It is the federally pushed replacement for the state-issued driver's license you're required to get if you wish to be able to cash a check or buy cough syrup – and also, of course, to be allowed to operate your motor vehicle on the government's roads. Our onetime right to use the public roads having gone the way of our right to keep what we earn.

The driver's license is of course an ID already. Just not REAL enough, apparently. They want more identification. Because – apparently – the state-issued ID isn't "real" enough (for them).

Of course, the ID they've been requiring us to get for decades to be allowed to buy cough syrup or cash a check (and incidentally to be allowed to drive on the government's roads)  is already pretty real – in the ghetto-English usage. The photo they took of you is probably a face scan that can be (and will) be used by facial recognition systems and there is a bar code (and probably an RFID transmitter locater device of some kind built into it, too.

They really want a way to track your movements and activities in other words.

What that has to do with driving is difficult to divine.

Anyhow, it is still possible to avoid getting this really REAL ID – which you may wish not to get as a protest measure against the creeping biometricism they're pushing on us, my neologism for the push by the government-corporate nexus to herd us into their real-time databases via fingerprints, facial recognition and other biological identifiers. This is being pushed chiefly in order to make anonymity a thing of the past. They do not want to know it's really us so much as they really want to know everything we do, the moment we do it. They want to know, particularly, every last detail of every transaction we make, this being the prelude to and also the foundational component of the digital monetary system they envision.

They really want to do this – by tying everything together in one ID that is much more than just that.

You can still avoid the REAL ID – for now – in some states.

My state – VA – is one such though probably not for much longer given the Spanbergering that occurred last November. Just as it will shortly be impossible to legally buy "assault" rifles in Virginia, so also it is likely Virginians will soon be required to get the really REAL ID. The window is closing, in other words. That's why I decided to renew my driver's license now instead of come November, when my current one's validity expires.

Naturally I will be punished for this.

The punishments – plural – include not being allowed to travel by air and being barred from certain places that require a really REAL ID to enter. These punishments will of course be increased as time goes on, to prod the recalcitrant cattle into compliance.