Department of Priorities

I didn’t realize that yesterday was REAL ID D-Day in airports. Except it wasn’t really, because nobody was paying attention and hardly anybody has a REAL ID. So the government backed down and let the deadline slide….which they’ve been doing since 2008….since nobody had one back then either.

Because getting a REAL ID requires ANOTHER trip to the DMV, and the average American would rather have a colonoscopy without anesthesia than visit a DMV. The DMV is hell on earth. It’s Wal-Mart without the distraction of being able to buy something cheap from China. It’s a place staffed with bureaucratic cyborgs. I cannot imagine the damaged soul of a person who has to wake up and face an 8 hour shift at a DMV. The amount of tears in the morning shower would overwhelm the drain. Staff look exhausted. Years and years of forced frivolity takes a toll. It’s like being asked to herd cats. Or manage a gulag.

At the same time, they become unflusterable (if that’s not a word…it is now). Our whining and histrionics is muzak-in-the-elevator to the ears of a DMV employee. They have seen and heard it all. Their level of not giving a shit about your bad day is off the scale. Move along, son.

Nobody LOOKS normal inside a DMV. Everybody looks like they just broke out of prison. I feel normal until I enter one, and after 5 minutes I am completely dead inside and capable of all sorts of anti-social behavior. By then I’m sure I don’t look normal either. My eyes glaze over and my head lolls back and forth like it’s only being held on its axis with a stick. Everybody’s screws loosen. But at least I am not wearing flip-flops and pajama pants. Not that one should dress up to visit the DMV. But I feel like flip-flops and pajama pants say more about a person than the person realizes. It says….”since I do not care enough about myself to actually dress myself…..I also do not care enough about you to not shank you if the mood strikes me…” If aforementioned hell is actually a real place, it probably resembles a DMV. You walk in, take a number, and suffer the consequences of living in a nation that has not figured out how to do simple things simply.

There are still people who walk in and don’t know they need to TAKE a number, and end up sitting there (or more likely standing against the back wall, since there are never enough chairs) for 20 minutes before they realize their error. And it’s not exactly the Three Musketeers vibe in a DMV. People instantly go into survival mode. Everybody is on their own. Anybody dropping dead in a DMV will probably have their ticket stolen before anybody made a phone call.

You can tell the DMV all-stars. They are the ones who instantly know how much time they have to leave and come back and not lose their spot in line. They can shop, or go to the bar, or go sun themselves in the grass outside. Such is their grizzled confidence. Seeing somebody walk in the door, fresh as a daisy, and then having their number called minutes later, to the murmured consternation of the room, is the sort of magic power I wish I had. I’m so paranoid that I’m afraid to go to the bathroom for fear that Trump will sign an executive order that forces them to start counting backwards and I’ll miss my turn.

And if you do miss your turn? All that’s left is the walk of shame back to the ticket dispenser.

The REAL ID is a product of 9/11, and intentions were probably noble enough at the time. But giving the government yet another set of our vitals started making about as much sense as still being forced to remove our fucking shoes because some guy with the IQ of a barn door, convinced he was about to get laid by 100 virgins, managed to strike a match on the bottom of his sandals inside a plane. My driver’s license is going to be handed over to me by the SAME person who is going to give me my REAL ID. Smiling for the same camera TWICE is going to make us more safe? THIS is what you’re worried about? While Newark Airport, one of the busiest in the world, completely lost its ability to communicate with its own incoming and outgoing traffic?

What this nation really needs is not DOGE, it’s a Department of Priorities, and it needs to be staffed by people who do not wear flip-flops and pajama pants.

In a bit…

—tf