BWare

Today I went to the new post office for the first time. They closed the branch across the street, so I can’t just walk a block anymore. Now I have to drive a few miles. This is better somehow. And the hours are 9-4, you know, when all of us working stiffs can make it. I don’t use the USPS that much anyway, since their primary function is to deliver junk mail to my recycling bin, with me as the intermediary, same as the guys who go around putting home improvement flyers from contractors on the porch while I’m on a ladder painting the house. [1]

No line, which is good (see “hours” above). The one bored clerk was talking on the phone, so when she got done, I handed her my slim packages through an airlock in the inch of bullet-proof glass. That’s when I noticed the one-inch thick bullet-proof glass. One-inch thick bullet-proof glass? Huh?

Has there been some rash of shootings or bombings at post offices that I haven’t heard about? One that was not perpetrated by the poor souls behind the glass? “Going postal” refers to the post office workers gunning down their co-workers. Not the public.

Really? Armed robbers hitting the post office in the hours between 9-4 to get stamps? Al-queda blowing up Xmas presents?

So why the need for inch-thick bullet-proof glass to protect the nice lady behind the counter? From hard stares about lost packages? [2] [3]

This country has gone literally insane with fear. FDR could not get elected dog catcher. Fear is all there is, everywhere, all the time. Except there’s nothing to be afraid of. Crime is lower than ever. Highway deaths are down. Terrorist attacks are non-existent. Planes don’t crash anymore.

Except maybe, just maybe, the drone spying on you, and the USPS opening your packages and forwarding the contents to the CIA, and the NSA listening to your cell-phone conversations, and the FBI putting warrantless tracking devices on your car, and the library or ISP giving them a list of the books you checked out, or the emails, under an NSL that you’ll never ever know about and have no way to get rescinded. Because they hate our freedoms.

There is evil in the world, but most of it is on the non-citizen side of the bullet-proof glass.

The biggest thing I fear is my government.

And now there’s a ghetto bird circling above the neighborhood. Someone shoplifted from the Big Lots, no doubt. Or shone a laser pointer in the sky. This city has a love affair with helicopters. And traffic lights timed to make you stop at each and everyone. Because if you’re pissed about hitting every light red, maybe you’ll stop and go into the local stores and shop! After you pay the new meters. Where it used to be free to park. Helicopter fuel isn’t free. And neither is inch-thick bullet-proof glass.

[1] Whether the USPS should exist or not is another rant. Probably, as a firm believer in universal services (see also REA, and please give us universal access to internet). But the fact that they primarily exist to make, and their cash flow depends on encouraging, trash is problematic.

[2] And banks now too. I stopped going to my local branch because they have a person-sized air lock with an armed guard. They’ve never been robbed. I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but I’m not going into an airlock that I don’t control if I don’t have to. I do not like being treated as a potential, or worse, likely, criminal. But the next closest branch recently remodeled and now they have inch-thick bullet-proof glass. And they’ve never been robbed either. Just fear, completely unjustified fear. [4]

[3] The only expensive thing I’ve ever sent through the USPS is the only thing of mine they’ve ever lost. And as it was a bruxism guard, I doubt that it was stolen. Only of use to the person it was fitted for.

[4] At least based on actual events. Would that it were because the peasants had come to the banksters with pitchforks and torches…