De Bom

A cat burglar he's not:

A Sachse man was sentenced to more than eight years in federal prison today for attempting to rob a Dallas bank with a "bom" in a fast-food restaurant bag.

Pugh handed a teller a note when the teller asked him how much he wanted to withdraw. The note had this message:

“Look if you don’t want to die then you should do as this note says. This is not a bag of food. This is a bom, so just put money in an envelope and do not make any move till after I have left for ten mintis.”

The calm teller then demanded two pieces of identification from Pugh, according to the documents. Pugh showed her his Wells Fargo debit card and a Texas identification card with his name on it.

Dummy? Yeah, obviously. He was on parole for two prior convictions of attempted robbery. I'd say it's time for him to find a new career, but with the previous sentences reinstated, we will be feeding, housing, and entertaining him until he dies of old age. Great.

But there's something else here, I believe: this incident shows how conditioned our society has become to identifying ourselves on demand. Not a day of your life goes by (unless you don't leave the house) that you don't have to "prove" to someone that you're who you claim to be. Bom-boy was just following the social instinct that has been ingrained into him over decades of living in modern America. When somebody asks for I.D., people yank it out without thinking -- even when committing a crime, apparently.