Sitting here thinking about Terry Pratchett's Going Postal, and how the initial fantasy conceit of that book was a perfect example of taking an obvious joke and running with it until it's something dark and serious That the abandoned Post Office is haunted by "dead letters"
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It's one of those perfect moments that is both a ridiculous pun and something very painful and real Of course, when he wrote it, it wasn't THAT real
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Who'd have thought at this late date "snail mail" would be this relevant? (Even Going Postal is about the Post Office having been replaced by the fantasy telegraph, the clacks) Who'd imagine huge piles of scattered envelopes on the post office floor happening in America today
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I don't know what goes through Postmaster Louis DeJoy's mind when he goes to bed at night But I hope the sheer physical weight of those bags and bags of mail all over the country hangs on him until it makes it hard to breathe
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As Pratchett vividly describes, I hope some part of him understands the sacred trust the fraternity of couriers has held since time immemorial How obscene it is to break the sacred trust one carries when you take someone's words and promise them "I'll make sure they get this"
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And unlike the letters in the book we know what a huge percentage of the mail DeJoy has ordered "held" must say Because his order to hold that mail was a conscious decision to silence those voices, to kill those messages and stop them getting through Not negligence but murder
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If a letter undelivered is a little death, a tiny gasp of unfinished business, then a vote uncast is that twice over And the ghost of those dead letters is a ghost of a better world that could have been if that sacred trust had been upheld, if those voices had been heard
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In Pratchett's goofy po-mo universe every little subculture, every random profession and avocation and fandom gets its own religion, its own gods and its own afterlife Every postman hopes their soul arrives at its destination signed, sealed, delivered
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Louis DeJoy might want to check on whether his own soul has sufficient postage and insurance Because there's a high chance that when he passes on, karma loses him in the back of the truck, and writes him off as "Lost and Undeliverable"
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End of conversation
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It's the sort of thing that has 'applicability' as Tolkein put it. Not neccesarily designed as an allegory, but something that can reflect many different things depending on who is experiencing it.
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