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Whig Weeb's avatar

> As a sidenote, where I live in New York I also don’t have to show ID to vote, although you do have to show it when you register. And I’ve always found that a bit weird. There are arguments about people who don’t have IDs and how they might be disenfranchised - but surely this is an argument to make it easier to get an ID rather than an argument against IDs for voting?

Yes, well, that's exactly the problem, is historically state governments in America intentionally made it harder for people to get IDs explicitly to prevent them from voting. In particular this was used to enforce Apartheid, which is why Fascists want to bring it back under the veneer of it being normal and uncontroversial. Rather than trust the government to be responsible with this power Americans have pretty strongly built a consensus in favor of depriving the government of it entirely.

Americans, particularly on the left, just don't trust their government to make IDs easy to get, especially if they have something to gain from denying you one.

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Tom Hitchner's avatar

Great post, thank you! Re “arguments as soldiers,” are you familiar with Julia Galef’s “The Scout Mindset”? She opens with a similar metaphor and argues for using your thoughts as scouts, not soldiers (hence the title).

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