Please Mr. Postman

In the 1960s and 70s, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover kept extensive files on John Lennon for his supposed un-American activities. So I find it deliciously ironic that Lennon now has his likeness on a US postage stamp, while Hoover does not. With time, we often forget how even immensely popular figures like Lennon or Martin Luther King Jr. were treated with suspicion and hostility in their own time. Which widely vilified public figures of today will end up on postage stamps in a few decades? Colin Kaepernick? Stephen Miller? It all depends on what happens between now and then. This assumes, of course, that we’ll still be sending letters to one another in something called the USA. The promise is printed right there on the stamp, underneath the smiling lad from Liverpool, the one who wrote “imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.” Imagine how he might feel about being a posterboy for the slogan “USA Forever.” You say you want a revolution? Well, you know …