The net cinches just a little tighter.

A REAL ID is a biometric-encoded national ID card issued by the DMV – which stopped issuing driver's  licenses years ago when the latter transitioned into the state-level ID cards one must have in order to be allowed to do essentially anything, such as cash a check or buy a bottle of non-prescription cough syrup. Things that have nothing at all to do with driving.

This tells us that a "driver's license" has to do with driving only in a vestigial sense. One must possess the thing in order to have it when ordered to present the thing to an armed government worker as evidence that you have obtained the state's permission to drive a vehicle on its roads. It is not a certificate of competence to drive.

This distinction is important because it indicates what the "license" actually is.

The REAL ID is something more. The next step.

You used to have to obtain the (cough) driver's license in order to be allowed to drive; now you must have the REAL ID in order to be allowed to fly, even though you aren't flying the airplane.

This distinction is also important.

Why will it no longer be sufficient – come next Spring – to show your "driver's license" ID in order to be allowed to board a commercial flight? For essentially the same reason that people who do not fly commercial do not have to take off their shoes and submit to Obedience Training when they fly private.

Most people do not know about that. When they find out that people who fly private can board an airplane the way everyone used to be able to board an airplane – by just boarding – they begin to wonder why only those who fly commercial must submit to Obedience Training. They were told Obedience Training – styled "security checks" – were necessary to prevent the Evildoers from hijacking another airplane and flying it into a building like they did on Nahhhnlevven.