For some odd reason, we (people, all people) like to make a thing or a big deal out of nothing.

Or take a small, blip on the radar and make it a gigantic, colossal, world changing, everyone must know, throw it in your face happening.

Or we take an actual national or worldwide adventure or emergency and create sub issues we would be perfectly content if they didn’t exist.

I could write an extremely long list of news events or cultural changing events that really didn’t have to be, but between media, organizations, churches, businesses, and every other listable group or individual (all of us have been guilty at some point), it is pushed, thought into existence, and suffocated into life.

Here is another one…the Real ID.

In 2001, the September 11 (9-11) terrorist attack occurred which will rightfully go down as one of those events everyone remembers where they were at, how old they were, how it affected our country, how the tragedy bonded Americans from coast to coast, and how laws were put into place shortly after to protect us from a similar attack ever happening again.

Those should have happened. We were rightfully scared. It was a legit life changing moment, a societal changing moment.

For the most part.

In 2005 (four years after the attack), the REAL ID Act was established as another post 9-11 security measure. A Real ID is a card that looks the exact same as a driver’s license, except there is an additional star.

Without the card, an individual can’t board a plane, enter certain federal facilities, or nuclear power plants.

But without the card, since 9-11, since 2005, since forever, everyone with an “ordinary” state identification card, a driver’s license, or a passport could enter federal facilities and nuclear power plants, and board a plane to any destination.

Besides a massive terrorist attack that could unfortunately still happen to this very day, or tomorrow, the world has gone on, moved forward, without a star on a card.

We legally have to wear seat belts as a passenger in a car. People still die in car accidents. I’ve seen a video where someone was almost decapitated because of wearing a seat belt.

Motorcyclist in certain states, not Illinois, legally have to wear helmets. Riders still die in accidents.

In some instances, hopefully more than not, the safety precautions or amended laws are useful and do what they’re supposed to do, but there isn’t a 100 percent rate on any of them. Things still happen.

What is the big difference between a driver’s license or a state ID and a Real ID. A star? The fact you have to use a birth certificate to obtain the Real ID?

I bet if someone wanted a fake Real ID they could create a fake birth certificate. The same way people have created fake driver’s license and any other identification card or paperwork that has been illegally created before.

If a Real ID is so important, why was it created four years after the event it was created for? Whey is the deadline for the Real ID to come into effect in 2025? I don’t math the greatest, but that is 24 years after 9-11 and 20 years after the act was acted.

The answer is easy, it’s not important.

It’s just another made up, created out of angst or panic idea that we could do without. Instead of doing without, it’s put into existence, and we’re forced to move with the hoops of the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, dig up paperwork and documents, take time out of our day or week, sit in lines at a DMV with office members who don’t want to make the cards, spend money, and pretend having a Real ID is protecting our lives.