No sooner do I write a post playfully suggesting that its focus – the rot in our Western institutions – could be turned into a series, than news turns up to enable that.

The creature you see in the picture above could stand in for many Leftist voters and activists today, placing their hands over their ears to stop the facts from getting inside their brains and poisoning their perfect worlds.

But worse, that’s the 75th US PostMaster General, one Louis DeJoy. His questioner, representative McCormick (GA-R) is a decorated veteran and emergency room physician, who wants to know why DeJoy has allowed the USPS to lose $6.5 billion in the last financial year.

Behold our elected and selected Masters of the Universe. Laugh! Cringe!

Ok, TBF, Postal Services around the world have been getting beaten up in recent years as the Interwebby has steadily destroyed the business of mail delivery. At first it was email hitting letters (how many Christmas cards will you be getting this year, in our case I’d be amazed it was more than four?), but that started in the mid-1990’s and took thirty years to make an impact, although that impact has eventually been massive (a great demonstration of the effect of compounding), and more recent innovations like social media and electronic invoicing and billing are what have really finished it off.

But that was never the big money area anywhere; profits were not huge, barely breakeven actually. The real hit was in delivering packages; that was where the postal services made the money, and it got taken away not by electronics but by competing services such as FedEx, UPS, and here in NZ, the likes of DHS.

Traditional postal services have not coped with that competition despite having a massive head start in networks of distribution, sorting and delivery systems. In fact they’ve been humiliated by the newcomers.

Mr DeJoy is just another hapless director of one such postal service and probably nothing more could have been expected of him. Still, he’s Johnny-on-the-spot and accepted the job. Not only failing to do better but now sitting there during Congressional testimony with his hands over his years looking like a child having a tantrum is yet another example of Western institutional rot.