![\"\"](\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/ben.jpg\" "\\"ben\\"")
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As part of the National Shutting Down orchestrated by Washington, the\u00a0cash-strapped Postal Service said Tuesday that it’s considering closing\u00a03,653 branches <\/a>nationwide. Many in rural areas and places like Scranton and Bangor. Oh and one in Philadelphia, that predates the American colonies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Precisely 236 years ago yesterday, on July 26, 1775, Ben Franklin opened a post office at what is now 316 Market Street, in Philadelphia.\u00a0The post office didn’t fly an American flag. No, FOX NEWS, it’s not because Franklin was a progressive liberal and\u00a0a socialist fruit who thrust upon us many socialist institutions that destroyed America like public fire departments, public mail service and public libraries, an\u00a0intellectual sort, you know, an “elitist”. It’s\u00a0because America wasn\u2019t a country yet.<\/em><\/p>\n Franklin was appointed the nation\u2019s first postmaster general\u00a0of the colonies in 1753, customarily taking his job very seriously, schlepping all over the colonies, making improvements, establishing new postal routes. It’s 2011 and the\u00a0U.S. Postal Service is just not a “profitable venture”. Of course, it was never designed to be. It was designed to serve the people, particularly those living in rural areas who rely on the service for communication with the civilized world. Maybe the government has a plan \u00a0– that Steve Jobs will be pompously announcing any day now – that will involve stringing up internet wires like Christmas lights in remote areas, and supplying every poor household with a Blueberry iMac and a team of very patient IT guys to teach the geezers how to boot up.<\/p>\n The closings will cost 4,500 postal employees\/human beings their jobs. But what we lose in 4,500 jobs and in a post office that pre-dates the Revolutionary War, we gain in a CVS, a Wawa or \u201cother appropriate business ventures”. Seems weird, short-sighted, unromantic, and a little disrespectful to the guy who brought us eyeglasses, the stove, the printing press, electricity and the urinary catheter, to lump his Post Office in with all the others, but, hey, Ben Franklin was SO long ago, who even thinks about him anymore? Ben Franklin was a\u00a0deist, patriot and libertine, student of the Enlightenment, whose sensibilities as an American thinker and intellectual would be unrecognizable to your average teatard, whose idealized version of a founding father resembles a cross between Hitler and Oliver Cromwell but also kind of gay, in a powered wig and waistcoat.<\/p>\n Never mind that the Post Office is one of the few things actually mandated in the Constitution. <\/em>Further proof that Conservatives don’t give a rats ass about the Constitution or the founding fathers whenever a belief or intent might not quite fit with Jesus or whatever. It doesn’t matter that the constitution says\u00a0otherwise, they\u00a0just care about keeping their filthy mooola for themselves, and fuck civilization:<\/p>\n Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the\u00a0United States Constitution, known as the\u00a0Postal Clause or the\u00a0Postal Power, empowers\u00a0Congress “To establish\u00a0Post Offices and\u00a0post Roads”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/dd>\n One of the Postal Service\u2019s strengths is its ubiquity, as something safe and enduing for American, \u00a0because you know, it’s been around for 236 fucking years. Now it’s 2011 and:\u00a0“The Postal Service may close more than 1 in 10 of its retail outlets”. “RETAIL OUTLETS??<\/em> The storied post office of yore, that provided all Americans, rich or poor, with access to communication, is now just another fucking HOME GOODS?? “History” doesn\u2019t make money for the Koch Brothers, they’ve \u00a0already won – now they’re just rubbing it in . (Disclaimer: I cried at the disappearance of the phone booth. It was the 1980s in NYC, and they did it secretly and slowly, the phone booth bandits, under the cloak of night, when no one was watching. The phone booths (the real ones, with doors and phone books), disappeared and poles with phones stuck on them popped up in their place. My sister said at the time, that it was just another way in which day to day life would be more miserable. But no one else really even noticed). I’m telling you this because this is how it happens – when change happens quietly and gradually, people easily, mindlessly adapt to the new conditions, even if conditions are getting worse & worse over time. It’s called “creeping normalization” and is a creepily powerful phenomena. It’s why we allow ourselves to slide slowly into the darkness… kind of like\u00a0the old frog in the water <\/a>adage.<\/p>\n The whole thing just made me sad. Ben Franklin is the past. Dignity is the past, trucknutz is the future. We are doomed.<\/p>\n As part of the National Shutting Down orchestrated by Washington, the\u00a0cash-strapped Postal Service said Tuesday that it’s considering closing\u00a03,653 branches nationwide. Many in rural areas and places like Scranton and Bangor. Oh and one in Philadelphia, that predates the American colonies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[715,717,718,716],"class_list":["post-6926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-soapbox","tag-ben-franklin-post-office","tag-first-post-office-closing","tag-philadelphia-post-office","tag-post-offices-closing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6926"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8212,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6926\/revisions\/8212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/2.9.jpg\" "\\"2.9\\"")
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As the country’s first post office goes, so goes America. And if America falls, it won’t be from “terrorists” or “Casey Anthony” or any external enemy. It will be by her own hand. That is the inescapable conclusion that any sane person would come to, any person with a regard for the United States, or with some surviving faith in the virtues of representative democracy. Ben Franklin’s post office is a symbol of what has become of this decaying and careless Republic. America is crumbling faster than I ever imagined possible. The evolved among us know we need to keep our past alive if for no other reason than to remind our future, mindless generations that we were once strong.<\/p>\n