🛑 WARNING: THIS RANT CONTAINS DANGEROUS LEVELS OF TRUTH. SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE CRITICAL THINKING, EXISTENTIAL DREAD, AND A STRONG URGE TO QUESTION AUTHORITY. CONSULT YOUR CONSCIENCE BEFORE PROCEEDING. 🛑
Let’s take a little drive, shall we?
You’re on your way home. Seatbelt on. Blinkers working. Maybe you did coast a little on that stop sign—but nothing crazy. Nothing worthy of anything more than a raised eyebrow and a “hey, be careful.”
But this time, the cop’s not just running your plate for a chuckle.
He comes back and says, “Huh. Funny thing—your car’s not registered.”
You say, “Sure it is. It’s in my name. Been mine since college. Here's the paperwork.”
Cop squints. Calls it in again. Still nothing in the system.
You hand over your license. Clean, current, up to date.
“Sir, this ID appears to be counterfeit.”
You blink. “What?”
“Your name’s not coming up. Not in DMV, not in Homeland Security. Nothing.”
You pull out your passport card. Same name. Same face. Born and raised in Tucson, fourth generation.
“Fake,” the cop says. “Calling ICE.”
And before you can say “I’ve got a right to a phone call,” you’re in a van with no windows, on your way to a detention center run by a contractor whose only qualification is maximizing shareholder value.
Because here’s the kicker: your name was erased.
From the system.
From the record.
From the digital panopticon that’s supposed to hold the truth of who you are.
Why?
Because your last name was García. Or Hernández. Or Villanueva.
And someone upstairs decided those were suspect.
And in a beautiful, centralized, ultra-efficient government mega-database of everything—the same one that links your taxes, your Social Security, your health records, your TSA clearance, your credit score, and probably your porn preferences—all it takes is one delete key.
One click.
One glitch.
One policy directive from someone who thinks “assimilation” means learning to make potato salad.
You are now a non-person.
A ghost in the machine.
Good luck proving you're not “illegally present” when the machine says you don’t exist.
This is not some Black Mirror fever dream. This is what happens when “efficiency” meets authoritarianism—with a dash of xenophobia, a pinch of privatized prisons, and a good ol’ scoop of “just following orders.”
And don’t think you’re safe just because your last name is McAllister or Kowalski or Chen.
Because the second a government gets used to erasing people digitally, it’s only a matter of time before they start doing it physically.
One click at a time.
Welcome to the database state. Hope you remembered to back yourself up.
