[63]

It was surprising to me just how many of the banned books have immense literary value. The Color Purple, The Handmaid's Tale, The Kite Runner, etc. aren't random books that may be a little obscene, they're literary classics. In my opinion this is what makes it obvious that these bans were made in bad faith.

[tomrod]

Absolutely.

There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.

The people supporting this political wave tend to be extremely triumphalist in their personal religious zeal, unwilling to make compromises, and are iconoclastic and disrespectful to most outside their in-group.

Much like other iconoclasts and zealots, they rely on the pluralistic principle of toleration to force the paradox of tolerance to bend their way.

It's shame - pluralism is much more invigorating and no one forces lifestyles they disagree with onto dominionists.

[SilverElfin]

> There has been an organizing current in US politics around the theology and political theory of dominionism -- that a certain set of related religions have a responsibility to take over governmental authority in order to make the law support their particular belief set so that things they view as sinful are not supported, or actively discouraged, by the legal framework.

Reading your comment, I feel like the word religion is misleading. You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology, despite it not having to do with a god, has been introduced into many layers of government and other institutions. All the things said here can be demonstrated for the religious right but also the non religious left. It’s less about religion in my opinions, and more about how politics is about winning by controlling institutions instead of supporting individual freedoms.

[atmavatar]

I challenge you to make a point-for-point, truly apples-to-apples comparison.

Fundamentally, there are a lot of Republican policies which attempt to force Christianity or at least Christian morals down our throats, whether it be forcing women to have children, or posting the ten commandments in schools and government buildings, banning pornography, or preventing gay marriage.

I'm rather curious what Democrat policies are equivalent in your mind that would make you try and "both sides" this. And I mean actual passed or proposed policies -- not just bullshit you see from Hollywood and other media.

[fc417fc802]

Should successful policy examples be a prerequisite for observations of similarities? Must the government necessarily be involved?

At minimum I feel like cancel culture ought to count.

What would the application of your test to the Chinese Cultural Revolution look like? That's a genuine question - I really am curious what your reasoning would be.

[alistairSH]

If by "progressive ideology" you mean "tolerance for people not in the in-group", then sure, but that's not a bad thing.

[tomrod]

> You see the same dynamic in how progressive political ideology

No, this is incorrect.

The cold reality is that the adherents pushing Dominionism push an unsustainable ideology, such that they would rather throw the US into religious-based fascism rather than recognize that when people are free they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants.

[fc417fc802]

That seems less an observation about the dynamics and more about particular aspects of the targeted end state. As such I don't feel such a confident claim of non-correctness is justified.

Even then, the statement "they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants" seems to apply in equal measure. The core issue here is that both major groups have ideologies that seek to impose on others.

I'll also note that your response of "no these two things are obviously different and one is not okay while the other is" is shared by the opposition. When you agree with the behaviors being imposed and the justifications for doing so it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would object.

[tomrod]

> they don't typically choose to live the precepts the adherents wants

A bit reductionist, but critically, and because you asked for clarity, Dominionists want to force others to stop doing what they don't like even though it has no impact on their life.

Easily understood if you look at the standard of medical care for many miscarriages. They are abortions.

Today in the US, abortion is mostly illegal in many states, and people have died due to liability and uncertainty that would otherwise not have died should the standard of care been followed. This is before you consider the harassment of women after receiving care.

Yet, Dominionists want it banned because their theology changed with political winds conveniently in the 1970s and they now feel strongly, even more so than your feelings-based opinion that the factual claim of non correctness is unjustified despite clear justification, that life is absolutely defined as a zygote. This is before we consider that they are also equally unwilling to help children post-birth or to adopt sound economic policies to encourage household and family formation.

Tell me, what polity or power is forcing Dominionists to receive abortions unwillingly?

Or is it that they forget that their rights end at my nose?

---------------------------------------

> I'll also note that your response of "no these two things are obviously different and one is not okay while the other is" is shared by the opposition. When you agree with the behaviors being imposed and the justifications for doing so it becomes difficult to understand why anyone would object.

You know, I hear conservatives say this all the time, but me being an old school minarchist Libertarian, I just want people to leave each other alone.

I'll note that now several times in this discussion you implicitly assert that anyone contrary to Dominionism is "progressive" (strawman designation by rightwing propaganda for outgroup, or actual political group, hard to say), and that if a specific behavior is called out, well, there must be some behavior the other party feels should be imposed on them.

No one cares about someone worshiping at their house of worship and engaging in their rituals. Not a bit. But come in and force someone else to hold their particular social club in high regard in order to engage in commerce, education, or careers? That's what Dominionists want. And it's an egregious violation of everything the US stands for to everyone outside the Dominionist camp.

------

Now, please specify what progressive philosophy or policy planks that you think Dominionists find so unappealing that they'd be willing to sacrifice the freedoms so many US service members have died for, and how that is _imposed_ on said Dominionists?

[jrs235]

Thank you. Well said.

[jrs235]

If they are, or consider themselves, libertarian they are royal libertarians (not georgists) and therefore "might makes right" and "live free" means violence. A belief in "four legs good, two legs better".

[btilly]

There is a lot of evidence that engaging emotionally with literature will shift people's values. In a way that engaging with intellectual ideas does not.

These are not just literary classics, they carry a specific culture forward. People whose values are threatened by that culture need to not engage with them. They do so by finding things to be offended by in the books. In many cases the offence is perfectly genuine. It is caused by cognitive dissonance, and not cynical manipulation.

That doesn't make it less frustrating. But understanding why people have trouble with these works helps build empathy for them. And empathy is necessary to present your points in a way that is persuasive to their views. Yelling in anger at them is easy. Actually changing their minds is far harder. And it does require trying to understand.

[nancyminusone]

I don't think changing their minds is a requirement. They are allowed to not like something, but they shouldn't be able to ban it.

[ranger207]

Well, it's both. You need to ban book bans so that you can have the conversation in the first place, but you also need to change people's mind so that book bans never come up in the first place. It's a guardrail, and ideally we're not leaning on the guardrail

[layer8]

You have to change their minds about what legitimates a ban, and about these specific things they don’t like not having the necessary legitimation. And that’s not an easy change, it needs to be grounded emotionally.

[SilverElfin]

They aren’t banning anything. You can still freely buy any of those books. They’re just changing what content public libraries spend money on. Not really much different from states deciding school curriculum.

[kashunstva]

> You can still freely buy any of those books.

And if you can’t afford to buy them, then what?

Public libraries exist to serve a public good and are not just quaint anachronistic equivalents of amazon.com

[mlinhares]

Sorry for the vocabulary here but this is bullshit. The people submitting the banned books here have stated multiple times they have never read most/all the books they have asked for banning and are being driven by lists built by political entities like Moms for America.

There is no genuine offense here, they don't even know what the books are about other than someone saying "its LGBT". It is just cynical manipulation and hate.

[btilly]

Yes. All that they know about these books is propaganda leading to outrage, and a protection that keeps their world-view from being exposed to contrary ideas.

As I said, their identity is such that they need to avoid engaging with these works to maintain it.

That doesn't mean that their outrage isn't genuine.

[nerdjon]

While I can understand the side that you are coming from. One of the biggest failures I have seen from my friends is demonizing anyone that may have voted for tump and these people, and refusing to have a conversation. Immediately labeling them as racist for example (which I don't think is necessarily untrue for many of them, but when we know there are black people that voted for Trump that argument as a blanket statement gets harder to make).

I strongly believe that for many people just doing this is causing them to dig into their heels and instead of examining themselves they are pushed to being on the defensive trying to say they are not racist, homophobic, sexist, whatever. Which is not getting us anywhere and is just making both sides angrier.

There are the extremes, people that have the power that are pushing things like this. But then there are the manipulated. Those that are being told lies and being encouraged to vote a certain why because they simply are only seeing part of the picture. Maybe they don't have exposure to the world. Whatever.

While I do respect someone's right to protect their own mental health and not want to engage in a conversation with many of these people, these conversations do need to happen. I truly believe that the majority of people are nowhere near as vile as those in power right now are. So we need to understand why they are enabling them.

That being said...

It is a very fine line. Too much empathy can lead to them thinking that this is ok, there does need to be some force in a push back against what is happening right now. Pushing back on the misinformation that is causing many people to hold these views.

So yes we can try to understand where these views are coming from without giving them weight as being valid.

[amanaplanacanal]

I can totally understand that they are being manipulated. I still have no interest in trying to de-program them. Cut them off, and let them live with their choices. They'll either figure it out eventually, or they won't.

People who are trying to harm my friends and family don't deserve any of my time and effort.

[nerdjon]

I completely respect a personal choice of doing that, I mean I don't particularly want to engage with many of them either. Especially not when I can expect that I am going to likely be called a particular F word (I am a gay man).

My biggest issue is not the lack of contact, it is the demonizing. Using blanket terms like "if you voted for trump your racist, homophobic, sexist, etc" when I just simply don't think that is a valid blanket statement and is really just a "feel good" statement for us to justify not hearing why they might have done something.

I do think that we are actively pushing them to be more extreme with blanket statements like this and it isn't not actually helping.

We can keep calling them names all we want but the fact is they are still voters that are enabling what we all have to deal with. Either we acknowledge that or we just keep repeating the same pattern we have been repeating since at least the 70's. A little bit of progress followed by a regression.

[ranger207]

It's a prisoner's dilemma, or tragedy of the commons, or whatever-scenario-where-the-best-plan-is-coordinated-action-but-it's-difficult-for-individuals-to-do-so. Yeah a gay man shouldn't have to go to court to defend his marriage, but society's made up of individuals and their actions, and somebody's got to perform that action

[btilly]

They might not deserve it, but they will take rather more of your time and effort if you don't try to exert it until after ICE is breaking down doors and disappearing your friends and family without due process.

[FireBeyond]

I agree. I had this argument here previously, that I supposedly "owe" it to "the other side" to listen to their arguments (in this case on abortion).

No, I don't. Not when the other side just openly uses lies (that they know to be lies) like "post-birth abortion" to argue their cause.

They're not discussing things in even a modicum of good faith. Saying that I have some moral imperative to engage with them as if they are is horseshit.

[nobody9999]

>No, I don't. Not when the other side just openly uses lies (that they know to be lies) like "post-birth abortion" to argue their cause.

Absolutely. Although I'd point out that in many states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump, those on the "other side" (you know, our fellow Americans), often by large majorities, rejected abortion bans in their states after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

So it's not really as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Yes, there are absolutely those who despise the idea of the agency of women, and there are absolutely those who exploit that for monetary and political gain.

But a majority of Americans don't and even many of those who aren't on board could be persuaded to a live and let live position.

Politics is, after all, "the art of the possible." If we just demonize and "other" anyone who doesn't specifically agree with us, then nothing is possible -- only dysfunction and hate. That's not a world I want to live in.

[tremon]

[flagged]

[rmah]

To me, it's disheartening to see this sort of knee-jerk reaction to the grandparent posting (and to see that post be down-voted). What btilly wrote is not a defense, it's reasonable and, more importantly, practical advice in combating tyranny. Moreover, IMO, if you actually want to reduce or put an end to tyranny, you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy. Empathy is not agreement, it's not sympathy, it is understanding. Screaming at others that they're bad people will not change anything. If anything, IMO, it causes them to dig their heels and makes change harder.

[bilbo0s]

[flagged]

[1659447091]

>> you need to understand the root causes for the desires of your opponents. That's empathy.

> Um, what we used to call that in the Marines, was "intel". Not "empathy". And that designation of the information you outlined made us surprisingly effective at combating opponents.

This is the important part. Understanding "the root causes for the desires of your opponents" is not empathy. It's understanding something.

Empathy is a relating to anothers plight. If you only understand it then there is nothing to cause pause before using that understanding to your advantage. It's a core part manipulation and deception. If the only thing that happened with that understanding is seeing what you can get from it or that there is nothing you want there or have use for, then that doesn't really help bring two sides together.

Having the ability to relate to this understanding of another is when empathy happens. It's the empathy that gives one pause long enough to see there are other options that are not zero-sum.

> No need to have empathy for anyone who doesn't have empathy for others.

Disagree. Just because someone else can not relate -- now -- does not mean they can not later. I personally don't care for tit-for-tat games, thats simply a race to the bottom. Boundaries are the things missing here; one can have empathy for another that does not have it for them, that doesn't mean you also have to have a bleeding heart for them and let them walk all over you.

[Anonbrit]

You can have radical empathy with somebody while standing against and fighting every single thing they stand for. Indeed empathy /helps/ you fight better, because you can begin to fight root causes rather than fighting symptoms, and help people heal rather than just shouting them down.

You as an individual are not required to do this if you don't want to, but if a movement wants to be successful then a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success.

To have empathy with a view is not condoning it

[tremon]

Indeed. But demanding empathy as the only valid a counter-strategy is, which is what the GP was doing. Appeasement doesn't work if your opponent isn't following the rulebook.

From my point of view, you don't reason with immature children, you give them a time-out. You don't hand them weapons of mass destruction.

[LexiMax]

The sort of understanding the GP is promoting doesn't have to be used empathetically.

It can also be used on bad faith actors by giving you better avenues of winning over the audience - which is the only real point of continuing a conversation with one.

[wizzwizz4]

Correct: but giving them a thousand timeouts doesn't help, if you still need to give the thousand-and-first. It mitigates the immediate problem, but it also ties up your resources. Eliminating the problem at its root, if that's possible, is a more effective strategy: if we can take away the ability for the real bad actors to get loyal followers, by learning how to change those followers' minds, they won't have anywhere near as much power.

[kelseyfrog]

Exactly. The distal cause is that the Compromise of 1877 halted an unfinished Reconstruction. What I'm calling for is simple - the natural and final conclusion of Reconstruction. It might be 148 years late, but it's the antidote to the disease.

[btilly]

We live in a democracy. In a democracy, you don't get to deny people the vote simply because you view them as children. And, sadly, these "children" have around half the votes.

If you are personally not capable of attempting empathy, that's fair. As I said, it is frustrating and hard. But a political culture where nobody attempts empathy is what has allowed grifters playing up the resulting culture war to gain political power, and put themselves in a position to aim for a dictatorship. If everyone keeps doing the same old, same old, the totalitarian outcome is guaranteed.

I'll make this concrete. Right now, many in Trump's base are dissatisfied with the handling of the Epstein affair. As much as you may disagree with a random Republican, the odds are that your differences are not as important right now than winding up united against the idea of an authoritarian pedophile running the country. But if the only emotion that they get is anger about all of the areas where there is disagreement, they won't have anywhere to go but back to Trump.

Is that outcome really what you think is best?

[accrual]

> a degree of empathy with those who are resisting the movement is likely necessary for success

A great salesperson I learned from would often say something like "don't fight the resistance, join the resistance" with the implication that one must see through the other party's eyes before you can have a chance to really affect them. One must make them feel heard and understood rather than fought against.

[lern_too_spel]

We live in a democracy. If the majority does something stupid, you have to convince them to stop doing that stupid thing. This means understanding how they came to do the stupid thing to begin with.

[vpribish]

he's proposing that outrage is not the best way to oppose them - that we can be more clever and effective by knowing the enemy

[tremon]

But the GP didn't even identify the enemy correctly, so all that effort would be wasted. The people they're describing are mere tools, only required because of the existing democratic processes in the country. The enemy are the (insert your favourite label here) at the top of the media and political landscape pulling the strings. And I guarantee you, they aren't quite so bothered by the imagery in those books as they are bothered by freedom of thought in general. They are bothered by people that dare to speak truth to power. They are not bothered by appeasement strategies such as we people trying to understand the other people they've pitted against us.

[btilly]

No, I've identified the enemy perfectly well.

The actual enemy only has power because useful fools are willing to follow them. Treating those useful fools as enemies is a key part of the dynamic that grants the actual enemy power.

I am advocating learning how to talk with those useful fools, and assist them in finding paths away from being the power base for the actual enemy.

[tremon]

I understand where you're coming from. But I also think that you're wasting a lot of effort in talking to those useful fools while they're still drinking from the social media and faux news firehose. And that's by design -- you are meant to expend your energy on that asymmetric (and in my view unwinnable) battle, so that you leave the actual policymakers alone.

(sidenote: I said "tools", as in they're disposable means to an end. I'm not sure if you called them fools because you misread my comment or you switched to that term to try and placate me).

edit: actually, I think that my sidenote goes to the core of our disagreement. In your view, there are 77M battles to fight and if you manage to win just a few percent of those to your side, things can be stopped. In my view, 95% of those voters no longer matter. The party is now in power and has full control over all branches of government and media. There is no way they will relinquish power over such a minor technical detail as an election. They only need a few million jackboots to maintain the status quo, the rest is disposable.

[nobody9999]

>Did the people pursuing these bans consider having empathy with the people who value these books, and try to understand why they value them?

>Stop defending tyranny.

I think you miss GP's point. It's not that they support such book bans or the ideology that encourages that and other anti-democratic (small 'd') nastiness. Rather it's the old saw that 'you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (balsamic vinegar excepted).'

While there are many who are callous, cruel pieces of shit, there are more who live (without their knowledge or consent -- cf. rural broadcast media landscape, online bubbles, etc.) in an "information" environment that promotes such stuff as "godly" and "American" and "freedom", when that's not even close to the truth.

Which is clear from the book bans, the ridiculous "anchor babies" trope, the Democrats are all communists and on and on and on.

Yes, folks who actively foment this stuff and cynically (or even genuinely) fight to reduce liberty need to be resisted. Strongly and loudly.

But if you adopt those folks' "othering" tactics, you devalue everyone who doesn't specifically agree with you and everything you believe as evil and unredeemable, you remove a key opportunity for education, positive experience and persuasion.

Will that work for everyone? Absolutely not. But we don't need everyone, just the ones who are honest and fair-minded. And those can certainly be those who disagree with you.

If you exclude the radical reactionaries, bigots and cynical scum who seek to profit from promoting such ideas, the majority of all of us agree about much more than we disagree.

Perhaps that's something we all should ruminate on.

[alkyon]

I don't know if this was bad faith or not, but honestly, you need to be a bigoted retard to ban Slaughterhouse-Five of all the things.

The side effect of this is that some literary classics will enjoy a brief surge in popularity among young people.

[m463]

Sometimes I kind of wonder if putting important books on the list would be a measured way to overturn broken or unjust laws.

Sort of like adding "Common Sense", "The Grapes of Wrath" or "The Pentagon Papers", etc.

[shepherdjerred]

Wow, I can't believe The Handmaid’s Tale was on the list. That book is excellent and not offensive at all

[AntiEgo]

It's offensive to the people who are trying to build the Republic of Gilead.

[insane_dreamer]

Those three were banned? wtaf

[TimTheTinker]

> they're literary classics

Reasonable people wouldn't ask to get these book banned. What if people colluding with the publishers got them banned as part of a larger strategy?

I have no evidence to support that hypothesis; it's just very odd for literary classics to have been banned.

[skrebbel]

It's standard Trumpian negotiation. Ban lots of books, outrage ensues, courts get involved, some books get unbanned. But not all!

[dfxm12]

Also par for the course: lots of wasted taxpayer money.

[zeroonetwothree]

I don’t think Trump was directly involved in this law? We don’t need to invoke his name merely as an epithet.

[skrebbel]

It’s… just the common name for this way of getting things done (as far as I know at least). Propose something preposterous, so drama ensues and it gets watered down, but in the end you still get more than you would’ve otherwise.

I believe the term got popular around the time Trump got his wall by saying he was going to make Mexico pay for it. Suddenly nobody questioned the sanity of building a wall anymore, the entire narrative was about whether or not he’d get Mexico to pay.

[burnte]

[flagged]

[dfxm12]

[flagged]

[thewileyone]

They don't want to have to pay royalties to Margaret Atwood when they implement the handmaids headgear.

[AlexandrB]

> They've been transparent about their desires to censor media.

100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".

I don't really know who to vote for to stop stuff like this. No political party seems to be on the side of a principled defence of freedom of speech. Instead it's always about censoring your opponents and their ideas while you're in power.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl_revision_controvers...

[Fezzik]

Note one massive difference: nobody was trying to make a law that Dahl’s books be sanitized or running around to libraries and getting his books banned. That was a publisher taking unilateral action changing works they own (for better or worse). I see a massive difference between the two things.

[FateOfNations]

It was even done in consultation with the Dahl estate/family, although they choose to ignore Roald Dahl's professed opinions about editing his works.

[jeffwask]

Additionally, a lot of the language was very out of date with racists and discriminatory undertones so parents had stopped buying the books. It was driven by the market because if they didn't adjust the content to adhere to what parents expect in children's literature today the stories and moral lessons would be lost to the dustbin of history and merely interesting historical artifacts.

I would regularly see stories on Reddit where someone was gifted one of the more borderline Dahl novels and they binned it rather than giving it their child. I'm sure their internal metrics were painting a similar picture.

That's bad for business. It wasn't change for social justice. It was change or watch your IP die and everyone involved still wanted the money.

[belorn]

The problem with censorship is in general never about any specific application of it, but rather the principle. When censorship becomes culturally acceptable, self censorship and political polarization follows as a natural consequence.

The massive difference between government censorship and private cooperation censorship is unlikely to effect how people feel and react to it.

[antifa]

TIL that giving book buyers the choice between the classic uncensored version of a book and a revised version of a book with blatant antisemitism removed, a choice provided by a book publisher, is an example of the Democrats being almost as bad as Republicans.

[omnimus]

Don't forget one is state censorship and other is independent private entity that (in the land of the free) can do absolutely what it wants if it holds the copyright.

[nwallin]

> 100% agree, but what's frustrating is that "the left" are not much better. We get things like the rewriting[1] of Roald Dahl's books based on the feedback from "sensitivity readers".

You realize that's significantly better, right? Like at least two orders of magnitude better?

In one case, the copyright holder of Roald Dahl's books decided to censor (incorrectly, I agree) their own books which they own the copyright to. That's a private organization doing a stupid thing, making their own content worse. A private organization censoring their own words. No elected officials or persons appointed by elected officials were involved.

In the other case, the government is unilaterally deciding to withhold information from the public. The government is censoring other people's words.

You realize how that's not even remotely similar, right? "The left" is way better on this one.

[ndriscoll]

Without commenting on what's better or worse, note that the copyright holders are not censoring their own words. They're censoring the words of someone who died decades ago in books that are several generations old, and it's the government that says no one else is allowed to publish the originals. Granting exclusive rights to publish and modify the works several generations after they were written is government censorship. In this case the censored books become completely illegal to publish as well rather than simply unavailable in government libraries.

(Feel free to substitute the situation with Dr Seuss books if Dahl isn't a fit because that organization also publishes originals, but even if the originals were still available, derived works are also censored)

[archagon]

Except these revisions were driven by the publisher and not the Democratic party, as far as I can tell. An entirely different scenario.

[jrs235]

Anything not aligned and christened by the MAGA movement is considered left/woke/Democratic Party/etc. which means it's bad until they change their minds and adopt it, if they ever do.

[thrance]

More stupid bothseideism.

Surely the Dahl's family censoring their own books is on progressives, and it's equally as bad as Republicans trying to overthrow an election, send the troops after protesters, build concentration camps on national territory, ban books, revoke women's rights to abortion, revoke civil rights...

[add-sub-mul-div]

It does matter and it is not a minor detail that the left is acting to help people and the right is acting to hurt people. You can always disagree with what the left does, but the left and the right are nowhere near equivalent in the big picture that actually matters.

[kbelder]

It's indicative of a broken world view if you believe you can help people by censoring speech.

[hofrogs]

It's not indicative of a "broken world view" at all. There are already laws against defamation, running afoul of those would lead to your speech being censored to help the victim of defamation, for example. This logic can be extended with care.

[acdha]

That apparent problem goes away once you recognize that you’re using the word “censor” incorrectly in one case to draw a false equivalency. In the case of the right-wing behaviour discussed here, “censor” is the correct word because the term refers to an official use of power to prevent something considered politically incorrect or obscene from being available even though the publisher, librarians, and reader all thought they should be accessible.

In the case of the Dahl revisions, there is no official power being used to suppress individual preference. The publisher decided they wanted better sales for an older item, realized that things like anti-Semitism were unappealing to modern audiences, and created a new edition of their own property. Every part of that process was entirely voluntary and nobody’s purchased property is affected in any way – quite unlike the right-wing telling libraries to remove books with significant literary value which their patrons want to read.

[ranger207]

Yeah, both parties are becoming more authoritarian. IMO the solution is a different voting system than first-past-the-post that allows multiple parties to exist to force different political factions to interact with each other and compromise. But until then though I'm going to vote for the lesser of two evils, since under FPTP not voting at all would not be acting against the greater of two evils.

[Guid_NewGuid]

Evidence for the Republican party becoming more authoritarian:

- attempted illegal book bans

- suppression of right to protest and free speech on university campuses with lawfare

- US citizens being black bagged and deported to foreign concentration camps without due process and against court rulings

- deploying the army to the states unconstitutionally

- continued gerrymandering over the ruling of state supreme courts (Ohio)

Evidence for the Democratic party becoming more extreme:

- ... I'm struggling to think of an example, maybe you hold that prosecution of violent insurrectionists and their ring leader, the current president, was political extremism and authoritarian, but one would be so far detached from the reality-inhabiting community if so I don't know what to tell you.

[bilbo0s]

I've been saying since Clinton when it started to become clear, that liberals and conservatives will eventually kill the ideals of this Republic. (And not only the ideals expressed in the First.) They've been chipping away for long enough that they now believe it is safe for them to chop.

These people are all dangerous in the extreme. It's just that the conservatives have unmasked themselves and displayed the extreme danger they represent to our ideals in the US in a far more open fashion than liberals.

[shlant]

I might have given a shred of charitability to you if you said "far more open fashion than the left." but the fact that you said "liberals" tells me I shouldn't take your political perspective seriously

[omnimus]

So “I would take your politics seriously if it aligned with mine”? I am afraid that whole point of politics is finding compromise with people who you don't agree.

[shlant]

it has nothing to do with alignment of politics, it's that your description of reality is so wrong that it would be difficult to seriously engage

[acdha]

It’s more about good versus bad faith: you can compromise with people who are willing to be honest, but that isn’t possible when someone is redefining terms or contradicting all available evidence to make their position work. That commenter was conflating two very different sets of activities to smear liberals, implying that they somehow know someone else’s true intention even though that contrasts with their actions and public statements.

[bigfishrunning]

Yes, extremely bad faith. These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity, but they're not obscene.

[zozbot234]

> These books are upsetting, and show a very ugly side of humanity

Funnily enough, that's exactly what "obscene" means in popular parlance. On the other hand, the legal standard for what should be considered obscene is so inherently uncertain and varies so much across time and place that it's just meaningless to say anything that purports to be definitive about that.

[throwanem]

No, it isn't. The modern standard of obscenity in US federal law, the "Miller test," derives from a 1973 Supreme Court ruling in the eponymous Miller v. California.

I realize you're referring to some universal abstract theoretical concept of obscenity that doesn't apply or exist. The one I describe does, and I think that makes it more useful here.

[zeroonetwothree]

The Miller test doesn’t apply to content for minors though. So even here you are oversimplifying. Especially considering this post is about school.

[throwanem]

You're quite correct that the Miller test makes no such provision, because as another commenter here has noted, it is too general to require one.

Here is the text of the relevant decision, in case anyone would like to discuss that. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/413/15

[ethbr1]

Why not? All three parts of the Miller test can be tailored to average reader age.

[gosub100]

I'm frankly surprised that kids read books at all. With video games and smartphones and all this attention-draining junk, I would like to see how many books are actually read per 100 kids per month. I would be surprised if it even runs into the double digits.

[bryanlarsen]

Outliers skew averages. I know a couple of kids that read dozens of books per month.

[nilamo]

No bans are needed at all then. If "nobody" reads, then "bad" books can't hurt anyone.

[burnt-resistor]

Flood the zone with christofascist, orthodoxy propaganda in almost every public and private distribution channel people interact with since birth, and no compliant rule-followers will dare to read those "filthy", "un-Christian" books. The problem of opposition will be reduced to a small cadre of intelligent and curious people who dare to question approved ideas.. they are usually the first to be lined up against the wall when totalitarian regimes come to power. At some point in the past, I would've been half joking, but this doesn't seem so unfathomable anymore.

[gosub100]

Thank you for seeing my point. This is about leftist ideological worship vs christian spiritual worship. Two tribes trying to one-up each other.

[whimsicalism]

it doesn’t matter whether kids read books, all that matters is parents and how they vote.

also stats on book reading are notoriously cooked, look at how many books publishers claim the median American reads.

[makeitdouble]

> attention-draining junk

To put it plainly, this attitude is probably the main reason reading books is sometimes labelled as an elitist poser passtime.

Kids will enjoy reading books that are genuinely good, but they need to care about the subject in the first place and they'll come for more on their own term. Focusing on the numbers ("X books per months") or denigrating the other things they also enjoy solely based on the format will just signal no shit is given about the actual content.

[terminalshort]

Why limit it to kids? My brain and attention span is so rotted from the internet that I find it immensely difficult these days too.

[Der_Einzige]

Most good books are subversive towards the goals of education. I couldn't believe when they unironically asked me to read "Pedegogy of the Oppressed" and than tried to give grades on it.

Trying to give grades to kids for Oscar Wilde's work is fully against the spirit of his thinking. Trying to grade kids for a whole lot of modern "classics" also goes against the spirit of their thinking. Joyce was too busy writing horny smut to be a supporter of literary analysis of his work.

But more seriously, most young adult fiction is pretty low quality. I cringe pretty hard when I look back at what that genre had us reading at the time. Percy Jackson and Eoin Colfer are poster children for the millennial brain rot that ended our collective love of YAF. We are a far cry from the high point it hit under the excellent writing of a certain Brian Jacques

[philistine]

I got an A for reading Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six. I turned out ok, I read proper historians writing about horrific events, and my writing abilities are above average.

Properly defining how we educate children is tough.

[moritzruth]

What's wrong with Percy Jackson? What YA books can you recommend?

[piltdownman]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you seem unfamiliar with Wilde's work or his stated position on criticism - i.e. that only critical faculty enables any artistic creation at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Critic_as_Artist

Joyce's penchant for scatology in no way diminishes his canon's suitability for engagement via critical theory. If anything, the poststructuralist interdisciplinary approach is as natural a bedfellow for the interpretation of Ulysses of Finnegan's Wake as one could hope for.

To demean Eoin Colfer is another interesting hill to die on (Darren Shan?). Benny and Omar is a fantastic debut novel and a great introduction to class and cultural distinctions in the Islamic world as viewed through the eyes of a surly western teenager. The Artemis Fowl debut as well is a perfectly inoffensive fresh IP with an interesting take on putting a cyberpunk spin on Irish Mythology - although marred somewhat by an appalling cinematic adaptation.

To then cite Brian Jacques as a high-point, ploughing a furrow as he does in the foothills of mid-brow K-12 readership, only suggests to me somebody completely unfamiliar with the canons of Terry Pratchett or Philip Pullman. In any case, you seem to be conflating Young Adult Fantasy with the rich and well populated canon of Young Adult Fiction.

[TimTheTinker]

> these bans were made in bad faith

It's possible that the worst of these bans were done in strategic bad faith in partnership with the plaintiffs: to provide standing and legal cause for the plaintiffs to sue.

There may have been bans made that were reasonable but politically one-sided (perhaps an illustrated kamasutra, just to give an example), and the strategy to re-establish them was a sort of reverse motte-and-bailey -- get things that are far more innocent banned in a bid to sue and reverse all bans.

[rideontime]

A lot of things are "possible." Do you have any evidence to support this version of events?

[TimTheTinker]

Nothing specific. But generally, recent politics makes me believe that any "possible" version of events is an acceptable hypothesis to consider, no matter how egregious (and I mean this regardless of someone's political leaning).

Those with any form of power in very large measure (money, fame, political power, influence) ought not to be trusted implicitly.

[rideontime]

A simple "no" would have sufficed.