This morning, a friend of mine who is a top executive with the Postal Service forwarded me a column about a 'Tea Party' demonstration in which a mailman named 'Mo' was more or less harrassed, while trying to do his job.
Here's an excerpt from it:
He wound his way through the crowd to the mailbox, saying "excuse me" and "I'm just trying to do my job" as he tried to get through the mass of people. He noticed that a lot of people would see him and immediately look away. Others did not acknowledge his presence and refused to move out of his way.
As he tried to get to the mailbox, people stood in his way. He told the crowd, "I've got a job to do here." People still didn't move. One woman screeched at him -- screeched was Mo's word -- "Nobody's stopping you."
Mo replied, "Oh yes you are."
A man blocking Mo's access to the mailbox shouted at him, "You don't have a job. You work for the government."
Let's pause for a moment to examine that statement. OK, done? Nope, I don't get it either.
At this point, Mo was getting kind of frustrated and asked the guy, "What is your problem?"
See, all due respect, but that's the wrong question. A lot of people have been asking that question, and the answer never makes much sense. These people seem very angry about something.
The guy answered, "I don't have a problem. You're the problem. The government."
None of that was surprising to me, until I received a second e-mail from an obvious skeptic, whom I remember being a big Bush supporter who thought you had "forgotten 9/11," if you were against that war, and who also worked for the Postal Service for many years--as a management negotiator, in dealing with (read: against) its unions.
Needless to say, she had an entirely different take on it.
"I don't believe a word of it. Think about it!" she wrote.
That got me to thinking. We've disagreed in the past, but I nonetheless have great affection for her, so I wrote her back.
Maybe I got carried away. Here is what I wrote:
You may not believe a word of it, just like you don't believe anybody spit on this congressman, or called that one the "n" word, or Barney Frank a fa&&ot, or anything else you haven't seen with your own eyes.
Maybe you don't even believe there was a moon landing, now.
That is your right.
But the rest of us, here on Planet America, choose to support our government and our social services, because we realize that without them, we'd have anarchy.
ABC's Nightline (I know, "lamestream media") surveyed all the "militiamen" in Idaho, and found that nearly 80% were unemployed, and 70% were on Unemployment Insurance! Their defense? "It's insurance, not welfare."
Uh huh.
So let me get this straight: In Tea World, we want to kill the government that pays us!
And I don't know about any of you, but my tax return--and my weekly take-home pay--reflect the largest tax cuts I've experienced in decades. Under George Bush, I got one $300 check.
The other night, Bill O'Reilly took Republican Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to task for "lying" about Fox News. O'Reilly said his "researchers" had "looked into it," and "couldn't find a single instance, not one time" when anybody on Fox had said people "would be thrown in jail, if they didn't get health insurance" under Obama's new reforms.
"So that's settled," he harumphed, "You were wrong, on that. Now, on some folks at Fox and other places demonizing Nancy Pelosi, maybe you've got a point."
Unfortunately, though...there have now surfaced around ten seperate times when Beck, Hannity, Dick Morris, and yes, O'Reilly himself actually DID say that "folks will be arrested" if they don't buy health insurance.
Here's the problem with the right wingnuts: Unless you prove it, they won't believe it.
And WHEN you prove it, they still won't believe it.
So, can I prove this incident ever happened, with the mailman?
Bear with me while I continue...
Obama gets elected. But suddenly, he's not even born here, so it can't be legit!
Some guy is actually refusing his deployment to Afghanistan, based upon the legal claim that Obama cannot be his Commander in Chief...since he wasn't born here.
There's definitely a pattern emerging.
A group of people in the area picked up on that and, pointing at Mo, started chanting, "You're the problem. The government."
I advised Mo that perhaps he should have told them, "I'm not the government; I'm the postal service." Or, he could have said, "Be nice. We're the people who deliver your Social Security checks."
He did neither. Instead, he made his way to the mailbox and began collecting the mail.
One letter blew out of the box and onto the sidewalk. When Mo went to pick it up, a man standing by the mailbox stood on the letter, ignoring Mo's request to move his foot so he could get the letter. Mo finally was able to wrench the letter away.
As he started back to his truck, people in the crowd tried to get in his way. One person did say, "Have a nice day" as he walked away.
Essentially the same thing happened to Clinton, with Paula Jones. From the day it became apparent he'd be elected--and re-elected, the Republicans sought not just to oppose him through normal means, but to remove him from office.
Recently, health care reform was passed in both Houses of Congress, as prescribed by the Constitution the right so fiercely insists they wish to defend...and yet...even after fair votes, representing every single district, in every single corner of this nation were completed-- Fox, Limbaugh and others claim the result was "illegtimate," and "does not reflect the will of the American people."
Really?
Under precisely what system of democracy do you live?
The 'Fox/Rasmussen Poll' system???
See, in America, we have only one poll that actually counts. And that is when we elect people, and then they vote for us. Not by polls...but by conscience. Which is what we elect them to do.
The truth is simple and all too obvious: Republicans are SORE LOSERS.
Any time they do not get their way, they attempt to tear down the very country itself.
They were FOR bailouts to Wall Street, until we joined them in that pursuit.
They were FOR huge national deficits, until Democrats took office.
Health care passes BOTH HOUSES of the American Congress--but it's somehow not what the people really wanted.
Gee...really?
Now, as angry white people form "Tea Party" demonstrations on Tax Day, you'll see a hundred **VERY TIGHT** shots of these demonstrations, on Fox News, tonight--carefully cropped, to avoid showing how small they actually are. If 5,000 people show up in DC, it'll be called "tens of thousands," and--as Hannity has proven he'll do, before--they'll simply splice in old footage, if it serves their narrative.
Let's see now.
Do I believe that this postal worker was dissed?
Hmmmm.
Think about this, for a moment:
I have traveled the world for a living, for 26 years. I have used mail services from nearly every major country in existence, and have yet to find a better run, cheaper, more efficient service than our own.
Some of you here are intimately familiar with the slandering of our Postal Service, and just how unfair and inaccurate that can be.
It hurts, doesn't it.
But most Americans--from late night comics to average Joes--delight in mocking our supposedly lousy service.
It's almost like a national sport!
Why do you suppose that is?
I'll tell you why:
Because every day, on every single talk show that ever mentions "government," or "the mail," or the "Postal Service", the host of that show will proffer single view: That it all SUCKS.
His mission is to make you believe that these things are the Devil Incarnate.
Unfair, right?
Inaccurate...yes??
I agree.
But even as you concur on this point, do you stil somehow refuse to believe that a populus so inundated with anti-government, right-wing propoganda could never obstruct a mailman, at an anti-government demonstration?
Is this another "show me" situation?
Nobody ever sent threatening letters to Pelosi? Shumer? Frank? 10 others??
Nobody ever used he "N" word at a Tea Party demonstration, even though we've seen the Hitler/Obama posters they carry?
And now...nobody kept their foot on a letter, taunting the mailman, during an angry demonstration?
I'll grant you this:
It could've happened; it could've not happened.
But the overall antics these mobs are up to are far more onerous:
They hate any America that's not totally white, far right, and a twisted tribute to the past they think they remember, but never was.
You gotta love all these folks who say, "My parents worked so hard, and never took a dime from the government!"
Oh really? That was the "Greatest Generation," wasn't it? You mean the ones whose "GI Bill" represented the greatest single housing giveaway in the history of government giveaways...and gave ALL of our families the head start we so badly needed, after WWII?
You mean the biggest government bailout in history...which drove 50 years of prosperity in our lives?
Oh, I guess that doesn't count.
In "Reagan World" (which is akin to Bizarro World, for you Superman fans), "Big Gub'mint isn't the solution, it's the problem!" Great applause line, from a B- list actor...but it's virtually destroyed our nation, ever since.
Taxes bad! Unions bad! Gubmint bad!
Guess what, nostalgia buffs:
When we grew up, nobody ever had to hold a "Bake Sale," for basic school supplies. Public Education was respected, and adequately funded--and if the city or the state or the Feds needed more money to do it, they raised your taxes. And while folks complained about it (as they always have), nobody adopted the kind of "Who cares about the future, cut my taxes!" attitude we've had, ever since the '80s.
That is the perfect metaphor for America today.
If you want to see modern bridges, folks...google "Hong Kong bridges" --and while you're at it, try "Shanghai skyline."
They're a full 50 years ahead of anything we have, and that's no lie.
This country is in serious decline, as a direct result of a 'Reagan World' populus, who hates its own government enough NOT to fund it..and then wonders why nothing gets done!
It blows my mind, to see O'Reilly on the air talking about California going broke, yet never mentioning the fact that tax cuts from the "conservative philosophy" are precisely what's strangling our governments and suffocating our infrastructure, our roads, our schools, and our future.
If the Postal Service did what it SHOULD do, and made the cost of delivering a letter a dollar, their problems would be solved...and then some. But GUESS WHO would scream the loudest!
Would it be liberals? Reasonable people, who realize the ground has shifted under our mail system?
Not hardly.
It would be one big, fat, white "Tea Party."
Frankly, most of us mail,so many fewer bills that such a price hike would hardly even be felt, except at Christmas time. Bu in a "me, me, me" world of anti-government, anti-funding, anti-everything...that'll never happen.
So instead, let's continue to close post offices, close schools, cut government agencies, and watch everything decay until it falls apart just like that bridge, shall we?
What a great party.
So we obstruct the mailman. We laugh, about the lousy Postal Service. Ha, ha.
We pay our bills online, that much you can all agree with me about.
We even go to UPS, because "private enterprise is better than a Big Gub'mint agency, even if it's inependent."
I 'll bet you're wondering now...did it really happen, this blocking of a mailman?
I don't know.
But I do know this:
The other morning, a man in his UPS uniform walked into my Post Office, right in front of me, and mailed a whole lotta UPS packages. Packages people THINK are going UPS, and that they paid higher UPS rates for...but that will be delivered faster, quicker, and for much cheaper than UPS could do...by the unionized Post Office.
Who can figure out what's a lie, about these demonstrating morons, having a 'Tea Party' that rails against our government and everything associated with it?
We don't have time for that. We're too busy paying "private enterprise" twice the fare, to ship our gun parts to our fellow militiamen, who are on unemployment.
Seems some of us just like to lie to ourselves...a lot.
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Copyright 2010 by Peter Rodman. All Rights Reserved.
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