After waking, then consuming a bowl of cheerios for breakfast, I listened to The Daily.  The Daily is a New York Times podcast.  It is an in depth audio exploration of a something that affects all of us, and I often chose to listen with the earbuds in place.  I recommend it.  The Daily is free.

This mornings story was an interview with a rural mail carrier from my home state of North Carolina.  He shared his front line account of how the covid-19 has impacted the Postal service.  I was taken by his love for his job, and his account of how the post office is the daily face of the government for people who live away from cities.  It is a lifeline for necessities.  He explained how the Postal Service provides “the last mile” of delivery for Fed Ex, UPS, and Amazon.  These competing businesses have contracts with the Postal Service for the last leg of delivery for their packages. 

The podcast went into some detail about the long term and the more recent covid-19 factors involved in the post office’s loss of money.  The point of the story was that the same type of assistance given to other large and important American companies has been denied to the post office.  The White House has said that no help will be approved, claiming that Amazon is ripping off the post office and is responsible for the deficit in the Post Office operations.

I listened and a more direct link was more plausible to me.  Jeff Bezo’s owner of Amazon also owns the Washington Post.  The Post has been generally critical of the President, and the President wants to hurt, to inflict damage upon its owner, Jeff Bezos.  If necessary the Postal Service is to be sacrificed to silence criticism and costs will dramatically increase for citizens who live in the hinterlands.

Now you know how I began my day.  You may listen to the story for yourself, just CLICK HERE.

With just a few more pages I am nearing the end of The Rebel by Albert Camus.  I recommend this precisely expressed, insightful writing to anyone concerned about the nature of politics and what is involved in changing the status quo.  Here are some lines that I read, more than once, this morning.

Absolute freedom
is the right of the strongest
to dominate.
Therefore it prolongs
the conflicts that profit
by injustice.
Absolute justice is achieved
by the suppression
of all contradiction:
therefore it destroys
freedom.

There is, in fact,
no conciliation possible
between a god
who is totally separated from history
and a history purged of all
transcendence.
Their representatives on earth
are, indeed,
the yogi and the commissar.
….they offer us only
two kinds of impotence,
both equally removed from reality,
that of good
and that of evil. p. 288

Any historical enterprise
can only be a more or less
reasonable or justifiable adventure.
It is primarily a risk.
In so far as it is a risk
it cannot be used to justify
any excess
or any ruthless and absolutist position.

If,
on the other hand,
rebellion could found a philosophy
it would be a philosophy of limits,
of calculated ignorance, and of risk.
He who does not know everything
cannot kill everything. p. 289

excerpt, The Rebel by Albert Camus