Going un-postal: A fantasy

Editor’s note: The following column is a work of satire and invention.

The Bush-Wah administration announced today it’s doing away with Post Offices in America.

“We have decided to unload and close and yes – obliterate – these 30,000 unprofitable dinosaurs bleeding our economy dry,” said the putative president, “and instead encourage the nationwide, and we hope someday, global, creation of Faith-Based Mail, which we expect will surpass even e-mail once our citizens get the hang of it, or else, under penalty of law.”

Aye, there’s the rub.

Faith-Based Mail, said the current White House press-bot (OAF – Officially Automated Flack), is the latest wrinkle in federal privatization of government services: a fee-based subscription free to corporations, natch, which involves transmission of information at the individual citizen’s expense without packages or envelopes!

DUH-Be-Ya likens the system to “prayer that delivers a message both ways, you know, spiritual telegrams. It’s punchy, to the point, and way easier on the shoes. You got any idea how many pairs of shoes our mail-delivery people go through each month? Well, now your government won’t be in hock paying for those suckers. Things got so bad we had to recycle rescued shoes of dead Gulf War soldiers. Now, let them go barefoot – better for their arches. No more government-issued shoes. Besides, we’ve already sold those soles 10 times over to make soup for imprisoned terrorists and other dangerously evil dissenters, including those protesting all forms of federal elimination programs.”

That oblique reference was a not-so-veiled allusion to the Bush-Wah administration’s recent plans to immediately “eliminate, abolish, terminate, have I made myself clear:” Head Start, for young at-risk children; Americorps, which trains new teachers for economically distressed urban areas; AMTRAK, a unified railway system which is the hallmark of any civilized nation; all trees on federal lands “impeding corporate progress;” whales because “who needs all that blubber, it’s unhealthy;” military educational benefits because “our schools have to take up the slack;” and even the environment itself, including oxygen we breathe, flying birds of the air, beasts of the land, swimming fish of the sea and whatsoever else passeth therein, yea verily.

“Nah, we don’t need that crap no more,” the alleged president muttered an accidental aside into a microphone he thought was turned off, launching a kind of commander in chief filibuster, and it’s a good thing he is the commander in chief, because the filibuster’s another thing soon to be outlawed by his band of right-wing thugs and henchmen, AKA the junta-masquerading-as-an-administration.

Meanwhile, not a whimper of dissent is heard from those pathetic Democrats, nearly mute at Republican hijacking, defunding and looting of this country to benefit the military /industrial /pharma complex.

Good Ol’ Georgie-Boy’s on a roll, hold the mustard. “You got your family-value-based families – patriotic heterosexual mother and father living under one roof without killing each other,” Bush43 declared, “your normal boring missionary-position sex, condoms are a tool of de debbil, church-going, SUV-driving, gas-guzzling, DVD-watching families, those fine upstanding American heterosexual men and women in two-parent patriotic heterosexual households who make our country the great country it is. Oh, and here I should say here how much I love the Jews. Wonderful folks, splendid people, even if they are going to Hell. And did I tell you Laura and I have decided to renew our vows in a traditional Marriage Encounter weekend at Israel’s Wailing Wall? Well, we have.”

Then he delivered a “this is final, I promise” underground bunker-buster nuke-you-lee-are bombshell all his own: “We have already set up mail rehabilitation camps for those who need a little help in switching mail techniques. Packages will be especially tricky to master,” the prez continued ever so compassionately.

“We got the ropes, we got the blindfolds, we got the electric cattle prods, we got the whips and chains and handcuffs and perpetually-on TV sets tuned to Fox News, we got the bad music and flashing lights that induce epilepsy attacks, we got the beer and Coke, uh, scratch that, we got the barbed wire, we got the brutal guards with Uzis. And yes, did I mention, stamp collecting will be declared illegal and subversive starting immediately, if not sooner? We see that ultimately as a substance-addiction issue – stamp glue will be added to our War on Drugs. And no, I didn’t see that Seinfeld episode.”

Later, the Bushling issued yet another obfuscatory, vaguely troubling “clarification”: “Tony Blair is behind me on this. And if it doesn’t work out, we’ll just let George Tenet do it. He’s good at falling on his sword … I mean, taking blame … I mean, getting things undone.”