I’m old enough to remember when liberals saw looming Christian theocracy as the most pernicious threat to liberal values, and when banning books was the single most horrible manifestation of that tendency that they could imagine. Now that we’re in the early days of the establishment of a woke theocracy, they’re eagerly looking for more books to throw on the cultural bonfire. Look out, The Cat in the Hat. There’s a fable promoting Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax that’s eager to take your place.
Out of curiosity, I went around some of the big book sites, most of which I quit reading in disgust years ago, to see if they had any comments about recent developments in the world of book-banning, namely, Ryan Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally being removed from Amazon, and of course, the controversy over six of Dr. Seuss’s books no longer being published due to “offensive” imagery (and furthermore, no longer allowed for sale on eBay). Surely, the woke MFA grads who pollute these sites aren’t naïve enough to imagine that this kind of monopoly power will always be in their hands, do they? Surely, even they can see how shortsighted it is to celebrate the disappearance of books for violating ideological etiquette? Surely, they won’t pass up a golden opportunity to attack Amazon again? Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. ArtsJournal? Nothing. The Rumpus? Nada. The Millions? Nope. I only found one brief reference to the Seuss case at LitHub, which might as well have been a shrug. Who cares if some “problematic” or “hurtful” books disappear? Well, pace Charles Péguy, we know full well what acts of cowardice are being committed for fear of looking insufficiently progressive. We’re looking at them right now.