The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
on privatisation of the U.S. post office

Would-be gatekeepers and trammelers of untrammeled civic discourse probably remember somewhere in the backs of their minds that, before the days of the internet["s"], unauthorized ideas and subversive writings were more commonly spread by means of the mails. Crackdown on the e- should logically soon entail crackdown on the snail-, should it not? Or if not crackdown, at least confounding of the medium's usefulness and democratizing potential by a plan to give it over to rule by the forces of breakup, redistribution via cronyism, wastefulness and incompetence (cf. Medicare Part D, FEMA, NOLA rebuliding, Social Security, NCLB (.pdf), the military and procurement, homeland security, etc.).

In disagreement with an idea that no doubt continues to circulate at a barely subterranean level, a very nice 1999 opinion piece in praise of the post office -- from the National Review -- is one that I was pleased recently to discover.

Long live the spirits of Eudora Welty and Ray Johnson.

posted by TiR at 7:11 AM