Fair warning: this post is going to be straight up odd and presume a lot of esoteric knowledge. Please feel free to ask questions. But don't assume I am off my rocker on this one.
I recently started re-reading one of the more controversial books in recent genocide scholarship, IBM and the Holocaust. The book I had read; recent updates in a reissued version I had not.
The US Constitution requires that the executive branch of our government carry out an enumeration, a census, of the population. This data collection is used for many purposes, most notably counting the number of people in the country to correctly apportion seats in the US House of Representatives. The Trump presidency hs proposed to add a question to the census asking about whether the answer is an immigrant. This has all sorts of interesting implications, most notably that immigrant heavy states (such as California) are afraid that fewer people will answer the census and therefore CA's voting power will be reduced. Also, some conservatives protest that we should not be counting non citizens, conveniently forgetting the infamous 3/5ths rule that gave slave states disproportionate voting power to attempt to forestall a Civil War. (It didn't work.)
In 1942, punch card machines designed in the US were cheerfully whirring their way through some interesting problems:
- the manpower needs of the US government in fighting World War II
- the continuing military mobilization of the Nazi German regime
- the consolidation of the Nazi takings in Poland, France and Denmark; specifically, rooting out and rounding up the Jews
- the rounding up and internment of Japanese Americans in the US West
Last but not least, however, according to this book (which is extensively annotated and documented, accepted as solid scholarship by the entire Holocaust community):
- the tracking, enslavement, deaths in custody and ultimate extermination ("evacuation" on trains with only one destination) of the European Jews and any other undesirables, neatly coded in sixteen categories for easy analysis of various efficiencies
The data that made all of this possible was drawn from census data as conducted repeatedly in Germany, once in each conquered territory ... and in the United States in 1940.
I have seen with my own eyes the 1940 census record that was used to intern my father in law and mother in law.
On the German side, every camp had its records department and submitted its data to central punch card analytics. Concentration camp inmates knew they were about to be murdered when their card was retrieved ... when a library gets rid of a book, the book's card in the catalog is pulled.
The technology may be different from place to place and time to time, but the horrifying potential for misuse is the same.
"I am not a number, I am a free man!" cries The Prisoner. "I will not be folded, stamped, numbered, indexed, folded, crimpled, stapled or mutilated!"
Indeed, the opening shots of that TV series show his index card being removed from his employer's files ...
Details matter. In the Rwandan genocide, the state issued identity card had a place for 'race' ... and to have the marking for Tutsi was to join the 800,000 brutally massacred. Machetes are as efficient as gas chambers, only slower ... speaking of inappropriate technology.
Take out your own government issued ID card and look at it. Anything on there you might not like? Or someone else might not like you for? Some states are beginning to offer, as an option, either ''veteran" or "disabled." Something to ponder. Especially as today's option is so easily tomorrow's requirement.
Now reflect on the databases behind the scenes, the modern technologies that make those punch card machines look like beads on strings.
Long, long before we should be amending the Constitution for other reasons, I feel that it is time to get rid of the US Census. It is too powerful a tool to entrust to anyone.
What do you think?
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