How ancient Israel's early literature, isolation, and religious exclusivism unintentionally laid the groundwork for a global obsession. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. Painting by Henri Frédéric Schopin (1804–1880) I want to be clear up front: This article is NOT an excuse for antisemitism. What I’m about to describe happened many thousands of years ago and isn’t any different from any other cults-cum-religions that made many mistakes. We don’t live thousands of years ago. Jews aren’t ancient Hebrews or Israelites anymore. But we need to acknowledge a few uncomfortable behavioral origins of where the historical obsession with Jews comes from. The Uncomfortable Question How did Jews become the symbol of all things evil for large, historical swathes of humanity, which has never lacked for excuses to be hateful? Where does antisemitism originate? Primarily considered today to be an evil of the right, Hitler’s adopted ideological child has proven to be a powerful force on the left since October 7th. Let’s not forget the historically antisemitic Islamic world, a primary force behind it today. Where this particular moral weakness in the Western mind manifests, opportunistic Muslims seem always to be right there to nurture and encourage it. But I got to wondering: What about pre-Islamic, pre-Christian antisemitism? The Koran didn’t invent it. Hostility against Jews was already existent, not just in the Middle East but in early Christian polemics as well, which developed the concept of ‘deicide’, contending that Jews were responsible for Jesus’s death and that Jewish descendants all bear an indelible mark of guilt for this crime, recalling the doctrine of original sin. The Koran itself isn’t wholly antisemitic; it’s a mixture of hostility and acceptance for both Jews and Christians for a variety of reasons. Mohammad’s gang began corrupting his teachings before his body grew cold; they didn’t like anyone who didn’t accept Islam as the One True Religion (an arrogance shared by its two main competitors at various times) but the Koran also praises and lauds both. The mixed messaging demonstrates that for Jews especially, it’s clear there were pre-existing tensions with the first Muslims. The journey begins with the Hebrews, who, like almost everyone else, lived in a risky world of potentially being swallowed up by conquering empires. They might not be able to stop it, but they could at least preserve their identity for generations to come. The evolving religious structure confined them within a framework of religious practices, language, dietary regulations and rules to distinguish themselves from the Others. Unfortunately future empires would weaponize this template to ‘Other’ them and render them hated wherever they wandered. Let’s take a look at where antisemitism originates. The Myth of Conquest: When archaeology meets historical Fiction The ‘Hebrews’ were the original incarnation of today’s Jews: A wandering band of pastoralists who emerged from the Canaanite peoples who’d inhabited the land for many thousands of years. The line begins with Abraham, the first person to be referred to as a ‘Hebrew’ in the Bible, and continues with his son and grandson Isaac and Jacob, whose twelve sons became the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The slow evolution out of paganism to early monotheism took place over hundreds of years, with eventual Israelite monotheists fighting a neverending battle against backsliding, exemplified by the famous story of the Golden Calf. This is why both factions in Israel today—Jews and Palestinians—have rightful inherited and genetic claims to the land. Both have ties or have lived there for many thousands of years. The Hebrews eventually ‘hived away’ from the Canaanites much the same way many religions or religious branches split from the mother religion, like the Protestant Reformation. The Isolation Strategy: Pork, Laws, and the "Other" The ‘Hebrews’ moved off into isolated hill country, developed their monotheistic Yahwism based on their God Yawheh, and began distinguishing themselves from their pagan neighbors by refusing to eat pork and creating a whole system of rules to be as unlike the left-behind Canaanites as possible. Hence the hundreds of laws. The injunction against pork is not, as many believe, a common-sense practice given the danger of trichinosis; archeaologists have found evidence of pig consumption in both Canaanite as well as early Hebrew excavations. The Hebrews stopped eating pork to discriminate themselves from their estranged community, although there were perhaps some practical reasons as well since pigs aren’t designed for a desert environment and produce no by-products themselves, unlike cows and chickens. Fictionalizing History: The Blueprint for Backfire Ironically, the Hebrews now set the stage themselves for a millennia-long hate-on for future Judaism by fictionalizing their own history. The Old Testament details how they set about attacking and conquering their neighbors with Yahweh’s blessings and committing various acts we would call ‘war crimes’ today: baby brain-dashing, pillaging and sacking, and all that. Except archaeologists and historians agree that a lot of those Old Testament ‘heroic’ tales never happened. These ‘conquests’ were inscribed centuries later, so the magnificently militaristic Book of Joshua withers under modern archaeological and historical scrutiny. The biblical writers fantasized a glorious military legend for their people acting on God’s orders when in fact they weren’t the righteous Scourge of the Pagans they painted themselves as. The lack of historical support for the Israelites’ grand conquests don’t read well for modern eyes who are aware of the rampant invention. The historical fiction did double future damage for what would one day become The Jews: It made their ancestors look like imperialistic conquerors and without question influenced the future Christian religion’s wars against competitors and non-believers. St. Augustine pointed to the Old Testament to argue that if it was okay to slaughter unbelievers and smash idols back then, it was okay now. God said so!!! The Old Testament writers couldn’t have envisioned how their work would be weaponized to what later became a larger global crusade against ‘God’s chosen ones’. The Exclusivism Trap: Monotheism in a Polytheistic World “Sadat complained to me that Begin was trying to use a title deed from God to claim sovereignty over land that belonged to other people.” - Jimmy Carter, speaking of the Camp David talks, in Living Faith, 1982 If the Israelites weren’t as warlike as advertised, theirs was, at least, a highly intolerant religious society compared to their pagan neighbors, and this would also bite them in the ass for centuries to come. The Old Testament is full of references to God’s wrath against pagan neighbors, at least according to their own scribes. God wanted the Israelites to have the land, not those now-filthy Canaanites. At least so said the prophets and later writers of the Bible who wanted the land recognized as theirs and theirs alone. ‘God said we could have this land and we’re taking it!’ is an argument for a divine title deed that landed with a thud as heavily with the ancients as it did during 1978’s Camp David Accords. Another big mother of a backfiring strategy was their hubris in setting themselves apart and above their pagan neighbors. Countless religions and cults were practiced all over the the Middle East and southern Europe and they generally existed easily enough with each other, with the understanding that whatever official/regional gods existed must be recognized and/or honored along with whatever gods thou worshippest. The Old Testament writers had already set the stage for appearing disrespectful for those who read their heroic fantasy: Not only did they paint theselves as intolerant, violent assholes, but even their own god didn’t always support them. When the Israelites won a battle, it was with God’s help, but when they lost, it wasn’t because of God’s weakness against the enemy’s god, but because the Israelites were weak, rebellious, disobedient, prone to pagan backsliding, wicked women, whatever. To outsiders, they looked like a bunch of religious fanatics—and they were. Early Precendents: Elephantine and Esther The earliest recorded anti-Jewish event occurred in Elephantine in 410 BC when Egyptian priests destroyed a Jewish temple. Another early example is the story of Esther which details the arguments Haman makes to her husband, the Persian king, to justify wiping out the local Jews. "There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose laws are different from those of all other peoples and who do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them." - Book of Esther It’s ironic to our modern eyes that religious tolerance was widespread back then, if not available everywhere. One could customarily avoid running afoul of the local religious authorities by recognizing the local gods and attending a religious festival now and then. Yahweh, with his relentless tyrannical monotheism fetish, failed to foresee his narcissistic Commandment prohibiting the worship of others would easily become a primary vehicle of hatred for his Chosen People. Familiarity may breed contempt, but unfamiliarity breeds fear, and the Yahwists’ unwillingness to socialize and worship with their neighbors made it easy to wonder just what those people might be up to. Humans have always distrusted secrecy for very good reasons. Sometimes those others are up to something. The ancestors of the Jews unconsciously created an unfortunate antisemitism blueprint by pioneering religious intolerance and fanaticism, leading to a worldwide spread that continued through the centuries, even to countries with hardly any Jews or knowledge of their alleged history. Fanaticism is never popular although it’s ever-present in human society. It’s likely what prevented them from asking themselves why they were hated so much and making a few changes. Then again, it’s hard to argue with a fanatical prophet. They claim to speak directly to God and who are you to say they don’t? This isn’t to blame the Jews for antisemitism; they live much more comfortably with their non-believing neighbors today as long as those neighbors aren’t actively trying to kill them, and that’s what’s important. The Holy Land was full of seemingly crazy cults making outlandish claims in the Late Bronze/early Iron Age; why the Jews’ cult-cum-religion survived as long as it has it will be addressed in Part 2. The Power of Fictional Holy Books The ancients had an excuse for something they didn’t know about, nor did we until about thirty years ago: That the Old Testament was heavily fictionalized by greedy ancient real estate agents centuries after the alleged facts. It’s understandable how St. Augustine could use it to justify future Christian imperial barbarities of others even he couldn’t have conceived of. The history was what they knew in a ‘holy book’ that was said to be the inerrant word of God; the justification monotheists have been using ever since. If you believe, as the ancients did, that my god(s) were more powerful than yours, the insanity of a god who doesn’t reliably support his own people is understandably bizarre; Zeus or Mithras might lose a battle but it wasn’t for lack of trying. The other army’s god was just in better form that day. According to the Yahwists, God let his own side lose because of alleged pious infractions; a blueprint for self-hatred we see in certain fundamentalist Christian sects today. But it wasn’t self-hatred back then; the Prophets created theodicy, in which the Israelites’ god is never defeated by a more powerful god, they’re punished by Yahweh for various moral infractions. It’s still largely unrecognized just how fictional holy books can be; they’re rooted in many of the arguments I had with Christian literalists when I was younger and living in the States. Modern theologians try to explain away ugly Biblical justifications about slavery; warring against one’s neighbors; religious persecution of others; marital enforcement; stoning miscreants to death for ‘crimes’; and ‘blasphemies’ (mostly for social control) we now see daily on social media. They’d rather not acknowledge just how awful and immoral the ancients’ Patriarchs were to others and each other; how the God of the Old Testament approved of all of the violence. Yahweh comes across as a narcisstic psychopath who favored twelve tribes of children over all the others he created; and blames the pagans for their paganism when he never revealed himself to them. Yahwism must have sounded an awful lot like the cults du jour we see today; and for many centuries, Yahwism-cum-Judaism was exactly that. Just another crazy cult; but also a deeply unpopular one. Why Christianity Won the Middle Eastern Mind It makes it easier to understand why Christianity captured the world’s imagination, eventually. Once the Gospels were created 70-150 years after the alleged birth of Christ (his Biblical character historically and archaeologically unsupported), a kinder, more loving God who would always forgive your fallibility as long as you sincerely repented and would eventually redeem you in the afterlife, had to have been a powerful draw for people tired of living under a harsh Jewish god, or who found little solace or comfort in dying Greek and Roman polytheism. Nevertheless, Judaism survived. Why? In Part II, we’ll pick up where we left off with the earliest recorded antisemitism of the Babylonian Exile and trace the enduring dislike or outright hatred of Jews. 📚 Support Local Bookstores: You can find titles mentioned in this piece on my Grow Some Labia page at Bookshop.org. Every purchase directly supports independent booksellers and this newsletter. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a damn thing! There are also Substack and Spotify podcasts of more recent articles!

They've never lived in a truly free and democratic America, which may explain why they're less supportive of it Party like it’s 1999. Photo by RDNE Stock project Karoline Leavitt, Trump II’s trained parrot, is stepping down at the end of the month to take care of her second child. I found her fascinating when she first emerged into the national consciousness as the press secretary for the Liar-in-Chief. All White House press secretaries are professional Pollies, dutifully parroting what their boss wants them to say, and how. She performs her duties with especial gusto. I can’t watch her; she too-gleefully repeats bald-faced lies just too painful to hear, to her own people, and I wonder if this silly child ever questions or feels embarrassed about the omnipresent cross at her throat. Christian hypocrisy is the most cherished Republican virtue, but what does the young Catholic say in confession? Does she even bother to go? Perhaps she avoids it altogether. Every press secretary has to lie to some degree, but Leavitt works for the most dishonest President in U.S. history. Bill Clinton may have stretched the truth on the rack until it screamed like a Manichean heretic, but eventually he came clean with a more inclusive definition of ‘sexual relations’. Trump couldn’t tell the truth if you held a gun to his head. Leavitt must know on some level that her boss tells nothing but lies all day long. The MAGA-chic gold cross virtue-signals she’s a member of the tribe, not necessarily that she’s anything resembling a Christian, especially as her job description requires her to break the Ninth Commandment daily and repeatedly for a man who’s regularly broken all of them except the one about murder. The MAGA’s 21st-century Leni Riefenstahl joyfully serves her boss’s propaganda dish cold, glorifying his authoritarian wannabe Reich in service to her career just as Riefenstahl did, both driven by their relentless ambition, communicating lies to their nation. Leavitt’s face glows as she defends even Trump’s genocidal expression to wipe Iran off the map; there’s nothing he can do that she won’t defend or brush off to her journalist toys. Riefenstahl and Leavitt both knew and know what they were and are doing. But I may be too hard on her; after all, Leavitt is a conservative artifact of the first generation for whom speech is not necessarily a search for truth so much as an exercise in brand positioning, loyalty testing and partisan weaponry. She lies and excuses as easily as she breathes. But she grew up in an America that had begun to devalue truth. She knows nothing else. Born into the anocracy When I Googled her age - she’s 29 now, born in 1997—I realized she’s a ‘cusper’ - a tail-end Millennial, with the first Zoomers three years ahead. They came of age in what was better described as an America shuffling toward anocracy—not the free or mostly free country into which us Xers and Boomers were born. Karoline Leavitt’s generation was raised in a newer era in which public speech was no longer about facts, honesty, or, most importantly, dialogue, but about performance, bullying opponents, and above all, controlling the narrative. Both the left and right served as public examples of how to wield power to demonstrate tribal loyalty and receive supportive accolades. Virtue-signalling was for everyone. I’m not sure exactly when the American belief in truth and honesty died—maybe with George Bush’s contentious first election win, or maybe 9/11—but it’s not surprising that America’s decline is bipartisan. Both political parties embrace authoritarianism, although the party faithful can’t see it or acknowledge it. Today, the right controls liberty and free speech from Washington; the left from everywhere else. The Authoritarian Progressives Leavitt represents the Millennials. The first for whom democracy was clearly eroding by the time they were old enough to become conscious of their own existence. Leavitt became a teenager in 2010. This was the decade that marked the beginning of the early 21st-century bipartisan battles against free speech. She was raised in a conservative Catholic family and was a Trump fangirl years before she got hired, and became a legal adult in 2018. She was born three years before the closest, most contested federal election in American history and was finger-painting during 9/11. She was 19 when her boss won his first election and U.S. intelligence sources found that Vladimir Putin had pretty certainly meddled in the election, although it was never proven that Trump knew or had anything to do with it. Washington was broken by the time her generation graduated high school during the dawn of woke dogmatism. The language policing, social media’s emerging cancel culture, book-banning (although America has never not banned books), the crazy-ass victim feminists materializing out of ‘gender studies’ classes, the black obsession with white skin as the secret handshake that grants you membership into everything. Transgender witch hunts against scientific-thinking critics would begin soon. What we Xers and Boomers have that Leavitt’s generation doesn’t is experience with a truly free, if imperfect America, with less oppressive policies and speech policing. The bipartisan war on free expression Karoline Leavitt probably wasn’t paying attention to infant social media in 2007, but the Bush administration had already set forth the 21st century’s conservative anti-First Amendment crusade in the guise of ‘fighting terrorism’. Bush’s Patriot Act’s ‘national security letters’ allowed the federal government to snoop on American reading material. Bush’s bulldogs attacked journalists and other critics of his Iraq War and used the Espionage Act to investigate leaks and intimidate whistleblowers. The left also geared up in the battle against the First Amendment, outside Washington. Cancel culture reared its ugly head to protect intellectual babies from facts. The first university complaints began trickling out against conservative professors, teachers, and university staff, who pointed out that ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘safe spaces’ were suppressing conservative, or merely alternative, opinions. For example, in her early document of the rising culture of Millennial safetyism and victimhood-centered grievance culture in her book Who Stole Feminism?, Christina Hoff Sommers argued that such kid glove handling encouraged women to become fragile flowers who were easily damaged by ideas that made them think too much. She argued there should be no such thing as a ‘safe space’ from challenging ideas, and in fact, that’s what universities were designed for - to discomfort the comfortable. To irritate the elites. She described a ‘safe space’ she encountered on a 2015 book tour, enacted specifically for her own campus appearance, a room in which female students “played tapes of frolicking puppy dogs and they had bubbles and games,” which she described as ‘infantilizing’. Support Local Bookstores: You can find the titles mentioned in this post on my Grow Some Labia page at Bookshop.org. Every purchase supports independent booksellers (and this newsletter!). A few years earlier, a woman who tweeted a ‘joke’ about AIDS and whiteness became the first to get fired merely for an ill-considered public jest. Apologies were useless; the New Progressive Left decreed that redemption and forgiveness were critical moral faults, not virtues. Social media became equality tools for fanatics on both sides, weaponizing influence and followers to destroy those who didn’t agree with you, whether they were on your side or not. The left attacked its own with more vehemence, but conservative self-cannibalism wasn’t absent either. As campuses across America ignited with a burning desire to make the country ‘safe’ for anyone who felt or at least pretended to be ‘marginalized’ or ‘disadvantaged,’ progressives flexed their new muscles and realized they now had a chance to remake America in their own vision—one of racial and economic equality. That meant, of course, quelling opposing viewpoints. Campus curricula continued moving away from heterodoxy and anything smelling of ‘right-wing’, coinciding with the rise of increasingly ideological ‘race studies’, ‘gender studies’, and restricting any utterance deemed ‘harmful’, while Obama’s Washington ignored the threat. By the time Millennials became legal adults Americans censored themselves more effectively by simply refusing to speak out. They needed to feed their families, after all. Leavitt’s tribe also grew up in a safety-prone world of heightened airline security prompted by 9/11, and heightened surveillance of Americans prompted by a Republican president. Hers was the first generation to grow up online, when they were young and learned easily, unlike the rest of us who had to struggle as adults to understand these newfangled computers. The federal government warned Americans constantly about vague, potentially forthcoming terrorist attacks to keep them in a state of heightened fear (and easier to control). By 2013, college campuses policed speech and made it dangerous to express a conservative view, or something now deemed conservative that wasn’t before. ‘Trigger warnings’, safe spaces, and deplatforming speakers became de rigueur. An early example of the conservative fight against free speech emerged in a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project, determining that groups could be prosecuted for ‘material support for terrorism’ even if said material provided detailed peaceful methods of conflict resolution. The Court argued it could lend legitimacy to a terrorist organization and encourage more funding for them. “Throwing people in jail who are trying to create peace is a poor strategy for fighting terrorism,” commented a senior counterterrorism counselor for Human Rights Watch, which joined the ACLU and eight other groups in filing an amicus brief. Teaching the value of friction For those of us on the right and left who would like to ‘reactionarily’ return America to a state of the far more expansive free speech rights we enjoyed in the 20th century, it’s going to mean fighting the dual forces of authoritarian censorship: A right wing that steals your First Amendment rights in the name of ‘national security’, and a left wing that wants safetyism to protect them from emotional discomfort. Except when they’re recording others they think are behaving badly in the Mobile State, which does a better job of policing Americans than the government. Karoline Leavitt gleefully lying to her own country and the campus activist presenting a petition to the dean demanding ‘trigger warnings’ for Ovid’s Metamorphosis have more in common than they look at first glance: Truth is what someone in authority says it is, not what the actual facts state. “The heresy of heresies was common sense.” - George Orwell, 1984 Younger generations aren’t going to ‘get it’ unless we re-educate them; they’ve been socialized to believe ‘freedom’ means from uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, or critical thinking. Or that the government knows what’s best for us and we should trust them. It means calling out manufactured call-outs; holding the President and Congress accountable for how they’re fighting free speech, not for it; and that critical thinking is not some fascist colonialist plot. Reclaiming objective reality America’s in a bad place. The Zoomers are even less educated and emotionally resilient than the Millennials and many now vote. Zoomers fill town halls cheerleading for socialist leaders yet can’t define ‘socialism’. They can’t name either the river or the sea while they yell a genocidal chant. They’re mad as hell that they can’t get good jobs, and they’re taking it out on the rest of us. But, America’s not over yet. The older generations still outnumber the younger, although the Boomers are dying. It’s up to us, Generation X, to challenge these newer bad ideas now, their bad candidate selections now, and to support our precious First Amendment. Regardless of party. The primary problem is that neither side values Enlightenment epistemology, which defines the rational, reasoned, evidence-based search for truth, upon which we can come to an agreement on objective reality. The far left specifically attacks reason and rationalism as ‘colonialist’ or ‘white men’s thinking’ while the right simply denies it. Trump will never acknowledge the Reflecting Pool’s troubles were the result of poor workmanship rather than vandalism; he refuses to respond to the refrain that there’s no evidence of the latter; he believes what he wants to believe, not what’s true. And here’s the kicker: ideologues can’t be swayed by facts; their belief is their own personal religion. ‘Normies’ have to start speaking out or we won’t deserve the America (or Canada) we once had. It’s on us, kids. The X-Gen. Put on your superhero suits. Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a damn thing! There are also Substack and Spotify podcasts of more recent articles!

We need libraries and badass librarians more than ever. We start by decolonizing them of our self-appointed intellectual dictators, and returning to ideological neutrality Creative Commons CC0 image from Peakpx I remember when librarians were badasses in oversized glasses and plainclothes. During the Reagan years, librarians defended their free speech fortresses against the barbarians at the gate—Christian fundamentalists with a long list of thou-shalt-not-reads, politicians afraid of criticisms of the American project, and activists like the Gablers who wanted to excise evolution from textbooks. There were a few reported book burnings in the ‘80s, mostly localized. The censormonkeys of the right really really really didn’t want you reading books they deemed ‘harmful’. Sound familiar? Yeah. Later, under Bush II, librarians genuinely fought for social justice and freedom to read when the USA Patriot Act allowed the FBI to secretly obtain library and bookstore records under the guise of terrorism investigations. It wasn’t much of a leap to wonder whether they also wanted to know who was reading books critical of the Bush administration, so I kept a running list of titles I would read once I moved to Canada. Oh, the glory days of right-wing censorship! Now the left’s censormonkeys burn books (although some righties still join in). Who holds the real power in America? Here we are, once again, with a right-wing President still trying to control the message, but with an interesting wrinkle: Only so much, because unlike at the turn of the New Millennium, he doesn’t hold primary power. How do we know? Donald Trump’s cancellation victims continue to work. Stephen Colbert is happily co-writing a new Lord of the Rings movie and evaluating where to go next creatively. It’s not hard to imagine he’ll return to commentary as Jon Stewart did. Why? Because Colbert and friends speak truth to secondary power, not to primary power. Sixteen actors who have trouble finding work after mostly progressive cancellation demonstrate that left-wing power still rules the day. Not all of the listed ‘banned actors’ are on the persona non grata list because of conservative political views, but most are, their lives and careers upended by progressives. Progressives own and run Hollywood, although that’s beginning to change. The far left holds the primary power in America. It’s much more dangerous to criticize progressive racism, sexism, homophobia, or its own colonialism. While the right colonizes lands, the left colonizes womanhood, language, public and higher education, Hollywood, publishing, theatre, mainstream media, non-profit and advocacy groups, hiring, and religious groups. Who owns you? Which opinion would you feel more comfortable expressing on X under your real name? Donald Trump is a senile old coot and the most corrupt president the U.S. has ever had. Release the rest of the Epstein files! If GOP Republicans weren’t such massive wussies they’d have Amendment 25’ed him by now. or, ‘Transphobia’ isn’t bigotry. It’s the genuine fear men pretending to be women generate when they insist on colonizing women’s private spaces. You can’t change your sex, period, and they clearly can’t change their exceedingly male and often misogynist brains. I know which view obedient Stephen Colbert regularly expressed. Humor speaks truth to power and these comedians don’t Stepin Fetchit for Trump. The Biggest Joke Of All: The Comedians Who Didn’t Care About The First Amendment Until Now Challenge Humophobia With The Almighty Power of Comedy! Progressives feign oppression by the right wing when in fact, they themselves are the apex oppressors. They are more powerful than the current administration. Which brings us to today’s libraries, with a cultural censorship dictated and curated by modern authoritarian progressives who greatly resemble the God Squad of my youth. Libraries could be sources for The Resistance but for two obstacles: They’re far too ideologically captured, and books have become remarkably expensive. The squeeze: The ALA will tell you what to think Reason Number One for why libraries have become irrelevant: Lack of heterodoxy on the shelves and in the staff room. The lack of neutrality at the American Library Association (ALA) is an erosion rather than a coup. It began in the social justice-mad ‘60s and ‘70s with an increasing emphasis on activist causes which, to be fair, was what people wanted to read then. Activist-oriented librarians formed groups like the Social Responsibilities Roundtable, to address social justice issues like racism, the Vietnam War, civil rights, and other pressing matters of the day. Many challenged the idea that libraries should be neutral spaces, giving rise to the idea that libraries should tell people what to think. FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) continues the conversation on how ‘social justice’ librarians have abandoned institutional neutrality and enforce their ideological orthodoxy on staff and new hires. How Librarian’s New Social Justice Mission Goes After the Privacy of Library Workers - Fair For All DEI diktats ‘train’ newbie censormonkeys to think the ‘right’ way and make disagreement too costly in staff meetings. Ten-year-old library Best Practices emphasizing fairness, viewpoint diversity and neutrality, it notes, have been tossed in the trash. Staff members are encouraged to develop only four ‘competencies’ — “awareness of racial identity, manifestations of racism, commitment to countering racism, and analysis of racialized outcomes.” And here I thought America had bigger problems than residual racism. Everyday readers have begun drifting away. But you can at least buy the books you want easily on Amazon, right? Why are books so expensive? The death of mass market paperbacks Reason Number Two for the decline of library anti-normie-ism: The rising cost of books. I haven’t been to a library in many years. They’re still stuck in the ‘90s. And we need libraries more than ever. The last time I was in one, it was to beg them to make my kludgy, slow, mostly useless Overdrive app work. It’s an app that allows you to borrow e-books. Theoretically. But I can’t always get the books I want. I looked around at the carrels of old-looking books and wondered why anyone even bothered to visit anymore. With Amazon, I didn’t have to wait weeks or months to read what I wanted. When they allowed independent bookstores and sellers to offer used books for much less money, a $100 gift card was the most exciting birthday gift I could receive. Public library budgets have dwindled (mostly from Republicans). Certain elements of conservatism have never been at all keen on self-educating curious-minded Americans; they tend not to vote Republican. Contarily, though, research shows that opinions of libraries, among the thin sliver of Americans who still access them, are pretty non-partisan: Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, mostly enjoy perusing the shelves and risking upper respiratory infections from pulling down out-of-print books and wondering, Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche? What the hell? Support Local Bookstores: You can find the titles mentioned in this post on my Grow Some Labia page at Bookshop.org. Every purchase supports independent booksellers (and this newsletter!). But in the last two years, the cost of new books has gone way, way, up and, it’s not just the Orange Menace’s tariffs, either. Book Riot historically tracks book affordability. To access the entire article you have to join, but there’s enough in the first few paragraphs to answer the question: There was a paper supply issue in 2018; the cost of books rose between 2018 and 2023, coinciding with the COVID crisis and supply chain disruption; and the publishing industry has largely removed the reader’s cheapest access to books, mass market paperbacks. Making books unaffordable makes well-stocked, diverse libraries even more necessary. Publishing is begging for piracy, having learned nothing from the Napster Age. What destroyed the market for free but illegal music back in the ‘90s was the Apple iStore, combined with a Clinton administration takedown of artificially frozen CD prices, both of which brought the price of music down to the point where buying reasonably-priced music was less stressful than waiting for the music cops to knock on your door. USA today asks, “Is reading becoming a luxury?”, noting that formerly $20 hardcovers are now closer to $30, and that fewer people are buying new books, opting for used ones, which have also gone up in price. It’s what once allowed me to buy six Amazon books for $120 in May 2023, and today I might be able to get only three or four for that price. E-book pricing is only slightly less expensive. Hardcovers and trade paperbacks drive higher price margins, which is why the lowly mass paperback has fallen into great disfavor by publishers and booksellers, but not readers. So you can return to the library, but the dwindling choices and the lack of funding for a fix to lumbering Overdrive are a bit like trying to find a good movie on Tubi.tv: There are a few, but mostly it’s crap. The Normie Revolution: Making libraries cool! Libraries could be a great fix for what ails us politically, but first, we’ll need a revolution—by us normies, the maverick sans-culottes, to overthrow the bourgeoisie, the elites who consider themselves our intellectual ‘betters’, who have colonized our libraries and rendered them no longer revelant. We shall drag our DEI-addled librarian gatekeepers to the Place de la Concordia where they shall be tried for their crimes against cognitivity and their Heads of Staff forever severed from their body politic! We shall erect signs out front that read FREE BOOKS!!! so everyone knows they can come in and browse, then check out however many books they want ABSOLUTELY FREE!!! We shall remove their narcissistic, virtue-signalling overblown Pride displays and relegate them to their own corner, no more or less than any other special interest group’s. Down with Rainbow Narcissism! We shall welcome coffee shops as many bookstores do, setting aside a place where book lovers can exchange ideas, recommendations, and get to know their neighbors. We shall pressure Congresscritters to allocate more money for improving libraries so they can provide us with the books we want now, and find quickly the books they don’t have in-house. This will induce the publishing companies and booksellers to reduce their prices and make cheaper books again just as Apple once did for music. We shall condition those funds on their return to the goddess Neutrality and her rightful place, offering a balanced diversity of beliefs, views, ideologies, and ideas, especially any book the other side deems ‘harmful’. We shall create or adopt better apps for borrowing e-books than Overdrive. We shall bring forth library websites where you can browse the shelves from home and mark one for pickup. Where possible, we will also offer a patio where one can continue the conversation outside when the weather is warm. We shall install more comfy couches. We shall allow authors and speakers to make appearances at libraries, with big, burly security guards prepared to drag out deplatformers who try to shut it down. ‘Protesters’ who fail to observe the rules of civilized discourse will be sentenced to reading Marcel Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time, a 3,000-page doorstop. They must sit at a library table phone-free near the main desk until they’ve submitted a handwritten book report of no less than 5,000 words. No open book. No help from friends with longer attention spans, Coles/York notes, or AI. We can bring people together face to face. We can lengthen human attention spans. We can have great conversations and find common ground. We can turn librarians into rock stars and, dare I even suggest it, sex symbols! “Marcel Proust lovers make me sooooo hot!” Image generated by Open AI, after a lot of argument about its inability to generate anything erotic. I predict an uptick (ar ar) in male library attendance :)) We can Make Libraries Cool Again. And we can burst the intellectual bubbles of small-minded people, right or left, and render them about as cool as overplucked eyebrows or ‘millennial gray’ interiors. We can return diversity to starving libraries where radical freethinkers can read Genderqueer or Charlie Kirk’s Time for a Turning Point. We can resist our wannabe brainmasters on the right and left. And don’t even get me started on Drag Queen Freethinkers Hour! Did you like this post? Do you want to see more? I lean left of center, but not so far my brains fall out. Subscribe to my Substack newsletter Grow Some Labia so you never miss a damn thing! 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"GROW A PAIR" That's what we say to men when we think they're acting weak. "Grow some balls!" So what do we say when women are acting weak? We can't very well tell them to grow some balls. Women can't, of course! Women need to 'grow some labia'! They're the parts of the vagina that would have become the scrotum for the balls had she been born a male instead (and since she didn't, what would have been her balls are her ovaries). But I doubt you came here for a female anatomy lesson. It's time for us to grow some labia and woman up, show more strength, challenge ourselves more. Time to take more charge and responsibility for our lives, and spend less time blaming 'The Patriarchy' or systemic sexism. Those things exist, for sure, but at some point we've got to recognize the buck stops with the woman in the mirror and we need to claim our power (or reclaim it if we gave it away somehow!) So it's time for women everywhere to GROW SOME LABIA! I've written a few blog posts about how we can do exactly that and reclaim our power! Feminism The differences between victim feminism, which sees women as chronically aggrieved and victimized by men and 'The Patriarchy', and power feminism, which is more focused on one's self, achieving and claiming personal power and using it for the betterment of others. Dec 21, 2024 The Transfolk Who Really Do Need Our Support The experience of 'The Bearded Lesbian' reminds us some folks really do need to transition; and how LGBTQ can fail them I began following... Dec 5, 2024 American Feminists Don't Need A 4B Movement The South Korean feminism project will be dead in the water. Like it or not, we need men, and they need us. Maybe we just need to reform... Nov 24, 2024 Emma Watson, Emma Watson, Wherefore Art Thou, Emma Watson? The foxy fauxminist has gone missing in recent years. No movies. No fauxminist outbursts. Not even any trans love tweeted. I... Nov 17, 2024 Progressive Democrats Hate Women More Than The Right. Especially Feminists. Right-wing misogyny isn't How The Left Was Lost. It was women's, the primary administrators and executors of patriarchy and misogyny. The... Oct 12, 2024 A Frenchwoman Is Dead Serious About Holding ALL Her Rapists Accountable The Gisele Pelicot case highlights just how frighteningly high is the number of 'normal' men who have a penchant for, and might be... Sep 14, 2024 Let's Have A Grownup Talk About Privilege - With Curiosity Rather Than Outrage It's real. It's worth exploring even for the UnWoke. Its purpose is to open our own eyes rather than beat up others (and ourselves) over... Feminism Substack Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER for all my latest on power feminism, reclaiming your power, and the ongoing culture wars. Visit Substack >> Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE ABOUT POWER Big Girls Don't Blame The Patriarchy Explore The Blog LABIA POWER! About Me Grow Some Labia! is written by a liberal, feminist writer and social justice critic who teaches women and others how to reclaim their power and avoid partner abuse. She also candidly critiques far-left, progressive/woke/ social justice extremism. It's a place for people who lean left or right, but not so far their brains fall out. GSL's work can be found here and on Substack, Quora. And maybe a few other places. About Me The Latest From My Labia Power! Blog 5 days ago Daniel Penny: The Hero That Wasn't "He scared the living daylights out of everybody." The woke left damns Daniel Penny for trying to save others from a clearly disturbed... Jan 4 We Have To Think About Moderating X, Bluesky And Other Social Media The anoymous psychos who call for others' assassinations are a direct threat to democracy and public safety. Threats are NOT free speech.... Jan 1 Here Comes The 'Woke Right' And It Looks A Helluva Lot Like The Woke Left Brand-new management, same as the last! But the bipartisan UnWoke have the recent accumulated observation to help call out the... Dec 25, 2024 Roman Holiday - A Christmas Story Oh no! Not another Messiah! CC0 public domain Just what we need. Another bloody Messiah. The name’s Flatulous. I’m a Roman soldier in... Dec 21, 2024 The Transfolk Who Really Do Need Our Support The experience of 'The Bearded Lesbian' reminds us some folks really do need to transition; and how LGBTQ can fail them I began following... Dec 14, 2024 Is There Any Real Joy In Learning Anymore? Can students even experience learning something intriguing or unexpected? Or are they only told what to think? "Just kill me now!"... Explore The Blog DON'T BE THE VICTIM Take back your power. NOW. It started with abused women who didn't know they could say No to abuse. It morphed into taking back your power from political bullies and haters, including 'social justice warriors'. Don't Be The Victim GROW SOME LABIA "Grow a pair!" That's what we say to men when we think they're acting weak. "Grow some balls!" So what do we say when women are acting weak? We can't very well tell them to grow some balls. Women can't, of course! Women need to 'grow some labia'! Grow Some Labia I also take on the crazies from the right and the left. Subscribe to my FREE SUBSTACK NEWSLETTER

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