I never thought David Brin's incredibly cheesy and schmaltzy novel The Postman (made into a box office bomb starring Kevin Costner) would feel so relevant

The country dissolving into fiefdoms run by fascist warlords and the one man opposing them is the last US Postman

Honestly the earnestness of that story reads a lot differently in an age of enforced isolation

This one post-apocalyptic town has the fascist thugs holding the Postman at gunpoint and calling him a liar and troublemaker and telling him to leave

He starts frantically pulling out letters from his bag yelling at the crowd of townsfolk

"Is there a James Harrison, 46?"

"No one here by that name, son"

"A Frederick Barnes, 68?"

"Fred Barnes is dead and you will be too if you don't get a move on"

"A... a Sophie Nicholls, age 37?"

"No! There isn't, now -"

"WAIT THAT'S ME! I'M SOPHIE! NICHOLLS WAS MY NAME BEFORE I GOT MARRIED"

"Sophie, sit down -"

"No one knows me as Nicholls except my family back East! Who sent it?!"

"This says it's from a Lucy, Lucy Nicholls -"

"THAT'S MY SISTER! OH GOD, THAT'S MY LITTLE SISTER!"

"Sophie, dammit, shut up, this ain't your -"

"SHE'S ALIVE? YOU SAW HER?"

"I... I didn't receive this letter personally, ma'am, it was given to me at a post office"

"But - I apologize for reading your mail, ma'am, but I've been prevented from making my rounds as you can see, but this letter is dated six months ago, it says she's doing well, married now, she had a baby two years back -"

"LET ME SEE! LET ME SEE IT"

And the whole crowd suddenly erupts into a riot and overcomes the thugs and comes clamoring for news of the outside, and they overthrow their local warlord that very night

It's silly to make a direct comparison between that situation and our world, but having the right to be in communication with other people is actually a pretty damn important constitutional right and now the right wingers are openly saying it isn't one

"Why shouldn't you have to pay ten bucks to send a letter if you choose to live in a tiny rural town

Besides we have the Internet now (which is correspondingly also far more expensive in rural areas)

Fuck you for not living in New York"

I just looked up this scene from the movie on YouTube and they made it a lot less hostile between the Postman and the town leaders but it's still pretty good tbh

Okay it actually just hit me that The Postman would be a lot more honest to its themes (American ideals vs American reality) and make a lot more sense (why do people have such irrationally polarized feelings about this guy) if The Postman were Black https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1249382181719375878?s=19

You could make him an expy of Obama even

Giving this speech about "in accordance with the mandates of the Old Constitution, I have been given authority under the Restored Congress of the United States" to these skeptical bearded Oregon rednecks

Anyway the more I think about it the more relevant it feels

Our President basically saying we DON'T have a country, and it's every state governor for themselves in the face of a plague

And in Republican states with shitty governors it's every city mayor for themselves

The rich immediately fleeing to their mountain fortresses and being like "It's everyone else's problem"

Travel shutting down, people trying to put up hard borders between states to stop the flow of infection, all the old links broken