One of the worrying things about modern American politics is the tendency to conspiracy theory, which has become very widespread, even among people who don't think of themselves as conspiracy theorists of any kind. QAnon at least has a sort of purity, being a bunch of conspiracy theorists recognizing themselves as conspiracy theorists and participating in it for social reasons; but we have had to endure the whole 'Russiagate' debacle, which was from the beginning pretty obviously a conspiracy theory, and now we have this absurd Post Office furor. A few points about the latter:
(1) The USPS is an independent government agency; while the President has considerable authority and power over even such agencies, they are deliberately set up in such a way that it generally takes time and a considerable amount of political backing to effect large-scale change quickly. This is not even a plausible locus for a large-scale conspiracy.
(2) The Postmaster General hasn't been appointed by the President in nearly fifty years. The President appoints the USPS Board of Governors, who then appoint (and when they deem appropriate, remove) the Postmaster General. No appointments were made between 2010-2017 so that the Board dwindled to the point that it lost its ability to maintain quorum (indeed, at one point there is one Board member); appointments began to be filled again in 2017. Because of this it is in fact true that Trump has appointed most of the governors. There were several political reasons, at different times, why nominations were not made or else not given the consent of the Senate, including an extended period of time when Senator Sanders held up all postal service nominations (for reasons that are not very clear but are usually thought to be related to a plan to close a large postal center in Vermont). Regardless, the Postmaster General can't do much on a large scale without the support of the Board, and Congress, not the Board, is the entity that decides the actual structure for the Postal Service.
(3) The USPS is pretty much completely funded up for all current operations through 2021, and for most things up to 2024, and it has the option of receiving a large loan from the US Treasury. While the loan would require certain forms, it is purely optional, and it has not received the loan. The USPS currently bleeds money like crazy, and has been for quite some years now, but it is not in any way in danger, much less immediate danger.
(4) The only political question of serious concern in the vicinity is whether the USPS can handle large-scale mail-in voting; the USPS has warned that it cannot guarantee that mail service would meet election deadlines for mail-in voting with the time schedules that 46 of the states have previously been using, and has proposed alternate schedules that would be more manageable.
(5) The people with really die-hard investment in the conspiracy theory claim that Trump himself admitted that he was blocking funding for the USPS to manipulate the election; in fact, unsurprisingly, Trump said nothing of the sort, saying instead that (a) the USPS was asking for $25 billion to handle mail-in voting, and he didn't think it actually needed that much; (b) if Democrats did not work with Republicans to make a funding deal, they wouldn't get the money and the USPS would certainly not be able to handle mail-in voting. It is astonishing how easily people will believe that their political opponents are cackling melodrama villains monologuing their evil plans.
The entire weekend has seen a wave of people sharing 'evidence' of a conspiracy to destroy the USPS for political purposes -- pictures of stacked mail boxes (in fact waiting to be refurbished), pictures of locked mail boxes (a practice the Postal Service uses in areas in which mail is repeatedly stolen, and which only lock the most vulnerable slot, or else are always open for certain hours), pictures of mail boxes being removed (which the Postal Service constantly does in order to move them from low-volume mail areas to high-volume mail areas), etc. etc. I'm afraid it all reminds me of the garbage-stealing conspiracy in The Stupids. You have to sometimes step back from your politics or your politics will certainly start actively making you an idiot.
I wonder, though, if there are broader causes. Conspiracy-theory-like thinking seems to have become more prevalent even in academic life. Charles Mills's racial contract, some accounts of white supremacy in critical theory, Kate Manne's account of misogyny in Down Girl, Jason Stanley's account of fascism, all have features common to conspiracy theories. The primary difference is that they are all generalized rather than occasional -- that is, they are more like the early modern conspiracy theory of 'priestcraft', which was supposed to tell us why society in general was messed up, than like 9/11-Trutherism, which is focused on particular events. The academic cases are often more intricately and carefully argued than their folk counterparts, and one can certainly learn genuinely worthwhile ideas from looking at particular arguments on particular points. But overall they have many of the same features as the folk conspiracy theories, and sometimes some of the worrisome red flags -- the unfalsifiability, the immoderate scope of speculation, the suspicion of official stories, the blurring of general-level explanation with explanation at the level of particulars, the inadequate distinction between accident and intent, the facelessness of their discussions of people, the tendency toward 'psychosis of resemblances' (to borrow a term from Eco) arising from very crude, rule-of-thumb classifications being treated as if they were precise and reliable. Diachronic totalizing narratives like Hegelianism and Marxism are no longer much in fashion; but synchronic totalizing narratives seem to be the rage of the day. Perhaps some of the latter are distinguishable from conspiracy theories in some way I'm not seeing; but they are cousins, at least. I have no idea, however, why such narratives have become so tempting to so many people.
