Part One:
We speak with Steve Hutkins, a retired NYU English professor who, in 2011, began editing Save the Post Office. As Donald Trump and the mega-donor whom he appointed to run the US Postal Service (DeJoie) continue taking action to subvert and destroy the Postal Service, people all across America are speaking up to defend this iconic American institution which has existed since before the Revolution. Especially in small and rural communities, the Post Office has not only delivered our mail but has also been a focal point that binds communities together.
Republican politicians have been trying for decades to dismantle and *privatize* the USPS. Their donors — Wall Street brokers and corporate moguls — have been anxiously seeking opportunities to take over delivering the mail so that their stockholders and executives could rake in the profits of this trillion-dollar-a-year business. Even before COVID and DeJoie, Republicans have forced USPS onto a cost-reduction program with a goal of down-sizing the postal service. They prevented government workers at USPS from doing jobs that the private sector could do. So a lot of jobs have been outsourced, contracted out to the private sector.
Republicans also imposed burdens on USPS that private businesses or even other govt agencies do not have to carry. For example, Congress forced the USPS to put billions into a trust – up front – to save until the funds are needed (decades in the future) to pay pensions for postal employees who are now working. No other entity (for-profit or non-profit) has this burden.
With DeJoie, the Trump administration has adopted rules to make the Postal Service appear to be a failure, so they can criticize and mock USPS’s supposed ineptness. They have removed and destroyed many (very expensive) sorting machines, which had been operating well to ensure that our mail gets sorted efficiently. They have ripped up and tossed out mailboxes from their ubiquitous locations where people can easily find them, causing confusion and frustration.
Why are they taking these drastic and unhelpful actions? Trump is, of course, trying to get reelected and he views absentee ballots (often delivered by mail) to be more heavily Democratic. But over the long term and over a broad range of govt programs, Republicans don’t like successful government entities. And of course there is a profit to be made by corporations – like the one DeJoie used to run – which might get the opportunity to take over USPS’s customers. For whatever reason, Republicans have been looking for “reasons” to rationalize the dismantling of the Postal Service, and the American public is the worse off for it.
Part Two:
We speak with John Nichols, who writes for The Nation, The Progressive, and In These Times, about the exploding crises in our country. It’s not news that Trump has been minimizing the real dangers threatened by the pandemic. And now his chickens have come home to roost: He has contracted COVID-19 and it appears that his case is quite serious. We wish the president a full and speedy recovery, but we are concerned that his risk factors could portend even more serious consequences for him and for the country.
Trump may have contracted coronavirus at one of his super-spreader campaign events or at the Rose Garden ceremony where rows of maskless, closely-packed supporters watched him nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Indeed, many of the attendees – including US Senators and high-ranking officials – have now also tested positive for COVID, continuing the public health crisis that began with Trump’s complete failure to confront the pandemic effectively.
Even after being hospitalized, rather than protecting the lives of his medical providers, Secret Service agents and the public, Trump led a caravan on a campaign joy ride while suffering from full-blown serious infectious illness. After performing that bit of political theater, and after jeopardizing the lives of front-line workers who are already exhausted (and still have to serve all their other patients), the president is returning “home” to the White House (against the recommen-dations of almost every competent doctor in America), where of course he will continue to have at his disposal some of the best medical care on earth.
And how does he interpret his predicament? In his usual upside-down way: He tweets that his experience has taught him that people don’t really have to worry about COVID. Just like with the flu, you get it, you get well soon, and you go home and forget about it. If only that were the true state of medical science!
Trump’s virus-spreading behavior also puts at risk our election season, the one stage of our democracy that Trump and his admin should have exerted every effort to protect. Summer was supposed to be the easy season for coping with the spreading pandemic. With fall, we enter the peak of our election season. People are afraid for their health (and that of their loved ones). They’re uncertain about how much support they will get to vote absentee so they can exercise their precious franchise without getting sick. People’s relationships have been challenged, and so have the communities they live in.
When people are stressed, they get angry, and look for someone to blame. Rather than take responsibility for his own mismanagement, Trump blames the faux causes: the Democrats, immigrants, people of color who are insisting that they not be erased and not be brutalized. Trump blames peaceful protesters exercising their First Amendment rights, the evil “puppet” Joe Biden, and most doctors and scientists.
In the face of Trump’s baseless attacks on him and lying to the public, Joe Biden should not fall into the traps that Trump is trying to set for him, like demonizing Medicare for All as some kind of scary (”socialist”) plot to take away Americans’ health insurance. At the very least, Biden must envision and articulate a health care policy that will enable people to get treatment for the possible continuing effects of the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden should, in general, stop emphasizing the distance between his policy positions and Bernie’s. He should resist buying into Trump’s skillful efforts to convince the American people that they should reject Bernie’s ideas as “socialist” and anti-American. More and more people have begun to recognize that they really would be better off with universal health coverage despite pre-existing conditions; with a high-quality, safe education for their children; and with a robust social safety net if – for one of any number of reasons – they might lose their jobs and find themselves unable to pay their basic living expenses. Many people have also recognized that whatever money they earn through their jobs is insufficient – certainly not *reliably* sufficient – to build a nest-egg so they can retire (with dignity) before their body falls apart, or to pay their household bills if they get seriously ill (much less to help their kids pay for a college education).
So we all just have to take a deep breath, and understand the basic premises of this moment. If Pres. Trump is feeling desperate, then he is scared. And that means he will do anything – literally anything – to get what he wants: to stay in office. We must mobilize to vote and help our fellow Americans to vote. Voting must be safe and all votes must be counted. And *after* election day, we must make sure that all of our voices are heard, that our society works to lift up all of us, even the least among us. And we must say no to violence, bullying, demonizing, and intimidating. We must say no to hate and the diminishment of any human being.
