THE LIBRARIANS

THE LIBRARIANS, a 2025 film, chronicles the Christian Nationalist book banning and threats against librarians, causing many to flee Republican states for their lives. 

SURVIVAL IN A PREDATORY SOCIETY

By my calculations, only one one hundredth of one percent of Americans engage in holding their local government accountable on a regular basis, as opposed to the occasional event. Even if my calculations are off by a decimal point, that's darn few people doing research, education, and community organizing as part of their duty as citizens. Non-profits that fundraise on social themes but don't deliver don't count.

Shirking that duty are the other 99.99 % or so who are preoccupied with consumerism. We don't need social scientists to tell us that this is a dysfunctional society, incapable of benign change, or even the comprehensive understanding required for survival in a predatory society such as the United States.

ERA OF EXTINCTION

At a time when denial and depression are dominant, rootless Americans are still looking backwards at imaginary golden eras of discursive monoculture, when what is needed is vision for survival in the era of extinction. 

TWO SARAHS

During the 1692-93 Salem witch trials, over 200 people were accused. Thirty people were found guilty, nineteen of whom were executed by hanging. One man died under torture, and five people died in the disease-ridden jails without trial. Three Sovereigns for Sarah about one of the accused whose two sisters were executed, tells the story of how Sarah Cloyce cleared her own and her sisters names after petitioning the Province of Massachusetts Bay. 

In 2008, U.S. Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s plan for Palestine was “incineration.” The first step in Palin's religion calls for all Jews in the world to be coerced to emigrate to Israel. The second step is to support the State of Israel in committing genocide against the Palestinians. The third step is for the US to instigate nuclear holocaust in Israel thereby incinerating all Jews (agents of Satan) and bringing on the Apocalypse. Palin’s followers believe she was anointed for this task by God, and discussed the necessity of assassinating her GOP running mate John McCain if he interfered with Palin’s plan. 

In 2009, at Barack Obama's inauguration, the invocation was read by homophobic, anti-abortion pastor Rick Warren. In 2013, the acclaimed documentary God Loves Uganda — which depicts the role of American conservative evangelicals (Warren’s proteges) in generating vicious anti-gay campaigns there — premiered in New York. In 2017, U.S. Ambassador to the UN — Nikki Haley — voted against a resolution condemning the death penalty for LGBTQ people.

FASCISM FLASHBACK

 

Editor,

During World War II, there was a publication called “Army Talk” sent out to soldiers in the field to inform them of different subjects. The one from March 24, 1945, was titled “Fascism.”

It starts with: “You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives because of a thing called fascism.”

Also from the first page: “Fascism is the precise opposite of democracy. People run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

On the fourth page, under “How can we spot native American fascists at work?”

“1. Pitting religious, racial, and economic groups against one another in order to break national unity … In the United States, native fascists have often been Anti-Catholic, Anti-Jew, Anti-Negro, Anti-Labor, anti-foreign-born.”

“2. …Fascists deny the need for international cooperation.”

I’d say this describes our current resident of the White House and Stephen Miller, among others, quite well.

Where are we?

From “The Diary of Anne Frank”:

“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone.”

Terry Garrett
Bellingham

PROGRAMMED EXCESS

Consumerism--a social system of programmed excess--is what drives the unceasing demand for MORE. As Amazon and Microsoft nuclear-fueled data centers ramp up electric consumption for consumers to do more online shopping for entertainment and recreation, the question of sustainability raises its unwelcome head.

DYSTOPIAN AMERICA

Will the new fascist version of the EPA change it's name to the Environmental Destruction Agency?

DOJ to the Department of Injustice?

A Ray Bradbury moment, author of Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel where fire departments burn books.