randoms on social media are harmless, but there's a major difference in degree there.)
I will note that while I'm also quite concerned about the situation in the 'States, there are widely-varying threat levels among Western nations. I don't see Australia collapsing even if given a hard shove, for instance. Canada and Europe seem to be somewhere in-between.
Empirically, social media shitposts about assaulting someone are not true threats. Has anyone ever been attacked in meatspace by an internet rando (as opposed to an ex-boyfriend or suchlike) who trolled them on social media first? I think shitposting about violence is bad and the people who do it are bad people who should feel bad, but online culture (and especially the online culture of the anti-establishment right that emerged from places like 4chan and was a major influence on early MAGA culture) disagrees with me.
I think that Paul Chambers (of the UK Twitter Joke Trial fame) was an idiot, but nobody found it worth the effort to publicly point this out.
Musk is the last person who should be complaining about failure to peformatively condemn shitposters - if the law took Musk's shitposting seriously then he would be in jail for securities fraud and Vernon Unsworth would own Tesla. Musk doesn't even condemn actual political violence when carried out by his side (I am mostly thinking about the Paul Pelosi case here), let alone shitposting.
Unless I'm missing something, we're talking about advocacy of assassination, not ITG threats of assassination. If you write a post telling people to do X, there's a possibility that people might read your post and do X. This is unfortunately true even if you weren't being serious. Hence, it is not unreasonable to be concerned about a high volume of people advocating X when X is "assassinating a high-ranked government official".
It is also not unreasonable to be concerned about the possibility of the culture war boiling over into mass violence in the USA, regardless of one's side in that war (if any). I'm thus not seeing the relevance of the tu quoque; I'm trying to get a better read on P(Boogaloo), not trying to score points.
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There's this chronic inability on the Left to call out people in their own tribe that agitate for and perpetrate violence. The Right isn't perfect either, but I didn't see this much resistance or 'gaze-aversion' when required to denounce the miscreants in their midst. And TBF, I think they too increasingly lost interest in doing so since the utility of it is less than zero.
At best, you get something like Biden's 'condemnation of ALL political violence' that only names the Proud Boys, whereas Antifa 'is just an idea'.
This arouses the suspicion that their political leadership is actually okay with somebody else doing anything between knocking over conservative BBQs to killing Elon Musk.
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I’ll also point out that no prominent anti-Trump figures are denouncing those random calls for assassination. I find little comfort in the fact that AOC has not called for an assassination when she also hasn’t called out those who have done so. Nor has she said a single word about the attacks on Tesla dealerships or the harassment of people who own Tesla vehicles. To me, this is a deafening silence signaling that while they’re unwilling to be brave enough to call for violence, they’re perfectly fine with violence happening.
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I don’t know how much of this matters coming from a repugnant blue-triber, but this level of nihilistic fatalism deeply saddens me. I have spent much, much more time arguing against the excesses and abuses of “my team” than I have spent opposing yours. The antifa apologetics, calls for violence against Trump and Musk, the Covid-era abuses of institutional power—all of it deeply disgusts me.
But I don’t believe collapse is inevitable. I don’t believe that a national divorce—whatever that might entail—is the way forward. After all, we live in a society whose socio-political dynamics ultimately flow from individual choices. The Constitution will die only if we kill it. This country has survived much worse.
I’m encouraged by more and more blue tribers openly rejecting the poison of identity politics. While TDS definitely was (and is) a real thing, I believe Trump’s enduring electoral successes is resulting in a more moderate, reasonable blue tribe (although there is a long way to go yet). This has been mirrored by what has been, in my opinion, clear excesses on the right—either in MAGA’s jubilant vindictiveness or in the fatalism exhibited by your post. Even though this also concerns me, I believe that this too will eventually temper and mature, but only if we don’t give in to the destructive impulses of the worst on our side nor feed those of the other. The Constitution’s survival depends on citizens demanding its enforcement; tribal coexistence requires rejecting the premise that opponents are inhuman. To paraphrase Madison in Federalist 10: The cure for factionalism is not homogeneity but pluralism managed through structured conflict.
The path forward is neither blind optimism nor radical dissolution but clear-eyed engagement. If the Constitution is “dead,” it is because we’ve ceased resuscitating it—not because it lacks the capacity to endure.
This is, in as much as it is happening, a temporary tactical maneuver. It seems likely the Democrats will obtain control of the House in 2026 and probably the whole enchilada in 2028, and identity politics will come roaring back, perhaps to the dismay of the purple-suburb voters who thought it was gone.
Blue Tribe has, due to its control of the institutions, a significant structural advantage in this conflict. It can delay and outlast any temporary political victory on the part of Red, and get right back to the program. And most of the country (including many who voted for Trump) find this legitimate.
Yes I think people seriously under estimate the long run implications of how we indoctrinated millions of people, mostly women, from kindergarten through university, law school; medical school, on and on; to be completely devoted to the progressive racial, sexual and transgender radical political ideologies. Combine that with white demographic decline more broadly and you have recipes for Bolshevik revolutions multiple times over
Not exactly. Recipe for Bolshevik revolution is poverty, hunger and unpopular war that is not going well.
Maybe around 2030 in MegaBlackPill timeline, when US casualties in Iran and Yemen get to six figures, while economy crashes and both man made and climate change caused disasters hit major food exporting areas of the world simultaneously you might have a chance to see something.
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I think you're underestimating the capability for current trends to get scrambled; we live in Interesting Times.
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It's kind of a "Dozens of us!" thing, but some privacy-conscious people carry a passport card, in addition to a driver's license (or in place of a state-issued non-license ID, for those without a license that can be used as government-issued-ID), because they don't list your home address.
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It's not the illegals that I'm talking about, it's the legals. Are you saying that I, as a citizen, can be detained by ICE if I get stopped, given that I don't carry around my certificate or naturalization or my passport?
In theory. In practice ICE officers would need evidence of illegality to be willing to arrest a white person and will almost always be satisfied with a drivers license.
They also only randomly stop people near borders or during raids(usually on workplaces).
That's good for white people but some of my best (citizen) friends are not white and I'd be pretty upset if they got harassed by ICE. It seems that such harassment would be fully within the law.
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Sure. The funny thing is there a whole lot of Amish, Mennonites and other off-the-grid communities that don't generally bother to get birth certificates - or any other government documents. They would have a hard time formally proving their status.
They almost always have a large community vouching for each other, but that's pretty informal evidence...
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From what you've quoted and a certain other line in the article, this stop doesn't seem entirely random.
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In areas near the border they have border patrol checkpoints where you have to stop the car and roll-down the window to talk to someone. I’ve never had any issues whatsoever, but I’ve also never been through one with somebody who has a strong Mexican accent.
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