Show Me Your Papers

I grew up in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and in those days my favorite movies, and there were many of them, were horror shows about Nazi Germany, where the dreaded, slimy, lethal Gestapo hyena would stop the underground resistance fighter at the checkpoint. The resistance fighter  was helping the American flyer to escape and the Gestapo goon would ask her, in the most sinister tones, "Und vear are your papers?"  or sometimes, if he was really creepy, he would be all polite, "Und, may I please zee yoah papers?" And your blood would run cold.  You just knew the jig was up, unless the forgers were really good. Then the pretty resistance fighter would try to work her feminine wiles on him, while he was examining the all important papers, trying to distract him, and you were sitting there watching, hoping he would not look too closely.


I have never been clear exactly what constitutes fascism, but, on an emotional level, for me, this was one of its necessary if not sufficient component of a nightmare state, the state where you had to carry your "papers."


Apparently, in Nazi Germany, you had to carry with you an identity card, (like a driver's license), even if you were in your own village or close to it, and to travel on a railroad or any significant distance from your village, you needed special "papers" which had to be "in order." So the government controlled where you could be and defined who was legitimate and anyone discovered to not have proper government papers was likely to wind up in some jail, prison or concentration camp, at least for a while.


I shuddered to think what it must be like to live in such a dystopia, such a menacing society--which was a special nightmare for me because I was always losing things, forgetting homework, or a textbook or some object. I knew I could never keep track of the all important "papers."  That's one reason I still hate traveling outside the USA--when you go to Europe you better have your passport, your papers. And in Italy once, the hotel people collected our passports to hand over to the local police, in Rome. Made me very nervous.


Now we have it here, courtesy of the Supreme Court's ruling today on the Arizona law.  And, of course, if you are arrested for not having your papers to prove you are a legitimate US citizen, you can get hauled off to jail and stripped searched.


So how has this happened in the land of the free and the home of the brave?


I suppose it's just that everyone believes this will never happen to me, only to them.


And we don't care much about "them" any more.


Thanks Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy. Thanks for making dreams come true.  Was there ever a star chamber court in the Spanish Inquistion which had more power or more willfulness to impose discipline on a nation?