Pride of America

Today at school we had visiting day. Classes were canceled and hordes of prospective new students were brought to the classrooms for informal observation. Anxious parents lined the hallways, sitting in chairs and every one of them looking like they were waiting for a doctor's life-saving diagnosis. Sonar and his gorgeous wife were there for their young son, as was T-Bone's wife with their younger daughter (the latter a shoo-in).

***

After work I went to the post office to mail a package. After waiting in line for an unusually speedy eleven minutes while two out of a four possible clerks slowly processed the every-growing line of customers, I was told by the clerk that the last digit of the zip code was wrong. And they couldn't tell me what the right zip code was.

In a U.S. post office. They couldn't look up a zip code.

This was a task that took me approximately two seconds on Google once I got home. What, they don't even have a big book where the codes are listed?

In the post office?

Now I understand that in this time of war born of deception, recession, disappearing middle class, uninsured working families, voter fraud, and so forth, this is a petty thing to be dwelling on hours after the event. But seriously, isn't this lack of initiative, or caring, or effort, symptomatic of a depressing downward spiral of this country? Where's the willingness to get the job done by any means necessary that kept the pioneers alive and got us through WWII?

We let illegal aliens shoulder the mantle so we can hate them for it, I guess.