LF: The Textalyzer

Yes, really.

They are working on a gadget that can tell the polizei whether you’ve been texting while driving.

For your saaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety – as depressingly always.

An Israeli company called Cellebrite – which sounds like the latest “ask your doctor about” pill to cure your ills – has ginned up this altogether different pill. Real-time and probable cause-free dragnet monitoring of people’s cell phone use and driving, so as to roust people who dare to ignore no-texting-while-driving statutes.

Automatically, furtively. Everyone. The cops in collusion with your sail fawn “provider,” as they are styled. You won’t know – until they let you know they know.

A police state technology from a police state country – what a surprise.

The Textalyzer would work in much the same way as a Breathalyzer does except it would be in your car and on all the time instead of by the side of the road – and with a cop demanding that you blow into the thing.

No checkpoints necessary. They’ll just check on you all the time – without you even having to slow down. Think of the manpower it will save. Think of the revenue it will generate!

Think of the fear it will impart. Which of course is just the point.

Like Santa – but not jolly at all – they will know, so to speak, when you are sleeping and know when you’re awake…

(And there is wonder why people – especially the young – are growing weary of cars and of driving. I stopped flying for very similar reasons; if I am going to be processed like a convicted felon I want to be convicted of a felony first.)

New York – the first American state to become a Safety State, the first state to depart from the usual practice – in free countries – of restraining people from harming others but otherwise not pestering them to restraining them from potentially harming themselves via mandatory “buckle up” (or else) and helmet laws – is “reviewing” possible (read: certain) implementation of the Textalyzer.

Bet your Bippie.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo – this is the guy who also supported outlawing sodas over a certain size – finger wags that “despite laws (that) ban cellphone use while driving, some motorists still continue to insist ion texting behind the wheel . . .”

Oh, the humanity.

They also some of them drive unbuckled and maybe have a beer with their dinner before heading home. Cue conniption fit.

The particularly creepy thing about the Textalyzer, though, is that it goes beyond merely Big Momma buckle-up and helmet laws, which can still be evaded – and should be, since they are affronts to freedom. If we are not free to assume risks for ourselves, we are essentially minor children who will never reach the age of 18 and assume adulthood.

Cue Cuomo – who very much wants to parent us all. And all the time. That is the difference here.

Textalzyer is exactly like having a cop riding in the passenger seat, observing your every move. Worse, actually – because you think you’re alone in your car but you’re not. That sail fawn in your pocket is narcing on you, in real time all the time.

It is as if everyone voluntarily agreed to wear an ankle bracelet, like the ones they affix to minor criminals who are given supervised release. That’s what carrying a sail fawn on you amounts to. Even if it’s off, by the way. Did you know that?

But texting while driving is dangerous!

Sigh.

When done by some people, yes. Maybe. Sometimes. But others are capable of doing it without it necessarily being dangerous. A fact of the same species as the fact that some people have better eyesight and physical coordination than others. And that some people are simply better drivers than others.

Equality of abilities is nonsense.

Americans have lost sight of such facts – or just don’t care about them anymore. Everything becomes a one-size-fits-all jihad, based on the least common denominator.

If an appallingly bad driver can’t safely negotiate a curve in the road at 35 MPH it becomes illegal “speeding” to take the corner any faster – for everyone. Including those who can negotiate the curve more safely – being in more control of their car – at 45 MPH.

If an enfeebled, glaucomic old lady can’t judge the distance and speed of oncoming traffic at an intersection, right-on-red becomes illegal for everyone – including those who are not enfeebled and who can see and correctly estimate the distance/speed of oncoming traffic and make a right on red without imperiling anyone’s “safety.”

Instead of separating the wheat from the chaff, everyone is presumed chaff.

It is a recipe for Idiocracy – the real thing predicted by the ’90s movie.

And, for tyranny.

A working definition of which is the persecution of people who’ve done nothing except transgress a statute.

This is now the main reason people are hassled, corralled, monitored, controlled and – increasingly -punished. Not for anything they’ve done to cause harm but because a nervous ninny worries they might – that worry having become The Law.

Our freedoms are so easily surrendered.

And for what? The idea that, somehow, we will be perfectly protected and perfectly safe – provided we exchange the risk that something bad might happen for the certainty that it will.

Apparently, the writer was too stupid to understand the point of Idiocracy which was that the stupid were destined to vastly overpopulate the earth as the people of intelligence failed to keep up and were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of idiots.