You may have that friend with the III% decal and always complaining we live in a Police Society. I have a couple…. or should say had. They don’t wanna talk to me anymore because I have called their bullshit because they really do not know what is to live in a Police State.
I was cleaning a box with business and other cards (I still have an MCI Phone Card!) and bumped into this:
That is my Venezuelan Driver’s License and Medical Certificate to Drive. They are useless. They have not been used in over 20 years, yet there was a twinge of panic when I thought about putting them through the shredder. Not nostalgia for old times but the fear I may need them in the future, I won’t have them and I will have to pay “mordida” for it or they will take my car. Yes, it is the dumbest of thoughts, but it is the shit that is ingrained in your psyche when you truly live in a Police State.
So what am I gonna do with them? Well what any normal Venezuelan will do in a situation like this: Put them in the safe with the Cedula (National ID) and the Passport also expired to hell, useless but the embedded panic won’t allow you to get rid of them.
The business about being able to present ID at all times upon demand from any official is true in many countries. That includes countries that many think of as “free” like the countries of western Europe.
In Holland, mandatory ID laws were able to be defeated for many years by hollering “Ausweis!” (German for “your ID!” and specifically a reference to the Nazi occupation). That stopped working in 2005, and now anyone over 14 has to show ID on demand on penalty of arrest and a $100 fine. I suspect there may have been EU pressures involved in this, though Wikipedia does not say.