Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman

Independence Day in the land of fake problems

When you love an addict (and by that I mean someone who is not in recovery), it is very easy to be taken hostage by their addiction if you aren’t careful, and even if you are. This can look a million different ways. If you’re a kid, you’ll start by thinking it’s you, and if you can just be a little better, maybe that will do it. Maybe you can save the person you love.

Years might go by like that, where you try and fail to be quieter, more helpful, less full of needs, more aware of their signals, thinner, prettier, smarter, less whatever it is that seems to set them off about you — a thing that changes all the time. You won’t ever get it right, and that’s the only thing you’ll know for sure.

When you’re older, it might look like bargaining. I want to spend time with you, but not when you’re drinking. If you drink, I’m going to leave. Let’s meet for lunch, how about that? Then it might mean wrestling with whether you actually leave when the person you love orders wine while you’re still unbuttoning your coat. It won’t matter if you stay or go, you’re in a hostage situation. The alcohol is king, you’re just a pawn.

You might suggest joint therapy next, and feel defeated and depressed when your loved one stands up and announces in the middle of the third session that therapy just isn’t for her, and she’s never understood people who find it helpful to talk to a stranger about their problems — managing to insult you and the therapist simultaneously as she walks out the door. The therapist can handle it, but you are twenty-five and struggling.

Eventually, it will look like moving 3,000 miles away, hard as it is, figuring out what geographical and emotional boundaries are — that will be the best solution you can find. A way to love your mother, but also take care of your heart, because it can only break so much. It turns out you really can’t save anyone, like all those memes will tell you. Because no matter what move you make, the person you love will never look directly at the problem. They’ll always say the problem is you and your hypersensitivity or ingratitude, or the problem is money, or the problem is a situation that is happening at work.

To make herself feel better, my mother would buy things. She would redo the living room, change the paint color, reupholster the couch. She would get new deck furniture for the lake house, spoil her dogs, send her grandkids, my kids, gifts. She would buy a new sweater, a new piece of jewelry, a new pair of shoes. She’d get her hair blown out. She always looked put together and perfect on the outside and it hurts my heart to think of it as I write.

Her hair, curly as mine, blown out straight, her lipstick perfect, her perfume lingering hours after she’d left, but not in an oppressive way. Sometimes I’d catch the scent and stand there, breathing it in with tears streaming down my face, wishing I could bottle up the good part.

She was on top of everything, she had lists and plans and was one of the most capable people you could ever meet. She kept a roof over our heads when I was a kid. But she would not solve the only problem that would have liberated her, or me, from a terrible cycle of suffering. Strangely, life solved it for her in the most brutal way possible. I suppose it gave us three weeks of clarity, but the price was like a knife through my heart. I am grateful, and yet.

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That is what I was thinking about this week. The way there are real and immediate problems to solve, and people who are suffering, right now, in real time. The way we could be solving these problems if we looked directly at them. Instead, we have people at the helm who pretend we need to be addressing problems that don’t exist. They pretend with their entire chests, like addicts, and I suppose they are. Their drugs of choice are influence and greed. They seem to enjoy them with a cruelty chaser. The white powDer makes them crazy.

It’s hard to keep up with all the pretend problems we don’t have, but the latest one is “Birth Tourism.” This is the main argument actual attorneys made in front of Supreme Court justices when they argued against birthright citizenship, a right protected under the 14th Amendment, Section 1, right at the top:

Fourteenth Amendment

Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The POTUS’s attorneys argued that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” doesn’t mean what it means, and parents have to be “domiciled” here even though it doesn’t say that, and to hear them tell it, this “birth tourism” is a huge problem. Friends, you would think we have millions of hugely pregnant women pole-vaulting themselves over the border every week so they can give birth on “our soil” (ew Mike Johnson, ew) and take advantage of “the welfare state” (ew again).

Me. I drew this for you. It made me laugh.

Here is his exact quote: “I do think that this has been grossly abused in recent years. You just come on to the soil and have your child, and then they’re, they’re able to avail themselves of the welfare state and everything else.” If you’d like to see those words coming directly out of his mouth, and also the look on his face when he heard about the SCOTUS decision to uphold birthright citizenship, you can — because the decision came down during a live press conference.

His face turns red and his breathing changes. He has a visceral response to the news that there was a 6-3 ruling on birthright citizenship (5-4 on constitutional grounds) when it should have been unanimous. That’s not why he’s upset, though. He’s upset because he was hoping they were going to strike it down altogether. He knows his boss is going to be rage-Truth-Socialing all night, and he’ll be dealing with the fallout. Let’s go back for a minute, though, and do a little math. It will be fun, I promise.

First, there are roughly 3.6 million births in the United States each year. According to the Migration Policy Institute, even the most generous estimate of births that result from “Birth Tourism” — that is, women intentionally coming to the United States to have their babies for the sole purpose of getting them U.S. citizenship — and this is based on U.S. Census Bureau data, and The Center for Immigration Studies — would be 26,000 annually. That is the most generous estimate possible, and it is highly and hotly contested, but let’s go with it. Let’s say 26,000 hugely pregnant women pole-vaulted over our borders, landed on “our soil”, squatted down, had their babies, and wrapped them in American flags. Any guesses as to the percentage of births that would be annually?

0.716463843%

Also, when Mike Johnson speaks of the “welfare state” he’s talking about what he likes to call “entitlement programs” and among those he includes Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. Some people are confused about how Social Security is funded, how Medicare is funded and how Medicaid is funded. They are not all being funded in the same way, or all coming out of ”the same pot” and it is worth a little time familiarizing yourself with the basics if you feel unsure. That way you know when your government is swindling you, or your representatives are not looking out for your best interests, which they are not.

Regardless, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for “entitlement programs” and Mike Johnson knows that very well. Their U.S. born children are, but why wouldn’t they be? You know who else is not confused about this? The Vice President, JD Pants on Fire. Here’s what he had to say about Amy Coney Barrett being on the correct side of the bench for this decision:

“Well, look, do I think she made a mistake in the ruling? I do,” the vice-president said. “I don’t know how anybody can say that if a person who is an illegal alien, or a person for example who’s pregnant and comes to the United States on a vacation, they have a baby and all of a sudden their entire family gets the benefits of American citizenship … I don’t think that’s what the framers of the 14th amendment had in mind.”

He knows very well it doesn’t work that way. If an undocumented woman has a baby in the United States “on vacation” — because that happens all the time [insert eyeroll] — neither she, her husband, nor any other member of that baby’s family “gets the benefits of American citizenship” and it’s disgusting for the VP of the United States to lie about that. He’s an attorney, he went to Yale, he knows.

It’s so odd, because I could swear he’s on some book tour about his “spiritual evolution” (excuse me while I pause to laugh for five minutes) and recent conversion to Catholicism, and while I am not Catholic, I spent my early childhood with my Italian Catholic grandma, and I am absolutely positive he is not supposed to be lying. There aren’t enough Hail Marys for that man’s soul.

It’s clearly a talking point, though, and it’s probably coming from the white nationalist who never got picked for dodgeball as a kid. This is what happens when boys buy into the version of toxic masculinity where cruelty and violence equal power and virility. Dear young teenage boys, does Stephen Miller look virile to you? Also, can we all take a moment and contemplate the reality that the POTUS (this is my new favorite moniker and I may stick with it for a while) chose this hateful creature to be part of his administration? Imagine choosing to spend time with Stephen Miller. That alone should be disqualifying.

In any case, Stephen Miller went on a rant about the Supreme Court decision, and said because of birthright citizenship, “We have people…from third-world nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel let alone modern technology…they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital...and then that baby is automatically a citizen.”

So, we could be here all day, but the general consensus is the wheel was invented by Sumerians, as in Mesopotamia, as in modern-day Iraq. Same goes for math, which led to “modern technology” — we can trace it back to Sumerians and Babylonians, to Egypt, to ancient Greece, eventually to China, India, and across Europe. You know who definitely did not invent the wheel and/or math? White men from America in suits and ties.

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for benefits, but they must contribute to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, and they do. A lot. $651.9B in tax contributions, $215.8B in contributions to Social Security, $58.7B in contributions to Medicare. Our immigrant community makes us stronger in every way, but to hear Mike Johnson, JD Vance, and Stephen Miller tell it, immigrants are the problem.

Birth Tourism is not a thing and not a problem. Birthright citizenship is a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, full stop.

“Men on women’s sports teams” is not a thing, either. We have people who are choosing between groceries and getting medical care. Parents skipping meals so their kids can eat. People working three jobs to try to keep the lights on. Those are problems. Becky Pepper Jackson, fifteen and the only openly transgender girl in West Virginia who can throw the shot put and discus, is not a problem. She’s a freaking rockstar.

It makes me sick to my stomach that Brett Kavanaugh was the one to write the majority decision. As if he has any concern about keeping girls and women safe, or “respecting women.” We all remember Christine Blasey Ford, Debbie Ramirez, and Julie Swetnick. That’s not a man who respects women, and no one is confused.

No one is confused about what will ensue from this decision, either. This won’t be good for transgender athletes or transgender people, period, but it also won’t be good for women or girls, or cisgender girls who want to play on girls’ sports teams. This won’t be good for any of us, and it’s heartbreaking. My heart hurts for transgender kids who feel like they have no safe place anywhere.

You know there will be coaches who take advantage, and if you don’t know, then you aren’t a woman, and you haven’t been paying attention. There will be some coach somewhere who decides he needs a girl to prove she’s a girl. The fury I feel is real, because these people have already tried to pass legislation requiring genital exams for high school girls to play sports. That’s what this Supreme Court decision does. It does not make girls and women safer. It does not “respect” girls. It endangers them, and news flash, girls and women are endangered enough.

There are a lot of very unwell people in the world, and we don’t need to make it easier for them to have access to our children. That’s the last thing we need to be doing. I really thought I couldn’t be shocked at this point, but I have to admit, this next thing got me. Here’s what they were teaching at a “Vacation Bible Camp” in Lexington, Kentucky last week to a room full of tiny kids: Commandos for Christ y’all.

Soldiers with very real looking machine guns executing “Satan” — a man dressed in black — on stage at the front of the room, while all the kids chanted, “Take him out, blow him up!” In a world where children are shot down at school every fucking week, this is what they’re normalizing in the name of Jesus? A “skit” where a man is executed? What Bible is this, is it the $60 Bible the president is selling? Because that would track.

“Men on women’s sports teams” are not a real problem. Men like these, indoctrinating children this way, absolutely are.

If you’re someone who thinks we need to get money out of politics, you won’t be happy about yet another decision of the Roberts’ Supreme Court, which might as well be called Citizens United, the Sequel. In some kind of bizarre fever dream, the Court decided putting a cap on coordinated spending between candidates and political parties was the equivalent of “restricting free speech”, because billionaires influencing the political landscape is totally the same thing as “everyone can say whatever they like as long as it doesn’t incite violence” — but, here we are.

This will undoubtedly affect the midterms, because now there’s no limit to the size of the checks donors can write to party committees, instead of individual candidates. Democrats tend to thrive on grassroots fundraising with small-donor donations, and Republicans tend to attract more money from large donors, so hopefully Melinda French Gates wants to keep balancing the scales singlehandedly, or at least showing all billionaires how it’s done.

I don’t get it at all, because if I had a billion dollars — or if I’d made 2 billion dollars in the last year alone! — you could not stop me from getting a committee together to start solving the world’s problems. I can’t think of anything more fun or rewarding. But not these folks. They just want more crypto and AI. They want to cancel programs for the families struggling the most profoundly, and give handouts to the people who need them the least, in the form of tax loopholes — otherwise known as the true entitlement programs.

The United States Postal Service has been on my mind lately, which is, of course, a sign of the times. I remember learning about Benjamin Franklin, the Revolutionary War, and the rebellious, treasonous, inspired beginnings of the U.S. postal service, and maybe you do, too. (This was long before I learned a different, less sparkly, Manifest-Destiny-washed version of American history, of course). I even remember a field trip to the New York City Post Office on 8th Avenue, where the “motto of the postal service” is etched in stone above the entrance:

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Between the ideals of an “informed electorate”, “The Pony Express”, and the poetic inscription above the door, I was entranced. I would have been even more besotted if someone had told me the motto was derived from a passage in George Herbert Palmer‘s translation of Herodotus‘s Histories, referring to the courier service of the ancient Persian Empire:

It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.

I probably would have said I wanted to grow up and deliver the mail, and why not?

Street types of New York City: Postman at letter box. , ca. 1896. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2002699105/.

Postmaster General David P. Steiner is threatening to follow the POTUS’s proposed rule, and only deliver mail-in ballots to states willing to turn over their voter rolls. This proposed rule is, of course, unconstitutional, and it’s “solving” another problem we don’t have. We do not have election fraud.

States control their own elections, and the president is not entitled to voter rolls. He is trying every way possible to disenfranchise voters who don’t support him. I am sure Ben Franklin is rolling over in his grave. The USPS delivers the mail. The president does not get to rule by Executive Order, or by stomping his feet, but he does if people let him. So far, too many of the people around him are solving pretend problems, and ignoring the ones that are painfully real. These people are addicted to power and greed, and they like that cruelty chaser.

You know what, though? There is another, lesser known inscription on what used to be the Washington, D.C. Post Office — and is now the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum — called, appropriately, “The Letter” — and written by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University. This poem was lightly but notably edited without permission by then-President Woodrow Wilson, and inscribed. At least he didn’t put his name on the building I guess. It strikes me that this is a poem, but it’s also a list of options. We could choose to be any of these:

Messenger of Sympathy and Love

Servant of Parted Friends

Consoler of the Lonely Bond of the Scattered Family

Enlarger of the Common Life

Carrier of News and Knowledge

Instrument of Trade and Industry

Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance Of Peace and of Goodwill Among Men and Nations.

I like those top four, how about you? Sending you consolations if you need them, and so much love. It may not be the 250th we hoped for, but there’s nothing to say we can’t gather the Scattered Family Together, and Promote Mutual Acquaintance of Peace and Goodwill Among All People, yet. Our 251st might be the best year ever.

Don’t give up, friends xx

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