At some point last week somewhere in Tennessee I've never heard of, and will in all likelihood never visit, a decision was made to ban a book intended for eighth-graders about the Holocaust because of language (a character in the story, which is entirely mice and cats by the way, because it's an allegory) says 'damn' and because of nudity. Here's the graphic novel, I call it a book, that frightens adults. Boo!
The same logic from the same people who grow faint at the mention of Critical Race Theory without ever expending any intellectual energy in understanding what it is or why the hell everyone in the United States should have some basic grasp of how we got here. If you want to get folks clutching their pearls, talk about The 1619 Project, but since it will help your argument to have some information on what it is and what it is not, you can read it here. Forearmed is forewarned.
We were once the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, willing to talk about anything with anyone at any time, 'my country right or wrong; if right, to be kept right if wrong to be made right,' and give you the (Carl) Schurz off our backs, but we've retreated to our own informational biospheres now where nothing that could threaten or upset our perspective is ever allowed to permeate the membrane of mistrust we've constructed for ourselves.
We blame 'fake news,' 'malevolent social media,' 'bad science,' 'faulty leaders,' but never ourselves. And then we wonder why we are afraid of tomorrow.
-bill kenny
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