some rural residents worried that the damage to their livelihoods / USPS credibility has been done

[Demovictory9]

But the same survey found some risk in attacking what has been among the best-loved government agencies. Rural Democrats and Republicans in the survey were leery of privatizing the Postal Service, an aim of Mr. Trump’s conservative allies, or cutting its budget. Mr. Trump opposes a Democratic effort to provide the post office with $25 billion in emergency aid.

Amid the uproar, some rural residents worried that the damage to their livelihoods and the credibility of the Postal Service had already been done. They wondered whether they could still trust the mail to handle their packages, animals and ballots.

“I’ve always counted on the post office,” said Carrie Sparrevohn, 64, who raises merino sheep and sells wool and yarn from her ranch outside Auburn, Calif. “Now, I don’t know if I should be mailing anything.”

n Fort Benton, Mont., Leone Cloepfil, 75, started worrying about her mail in July, when her Visa payment was not delivered and she was charged a $35.04 late fee. She had to stop driving recently after the numbness in her foot got so bad that she could no longer feel the pedals, so she said she had no choice but to trust her ballot to the mail.

“I can’t say I’m 100 percent sure,” she said. “It’s a mess.”

Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat in rural Montana, has received 4,800 calls about the Postal Service since the pandemic began. One of the complaints was from a neighbor in the 600-person town of Big Sandy who ran out of medication while waiting for a refill to come in the mail. (Mr. Tester’s Republican counterpart in Montana, Senator Steve Daines, also objected to the postmaster’s new policies but did not respond to an interview request.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/us/postal-service-mail-rural.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[Leghorn21]

1. Hey Steve Daines, way to look out for your constituents

chickenshit LOSER

[Newest Reality]

2. Just thinking about...

I am just thinking about what level of cognitive dissonance the MAGATs experience from this. They really have to work harder to confirm their bias while the truth bites them in the butt.

No matter how obvious the real problems and sources are, they may lack the creativity to concoct excuses out of fealty to their Dear Leader.

From that, I would then expect a lot of seething anger from repression and frustration ready to be projected and acted out on the "enemy" de jour they have been assigned for now: Democrats, the left, liberals, et al.

Watch out for smoldering scalps and locomotive breath when you are out. Oh, and that vacant, short-circuit look punctuated by grimaces and violent spasms. They can't admit they have been rubes, marks, scammed and lead around by their nostrils like red hat livestock.

[haele]

4. There are sadly still a large number of MAGATs who would watch their parents or children die

just to "own the Libs" - it's a cult. They love whichever latest Gawd Father figure tells them it's okay to just take what they want and screw the rest. Right now, it's Trump. Next year, probably Tom Cotton, so they can claim they made a mistake with a New York Mobster, but Cotton is a righteous military man, a Gawd Warrior, on a crusade against Commies and Liberals, and those Gays, lowlife dark folks, and Foreigners (except those who talk English, have lots of money, and look like the "good" neighbors).

People make the mistake of thinking the most virulent Trump Humpers are poor, rural whites. I've found that most are actually what are called Middle Class social climbers. They make their money off other people's hard work as rentiers, financial managers, or business people who treat their business as a personal ATM, and view church membership the same way old money viewed Fraternities and civic organizations - a way to paint themselves with a veneer of respectability and to network within their own personal sphere. It's Prosperity Gospel, wrapped up in "the Power of Positive Thinking". Because if they are successful, if something bad happens to you, it must be your fault...

They don't care about their poorer or more remote members of Church or Republican party end up suffering or losing their livelihood. It was their fault for doing XYZ, and anyway, there needs to be a sacrifice for the Great God Capitalism - so long as it isn't them, personally.

Haele

[Baked Potato]

3. Admitting Trump and Republican failure

is akin to admitting their own deep and lifelong failures. They will die before that happens. In my OP about the Evangelicals never abandoning Republicans, I laid out the same mentality.