In response to Joseph Reisert's article about Real ID driver's licenses: A Real ID driver's license would be required to enter an airport, board a plane or enter a federal building. If, rather than have a Real ID license, I decide not to enter an airport, board an airplane or enter a federal building, why do I need a Real ID driver's license to drive a car?

Ah, because an ordinary driver's license in Corporate America is used to cash checks, which are used to buy groceries and other merchandise and to pay bills for electricity, TV and telephones -- in short, checks make up the entire fabric of the corporate state.

If everyone had a Real ID, everything about a citizen could be fed into a database describing the person's income, purchases, reading habits, job description, medical records. A GPS profile could be made showing where that citizen is on the planet at any given time. A Real ID driver's license is really a surveillance card.

What Reisert seems to be saying is that to have our military empire, financed by the corporate state, we must give up freedom as a political institution and accept the fact that war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Not to mention the tautology that surveillance is security.

Bob Doel

Vassalboro