In the Terry Pratchett books, it’s the Dwarves who are horrified when words are erased.
I think I know Pratchett well enough to know that if Tennessee were in Discworld, there would have been a riot a few nights ago. Vimes would have called everybody in. Detritus would have been there with his Piece Maker crossbow, Cheri in her chainmail skirt, iron helmet and lethal boots, her trusty axe ready in her hands. Carrot probably would have talked sense into them, though. Everybody would have shaken hands and gone home feeling rather sheepish and silly, and the Watch would have toasted marshmallows at the great bonfire.
It’s unbelievable to me that people are actually burning books. That they are so terrified of knowledge, of ideas, of anything that might create a crack in their oh so carefully controlled population, that they set fire to books. Never have the book burners been regarded as heroes. And gods forbid they ever are.
I was raised in a reading household. I had access to any book I could want. My parents would never say no if I asked for books. My dad was a voracious reader of banned books – I think we owned copies of most of the books ever banned in ‘Murika up to that time – and encouraged me to read them. He had Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, which was amazing start to finish, and we’d have lively discussions about what was in there, oh boy didn’t we just. My belief that organized religion is a crock of propaganda started early … good times, good times.
So yes, if you are a small-minded, terrified person who wants Order and Control over All The Things, books are terrifyingly powerful weapons. I totally get why those people want to keep those books away from their kids. They literally feel unsafe around books. They are genuinely terrified that their children will read those books and reject the teachings of Jesus immediately and with no possibility of redemption, and they won’t ever meet them in heaven.
The brainwashing is astonishing.
I want to storm and rage and hit people when I see books burning. But I can’t because I have known those people, and I know that their primary driver is fear. Fear of the vengeance of the White Male God they claim loves them unconditionally – although I’m not sure that word means what they think it means. Obey my utterly incomprehensible code of archaic immutable laws without question and I won’t … set a plague of locusts upon all the houses in your village? Sure, big fella.
We’re officially on the ugly side of the pendulum swing now. It’s been headed this way a while, and a lot of us seriously thought it couldn’t possibly get worse than this, okay worse than this, jesus okay worse than this, but … it just keeps going. But it will come to the end of it’s swing and start back toward the side of enlightenment, beauty, love, truth, and justice. Wait, have we ever even been all the way over there in the entire history of this country? Damn, y’all. I don’t actually know.
No matter what the pendulum us doing, book burning should be a giant red flag that things have gone quite far enough and need to stop.
I spent a large chunk of my life being yelled at and gaslit so I know how the game is played. Keep them stressed, confused, exhausted, overwhelmed, afraid, and convince them they are badly broken and unable to function, and that you are the only hope they have of living a stable, normal life. Oh, it is to laugh, I know. Stable and normal? That is the opposite of what life is with those gaslighting asshats, wowzers. But when you are broken down far enough, you can’t see past the Wall of Control, and you are kept isolated from people who might be inclined to give you any alternative ideas. The gaslighters have it all figured out, from the sleep deprivation to the constant bitching and guilt-tripping to the never-ending accusations that you have to defend yourself from. It’s a daily onslaught. How do they have the time?
It’s so far past exhausting it can’t be described. That’s why it’s so hard to break out of it. The exhaustion and the brain fog and the guilt.
This is what we’re up against. Not just willful ignorance. We’re up against generations of people who have been terrorized, gaslit, and crushed on the daily. We have to be ready to stand with those who are desperate to break out. We have to hold a safe space for them to heal in. This should be part of any critical plan to stop this, to provide sanctuary for those looking to get out. Some need safe houses and police protection, but most just need a safe place to get the strength and encouragement to think the unthinkable, because once that genie is on the loose you are never gonna get them back in that bottle.
We don’t have to do the unbrainwashing – nor should we attempt it if we are not trained and qualified to do that delicate and sensitive work. But we can be examples, we can live our fullest and most sovereign lives, we can provide models of how to support each other, all while being uncompromisingly ourselves, hiding nothing. In other words, we have to normalize kindness, compassion for strangers, intellectual curiosity, and personal responsibility for our energetic and eternal selves. It’s so easy to be mean, so hard to care about someone you’ve never met, so practiced to go straight to “(father) god fearing.” I’m too much pantheist to be afraid of god – I’d never be able to get out of bed! But the idea that everything is beautiful and nothing hurts is just so foreign and terrifying to some people that they can’t get past it in order to live the fullest life possible.
We are beacons; let us shine in the darkness, and perhaps be mistaken for guiding stars.