The U.S. Postal Service is one of the most popular and respected agencies of government going back to the beginning of the country and it provides its services for everyone, regardless of position or wealth or location, and has provided well-paying jobs for those who have suffered bias and racism for generations.

Perhaps that is one of the main reasons that Republicans and others on the political right have tried to end the USPS’s centuries-old run. That, and the crazy urge to privatize every function of government that can be privatized. The defeated president, Donald Trump, appointed Louis DeJoy to Postmaster General, apparently with orders to do as much damage to the service as possible and he entered the China shop of the Post Office like the proverbial bull and started dismantling the works by removing automated sorting machines. To ensure that they would not be easily replaced, he ordered that they be taken apart and hauled away.

This is the work of the top boss who could not even answer the most basic questions about the cost of postage for different packages, domestic or foreign, when he appeared before a Congressional committee. Trump put him in the top spot to create havoc and that’s what he did. There have been calls for an investigation of DeJoy and his specific instructions from the former president before he was given the job. Whether the PG is removed sooner or later, that investigation should go forward and the details be made public, as soon as possible.

It has been known for many years that the political right has been gunning for the Postal Service, with the aim of privatizing some of it, not all, because there is no private company that is willing to deliver mail every day to every address in this wide country, including the backcountry of every rural state. There’s no money in that. But there is money in package delivery and other kinds of routine services that the Postal Service provides. They are trying to cream the profits and leave the low-profit services to the old USPS. The capper, of course, was the law several years ago that required the USPS to fund benefits for retirees 75 years into the future. That’s for people who might not even be born yet! There are few, if any, corporations that would be able to find the billions of dollars each year to fund such a demand from people who are trying to kill your enterprise. They did it because they knew it would work and the best parts of the Post Office could be sold off to the highest bidder. It’s no wonder that right-wingers can point to the Post Office and say it is losing money and, therefore, is poorly run, so close it down.

One ulterior motive for inflicting mortal damage to the service is the suggestion that it return to the old postal days when there were postal savings accounts and cheap money transfers and other financial or monetary services. Think about the banks’ opinion of offering these services in every neighborhood and what they would lose by not being able to fleece the poor and low-wage workers. And, think of the chagrin of payday lenders or check-cashing enterprises that are found in many poor neighborhoods, where they have been allowed to take a sizable portion of the paycheck and charge outrageous fees for sending money. These leeches, often branches of giant corporations, are supported by both Republicans and Democrats, depending on where they are located. The possibilities of providing beneficial services to low-wage workers and the poor are limitless for the USPS if it were free of the artificial restraints that have been placed on it by politicians in thrall to the moneyed class. For politicians’ payoffs, usually provided as donations to campaign funds, they are willing to steal meager wages and income from the most vulnerable in society.

Most of those affected are black, brown, and other minorities, who live in areas that are not only food and education deserts but are bereft of banking services and are left to corporate scavengers to take their last dollar, if possible. The Postal Service can be used to provide an actual boost in incomes of working people, by not forcing them to pay exorbitant fees to make use of their modest pay. It would actually provide somewhat of an increase in pay, just to provide the financial services at low or no cost to the customer. It would be billions of dollars in total and it would be like a transfer of that money from Corporate America to the people, direct and without passing any new laws. That’s one of the reasons that big business wants to finish off the Postal Service.

The other big reason that Republicans are frantic to destroy the USPS as we know it is that mail-in voting makes it easier for citizens to cast their ballots. Voting by mail is a profound benefit to the elderly, the disabled, those without a car or other transportation, and those who are trying to avoid being in the presence of crowds of people in the Covid-19 pandemic. Disabling the Postal Service is yet another way the Republicans can suppress voting, which they have been doing in the states for years. It didn’t start with them. History is clear that the GOP, the Dixiecrats, and any number of white supremacists in many states have been suppressing votes by any means available and the means they have come up with are numberless, over many generations, not just the past few years.

As in so many areas of national life, Trump did not start the destruction, but he saw his opportunities to destroy the functions of government and he took them, doing his best to dismantle agency after agency and department after department. The people most affected by Trump’s destruction may not feel the greatest pain for some time, but they will feel it. Trump has done the bidding of the ruling class and, although they may be put off by his arrogance, hubris, crude behavior, ignorance, and cruelty, they like what he has done for them, like the so-called middle-class tax cut that was another giveaway to the rich. They like his destruction of regulations that were designed to ensure that the people drink clean water and breathe cleaner air and have access to healthier food. Those regulations cut into profits, so they were to be opposed, and Trump opposed and eliminated scores of them.

The Postal Service, like other agencies of government, was one place where black and other minorities could expect a measure of fair treatment in hiring and in their work lives. For racists in charge, that might be another reason for such hostility. The Postal Service is in trouble, not because it doesn’t carry its weight financially, but because it has carried the anchor of right-wing politics around its neck. It is one agency that was provided for by the nation’s founders because they knew how important an informed people are to a democracy. The new Know-Nothings are opposed to the founders’ intent and will continue to do their best to damage the Postal Service. The less-informed the electorate, the better the Republicans like it. Trump even said so, in the wake of his primary win in Nevada in 2016: “I love the poorly educated,” meaning also he loved low information voters. That alone may make him a sterling Republican.

However, low information and millions of dollars from the billionaire class did not carry him through to a second term. The people had had enough of him and his confidence game. He lost the popular vote to Joe Biden by 7 million votes and the Electoral College vote by 306-232. What is significant is that those totals were despite the GOP voter suppression efforts in many states. He lost and refused to concede. He tried to steal the election by claiming that everyone else was trying to “steal” the election from him. Trump’s incitement on Jan. 6, at a rally just before the counting of the Electoral College vote in the nation’s Capitol, resulted in death and mayhem. He and his GOP enablers in the U.S. Senate claim neither he nor they have any responsibility for the death and destruction inside the Capitol. He is being tried for that in the Senate, this week.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a former newspaper reporter and labor organizer, who lives in the Mohawk Valley of New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Contact Mr. Funiciello and BC.