At about 12 years of age, I began working for my father, loading bundles into the two delivery trucks used in his small business. This required that, first, I back the trucks down an alley and into the loading bay. Thus, I learned to drive going backward, which probably says something fundamental about me.

But even at 12, I didn’t get stuck in reverse, as today’s Republican Congress has. The GOP’s autocratic ideologues and corporate toadies are spurning hard-won, economic, social, environmental, and other progress made by generations of grassroots Americans. They are trying to drive our people back to Robber Baron rule and Jim Crow law.

Indeed, no progressive advance today escapes the wrath of the GOP’s ideological swat squad. Consider the operatic political frenzy they’re now stirring up over Post Office trucks. Yes, that ubiquitous fleet of red, white, and blue mail delivery vehicles you see on every street and rural road in America.

Those gas-powered workhorses, now 35 years old, are way overdue for replacement. Sensibly, the Postal Service is buying fuel-efficient, non-polluting, electric vehicles, which include such basics as airbags and air conditioning.

But no, squealed extreme right-wingers like Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. She condemns the very idea of a battery-powered fleet as lefty “wokeness.” So she’s demanding that Congress literally defund the purchase of EVs, forcing the Postal Service to go backward to inefficient, polluting trucks fueled by Big Oil – an industry that just happens to be a generous funder of her career.

To get a clear-eyed view of which are the best vehicles to take us way forward, don’t ask a corporate-owned ideologue; ask the postal workers who drive them. Go to apwu.com.

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