This commentary is by Eric Peterson of Bennington, a theater director with two projects coming up soon.
American malaise is a hot topic. According to polls, Americans are disgruntled and unhappy.
We haven’t had any mail delivered to our house in about 10 days. We live a few short blocks from the post office. The last couple of years, mail delivery has been spotty. Our neighborhood has had, and lost, three or four mail carriers during that time.
There is a lengthy hiring process at the post office. It takes months and nearly every business in the country is desperate for workers. The inability to deliver the mail is a very visible symptom of what some see as a country falling apart.
Remember the poem that begins, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”? Those words were said by the Greek historian Herodotus. He said it during the war between the Greeks and Persians about 2500 B.C. in reference to the Persians’ mounted postal couriers.
Apparently they were really good at their jobs. If only we could hire them now.
The U.S. Pony Express became the heroes of books and movies. People looked forward to getting good mail. They enjoyed receiving letters, gifts and magazines. Remember getting Christmas cards in the mail? Not too many sent anymore. Everything is online these days. There are many adults who have never received a “letter.”
Louis DeJoy is the U.S. postmaster general. He was appointed during Donald Trump’s presidential term. DeJoy began immediately to make matters worse. One theory floated was that President Trump had appointed him so he could slow down mail delivery in order to keep election ballots from being delivered on time in 2020.
Since the president does not appoint the postmaster general, but only those who do, President Biden has not been able to replace the less than mediocre Mr. DeJoy. Rather than fixing problems, under DeJoy’s lack of leadership, things have gotten worse.
There was a time when delivering the mail was considered a good job with fine pay and good benefits. Many armed services veterans became letter carriers to extend their federal employment and add to their pensions. But there are easier ways to make a living now.
Most of the mail these days tends to be advertisements or bills. No one any longer excitedly shouts, “The mail carrier is here!” But when days go by and no one on the street has received mail, people notice.
I’ve made some trips to the post office to try to pick up our mail. The first few times, the clerk went in the back and came back with a bunch of mail. But they won’t do that anymore. They now say something like, “Your carrier is out with it.” They don’t say “out where,” though.
The problems with the mail are a symptom and part of the sense too many have that the country no longer works. Why can’t we even deliver mail on time anymore? Italians, years ago, said, “At least Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.“
People want the government to keep vital services running smoothly. Actually, Mussolini didn’t keep the trains running on time but the slogan worked for him anyway, for a time. Sometimes you can fool all the people, for a time.
People can hear good news without feeling the good news. During the 2½ years of the Biden administration, 13.2 million jobs have been created. That is more jobs than any president has created in four years. Inflation is down by more than half since June 2022.
All over the country, large construction projects that have been needed for decades are underway because Congress passed Biden’s Infrastructure bill with bipartisan votes. Obama and Trump couldn’t get big infrastructure bills passed. Trump never even submitted one to Congress. He just talked about it and proclaimed week after week “Infrastructure Week,” to no avail.’’
But according to polling results, Biden hasn’t gotten much credit for passing important pieces of legislation. People still see that prices are higher than they want at the grocery store and gas pump. They can be told progress is being made but they don’t believe it.
Too many Main Streets are filled with shuttered stores. My brother was recently in San Francisco on business and was surprised and appalled with what has happened to that once-beautiful and busy downtown. The New York Times had an article recently about office furniture being destroyed in New York because so many offices had been closed.
Facebook recently has had several threads of folks naming stores they remember in downtown Bennington that are now only memories. Many were owned by local families.
There is a reason our downtown is being remade largely with eating establishments. It’s because shoppers don’t go shopping anymore. They go online and purchase everything from shoes to lawnmowers to automobiles to groceries. Brick-and-mortar stores have been disappearing and the trend has sadly gone into overdrive.
People don’t go bowling anymore; they play video games now at home, so bowling alleys close. People don’t join bowling teams with their friends anymore because bowling alleys have closed. People don’t go shopping or bowling with friends anymore; they’re on screens at home.
People don’t see co-workers as much because people work from home, not in an office. So, offices close. They don’t shop at stores near their workplace at lunchtime because they eat alone, at home.
The post office can’t find enough letter carriers anymore because why walk through 90-degree heat, or snow, or sleet, or rain, when there are jobs you don’t even have to leave your house for?
There is an American malaise for many reasons. The country doesn’t seem to be working right anymore. It is true from Bennington to San Francisco. Our daily lives have been changing drastically but somehow we’re quite not fully comprehending how dramatic the changes are.
Those changes are eroding our sense of community, robbing us of friends and a sense of place. All the positive economic statistics won’t change that feeling. The nagging feeling of unhappiness that so many folks feel is called loneliness.
