Small Government? No, Small Minds.

Ya know, for a party that has promoted “small government” for the past, oh, close to 100 years (at least since Hoover), the Republicans sure have no fucking trouble trying to get the government to tell us what to do as long as it isn’t paying taxes, providing affordable health care, striving for racial equality, helping poor people or ensuring voting access.  The Republicans have a fascination with what we do with our own bodies (be it termination of a pregnancy, birth control, gender affirming care), who we can kiss, where we can put a penis, what sex we identify as, and who we can marry.  They  have a seriously weird obsession with drag shows and non-binary people.  They are more moved to action by what equipment we have than what we know or feel about ourselves.

This, of course, while tolerating the sexual predation of the former President, his chief advisor, formerly America’s Mayor, Mr. Guliani, and many others.  Their hypocrisy know no bounds.  Bill Clinton is evil because he got a consensual blow job, but a man who lost a civil rape case, who has gone on record about abusing other women, and once reflected on how “hot” his daughter is – well, he’s a great candidate.

The Republicans – they of “no regulation” can’t wait to impose their values by outlawing ESG (environmental, social, and governance) initiatives pursued by private and public companies.  They want to do away with diversity and inclusion actions as well, in business and in government.  But raise taxes on the rich?  Nah, too distasteful.

Republicans are also doing their best to “white wash” the history of the United States whereby slavery imparted “skills to the enslaved,” the Native Americans were aggressors, and racial discrimination and antisemitism are consigned to the past.

We know (and most Republican politicians know) that all of this is absolute nonsense designed solely to ignite culture wars, inciting those who are easily influenced and providing cover for those looking to justify their ignorance and racism.

And now, in Florida, Iowa, and other states whose governments are dominated by Republicans, we have the effort to control what can be held in public school libraries, and even public libraries . This Nazi-like, Fahrenheit 451-esque effort is just another of the tools they use to whip up the head-in-the-sand right-wingers into local action. As an example, what follows are a few of the 374 books deemed “inappropriate” for the Urbandale, IA school district.

• 1984 by George Orwell (required reading for me in high school)
• A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles (required reading for me in high school)
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman (a classic Sci-Fi story)
• Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (a cherished book for many young women)
• As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
• Beloved by Toni Morrison (winner of the Pulitzer prize for fiction)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (required reading for me in high school)
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (per Modern Library, ranked as the 7th (by review panel) and 12th (by public) greatest English-language novel of the 20th century)
• Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin (required reading for me in high school)
• I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo (since publication in 1969, this book has never been out of print)
• Maus: A Survivors Tale by Art Spiegelman
• Native Son by Richard Wright (required reading for me in high school)
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (Winner of the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and cited by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature)
• Sophie’s Choice by William Styron (Winner of the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation’s Witness to Justice Award)
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (required reading for me in high school)
• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
• The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (required reading for me in high school)
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Winner of numerous awards and nominated for many others, including the 1986 Booker Prize)
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

And of course, books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita and any other book mentioning a sex act, same-gender attraction, gender identity, sexual orientation or same-sex couples and parents, etc.  Check out the whole list here.  The list itself is shocking.

The logic here is that middle school and high school students do not and will not talk about or experiment with or wonder about sex stuff without being exposed (pardon the pun) to it by reading about it in books from the school or public library.  Without the books, they assume, no child would ever wonder about their sexuality and  certainly would not ever find themselves playing around with others (or themselves).  Nice try.

Now we know and they know that this is patently absurd.   It is 1984-type double speak.  Nobody ever became gay or trans or thought about sex acts because they read it in a book or saw a drag show.  This is the typical fucking dumb-shit fantasy stuff that created “virginity pledges,” with the attendant increase in middle- and high-school occurrence of oral and anal sex.  Stupid ideas have stupid consequences or is it that stupid games have stupid prizes?

But there is something more insidious about this list than the simple erasure of sex, sexual orientation, coming of age.  Notice how many classic books about the African American experience are banned.  Notice that Maus – a graphic novel about the Holocaust — is banned.  Novels that depict a dystopian society – Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, American Gods — are banned.  Notice that books by non-Americans are banned.

What is left on library shelves is the American, straight, white, Christian Nationalist, heterosexual edited version of literature and it is morally repugnant and wildly dangerous.  According to supporters of book bans, there is no institutionalized racism, there is no range of sexual attraction or inclination, and by God, this country was created by straight, white morally upright men and their stay-at-home adoring and faithfully supportive wives none of whom ever did harm to anyone.   

This idiotic curriculum is an attempt to brainwash our children in ways that make “being woke” look like a sneeze compared to Covid-19.

Want your children (and others’) to get an education that prepares them for real life?  Start attending school board meetings, run for school board, give your kids the books banned by their libraries and tell them that they are banned, that way they are way more likely to read them.

This is not small government. It is Big Brother.  In a Big way.  And it is Bullshit of the purest form.