Certain folks in Congress have gone after a most unlikely target, and they have almost succeeded in doing it in.

What is this terrible, horrible organization that they hate so much?

The post office.You know, the place where you meet your neighbors. The service that allows you to send packages for small change instead of the private companies’ higher prices. The place that employs that nice person who slips the mail through your mail slot—the guy who in winter waits to deliver your oranges until you are home so your oranges won’t freeze sitting outside your door.

The place that people are afraid might go away, making their lives less convenient and less happy.

The place that has the words “United States” attached to it. Weirdly, the words “United States” attached to an entity sends certain self-professed patriots into a frenzy of complaint. It is also possible that since a union is involved, it is seen as even more scurrilous.

My neighbors fear that this pogrom on the post office will take out needed, inexpensive, convenient, walk-to services in downtown Boston neighborhoods. Rural communities are also worried, and for some of them it is more serious in that getting to a post office still functioning would require a long drive.

So far the post offices are still in business, but it is not certain for how long. “Auditors” made visits to the facilities in the last month. Rumors have been flying around as to the result of the audits. What seems certain is that the numbers of employees in each office will be reduced. It’s not the worst thing in the world because it’s while standing in line that people talk with their neighbors. But making lines longer is another subtle, purposeful frustration that reduces support in some quarters. Over the next few years, as long as the make-up of Congress stays the same, post offices are in jeopardy.

The post office has lost business due to the Internet, but it still would work perfectly fine if the strange Congress we have now hadn’t made it play by draconian rules no other entity has to endure, such as overfunding its pension, restricting its ability to add business services and making it prepay health insurance for its employees. It could raise prices, since stamps are about the cheapest things anyone can buy. It could move some rural post offices into a local store or other such business. But this strange Congress said it had to approve those moves too. The message has been clear—put on so many rules on the USPS that it has no hope of succeeding.

These rules make sure that only private businesses like UPS and Fedex remain. UPS and Fedex are good businesses that provide such supplemental mail services as private pick-up and repeated attempts at delivery. This is fine too.

But in the rush to put all our services into private hands, Congress has ignored what private hands look like. The airlines? One would think congressmen and women would have flown enough to see how unpleasant and inadequate a private business can be. Or wasteful: Brian McGrory’s exposé of the excessive salaries and embarrassing high-flying perks at Liberty Mutual in his Boston Globe column has shown us what “well-governed” private companies look like, and it is wasteful and scary, and filled with the corporate version of welfare queens living expensively on policy holders’ funds.

We should support well-run, honest, private businesses providing us with good products and services with zest and infrastructure. But we still need services only the “United States” can provide.

For those of you who still think government should be supplanted with private companies, I’ll recommend a book, “Cloud Atlas,” by David Mitchell. This futuristic novel imagines what happens when government cede power to corporations. Hope you enjoy it.