“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” Animal Farm by George Orwell is one of many banned books, and based on the excerpt above, surely you can understand why. Right?
As it was said by Andrea Junker, “If you're afraid that books might change someone's thinking, you're not afraid of books, you're afraid of thinking." This is exactly why books are being banned in American schools and public libraries.
To un-educate people and distance them from the opportunity to investigate the very real possibility that their 'country', their 'home', is becoming dystopian and totalitarian. To deprive them of the opportunity for an enlightened view of the world around them. To prevent them from coming to their own objective, educated and informed conclusions. To dull their thinking and diminish their capacity for critical thought. To hide the fact that in their land of the free, rights and liberties are being stripped away from them by those professing to know what's best for people, regardless of what the people want and deserve to have.
And censorship is part of that movement.
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dystopian: an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives.
totalitarian: relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
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Milan Kundera wrote that "The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Banning books is part of an orchestrated effort to dumb down a culture to the point of implosion, aka a rebellion by dumb people against intelligent and critical thought, with them arriving at a state where they can no longer identify the evil that's directing them towards their own demise.
Consider what's happened over the past 5 years.
"I would say that COVID 19 bought out the worst in people, but it didn't. It uncovered what has always been lurking beneath the surface - that an alarming number of humans lack critical thinking skills. More alarmingly, more and more humans are willfully foregoing thinking for a "sounds about right" attitude." (unknown)
Sound about right?
Carl Segan wrote about the dumbing down of society in America, but be assured that this 'dumbing down' is not just an American phenomena. It’s a global crisis advanced by dumb people everywhere being made famous by other dumb people, the consequence of which is a societal infection that’s outpaced any pandemic.
This from Carl Segan . . . “I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."
"The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”
And that celebration of ignorance is being held in the cemetery of banned books.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell’s classic novel about how Big Brother is always watching and the state has established near-total control over body and mind. In this book, 'the Party' manipulates people’s perception of reality, so that citizens of Oceania believe that "war is peace" and "ignorance is strength"; not dissimilar to what is happening in Russia.
Perhaps look at 'the Party' referred to in Nineteen Eighty-Four as 'the Eyes' in The Handmaid's Tale, who are the secret police of the Gileadean regime. They spy on ordinary citizens, and when they detect signs of rebellion or dissent they abduct the culprits, torture them and hand them over to be killed by hanging or Particicution.
And now consider 'Oceana' as 'Gilead'. 'Gilead' is a patriarchal society, where only men have access to higher education or the right to keep and bear arms, and only they can hold property, a job, or political positions. Women are regarded as second-class citizens as they must submit to the authority of men. They are forbidden to read or write.
Are book and abortion bans a precursor for what's in store?
As I watch from a computer screen up here in Canada, it seems obvious that none of what is now happening to our southern neighbor should be considered as far-fetched. Because its not.
Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 is a story in which the hero’s wife is surrounded by walls that are essentially TV screens, and talking heads telling her what to do and how to interpret the world.
Then there's The Handmaid's Tale, a book that's been banned in a number of states and in other countries around the world. It's author Margaret Atwood recently claimed, "To those who seek to stop young people from reading The Handmaid’s Tale: Good luck with that. It’ll only make them want to read it more."
Let's hope so.
In this story, women can't dress, read or speak as they like, and are forced to give birth.
Praise be? (read the book)
"It’s shunning time in Madison County, Virginia," said Atwood in a story in The Atlantic, "where the school board recently banished my novel The Handmaid’s Tale from the "shelves of the high-school library. I have been rendered “unacceptable.” Governor Glenn Youngkin enabled such censorship last year when he signed legislation allowing parents to veto teaching materials they perceive as sexually explicit."
"This episode is perplexing to me, in part because my book is much less sexually explicit than the Bible, and I doubt the school board has ordered the expulsion of that. Possibly, the real motive lies elsewhere. The conservative Christian group Focus on the Family generated the list of “unacceptable” books that reportedly inspired the school board’s action, and at least one member of the public felt the school board was trying to “limit what kids can read” based on religious views. Could it be that the board acted under the mistaken belief that The Handmaid’s Tale is anti-Christian?"
That said, Christianity is only one of nearly 4,000 recognized faiths around the globe, but Christianity is the one that's undeniably at the root of what's been happening in the USA.
Fatalist or a realist?
I'm not asking nor expecting anyone to share this post, but particularly if you are American and like the idea of having fundamental freedoms, you might consider taking a long hard look at what's been happening to you, and share this message with your fellow Americans.
If not, I worry that you are already allowing your would-be oppressors to take control.
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