Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/14/mail-carrier-raided-by-fbi-is-apparent-qanon-conspiracy-theorist.html
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So that’s why I never get Victoria Secret catalogs in the mail anymore.
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I think this guys brother must also work here in DC. I regularly have packages lost to the infinity of “waiting for final delivery scan”. Even though they are “out for delivery” that morning. Most of the time they show up the next day, but sometimes never or only after I wait 4 days and spend an hour on the phone with USPS customer service tracking it down. Presumptively embarrassing them enough to finally get them to deliver the damned package.
Q hates mail I guess.
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Tiring that we get a sense of relief every time someone messing up like this turns out to not be a supporter of the same things we do. I look forward to the day when we can return to simply reporting “postal worker tossed mail” and not worry about his or her political views (I remember stories like this happening routinely years ago).
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I would think it would be difficult for the liberal elites to stuff the children into the envelopes and small boxes. Maybe they miniaturize them first. Or turn them into powder that has to be re-hydrated.
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Just like the ammosexuals and anti-vaxxers, these nuts are creating the world they fear the most.
People aren’t yet outraged enough to insist on common-sense gun reform? Double down and ensure that every angry 14 year old can access weapons designed purely for human slaughter.
Children face fewer deadly and crippling diseases than in all of human history because of vaccines? Make up some bullshit about autonomy and yer really good immune system and infect dozens of families at Disney.
Mail and voter fraud virtually non-existent? Hold my beer.
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Absolutely. It is possible that the mail-tossing had something to do with Q-Anon. It is possible that he was stealing ballots. But it’s not likely. And the intention of this story, at this time, is for us to read the headline, not read the story, post it to our feeds, and declare: LOOK! THEY are stealing the mail. Which is to say we are using the existence of a Right Wing Conspiracy Theorist to fuel a Left Wing Conspiracy Theory. If I had to bet, it looks to me like he is one of those mail carriers who doesn’t deliver junk mail to people who ask to not receive junk mail, which is the kind of thing I know, for a fact, that happened in Pittsburgh when I lived there. And he got sloppy about it, and there were a few pieces of real mail that fell into the junk mail. But we have to wait and see.
It’s definitely the sort of thing that shouldn’t happen, and should be followed up on. But the chances that this has anything to do with the fact that the guy happens to be a Q-Anon Conspiracist are low. He’s probably either a lazy or very conscientious mailman. There’s a good chance that no one would have said anything if they hadn’t noticed how much garbage he threw away every week.
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Clearly carriers hoarding mail is a thing.
You’d think that the USPS would have a solution by now.
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They would need to be packaged carefully, or else…
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Did you see that they have evidence of this? It’s right there in the posted quote.
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Well, except that there are numerous examples at every single level of the GOP disenfranchising voters. I take your point about not conflating isolated incidents that happen to be perpetrated by ideologically-aligned people as being one and the same, but this instance seems that it may be the exception. “Theory” is an appropriate term for situations that are as-yet unproven. The right’s methodical dismantling of voting rights is transparent fact.
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Well, that’s sort of what I meant, but not. I mean we’ve become so polarized, it’s almost a requirement now that we MUST post a person’s implied political alignment to offset the shit storm of complaints that one side or the other will gin up. In this case, it would have been “see, the Dems are using the post office and their control of the unions to get employees to steal ballots and change them!” Which, in fact, is exactly what folks had been implying.
Twenty years ago, no one cared if they were Republican or Democrat, only that the mail was being tampered with. Only one party has so destroyed our respect and support for various well-regarded institutions that we need to resort to partisan pandering.
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While the Q-Anon stuff is disconcerting, I don’t think it’s fair to imply causation in an instance of mail hoarding. Mail hoarding has been a thing for overworked postal workers for decades, and is more likely attributable to the irresponsible cutbacks to the USPS budget and infrastructure.
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Because I’m curious and a masochist, I turned on Rush Limbaugh on Monday to see how that world was spinning the polls and generally denying reality. Within the first five minutes, Limbaugh had explained (1) the polls are fake and Biden isn’t actually ahead, (2) Democrats all know and agree these are fake polls, and (3) Democrats all know that the plan is overwhelm legitimate votes with fake mail-in ballots.
Then, he said (and he said it literally) that what Republicans need to figure out is a way to “burn up” these fake mail-in ballots, and probably need to get some gasoline and matches to get it done.
This was the message being sent on the most main-stream “conservative” program around, with millions of devotees and broadcast on the largest stations in the country. This shit isn’t a fringe.
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Given that we have already clearly seen nut jobs pushed to the edge (and over) by not only GOP mouthpieces, but the Pres himself, Rush’s words are genuinely frightening.
Imagine what would happen when a bunch of ballots get burned up? Sure the stooge takes the fall and would go to jail, but the damage would be done and the stooge would be just a martyr.
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Tissue Compression eliminators can’t restore the victiim.
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Also would be an excuse to argue to the new supreme court to disregard (not count) any of the ballots in that entire polling district, on the grounds that the totals cannot be accurate due to the sabotage of destroying all those republican ballots in that mostly democrat district.
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I gotta say, re- reading the posted quote, there’s not suggestion that this person is not delivering the mail because they are a QAnon believer, and the undelivered mail seems to be a variety of pieces. There’s really nothing in the articles themselves, either.
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I am wondering how much of this is just another symptom of mental illness and how much of it is the usual “forcing the result” that we typically see among the “government is inept… because we’ve made it so” reactionaries.
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Probably unrelated and just bad incentives. While it is illegal to do so, a lot of postal managers have chosen to keep their numbers up by scanning packages when they shouldn’t. No one in their chain of command has any incentive to catch the bad actors, because it makes their numbers look better too. Any penalty from complaints falls largely on someone else.
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