tingilinde

the book police

 

 

book banning in utah

State-wide bans now. 

The rightwing loves to instill fear and hate in service of a supposed morality. It should be pointed out that Utah often leads the nation in online pornography consumption.    

Know them by their actions.

 

 

 

south carolina leads the nation

In banning books - of course other states are working to grab the title.

Too bad the Bible isn't banned - it's full of any number of bad things the right regularly rails against.  Of course they love Trump so there's that.

 

 

 

on american myths

The third review I've come across on Richard Slotkin's new book.

snip

...

My dictionary defines ‘myth’ as both a popular tradition that embodies core social values and an ‘unfounded or false’ idea. The word hints at intentional distortion of the truth. But truth is more or less beside the point in Slotkin’s discussion of myths. He is neither asking Americans to embrace demonstrable falsehoods as a way of restoring a lost sense of national unity nor demanding that unifying narratives embody only verifiable facts about the country’s past. ‘As I use the term,’ he writes, ‘myths are the stories – true, untrue, half-true – that ... provide an otherwise loosely affiliated people with models of patriotic action.’ Such common beliefs are more important in the US than elsewhere, since compared with other nations the country lacks traditional underpinnings of patriotic nationalism such as a shared ethnocultural identity, a long-established history and a powerful and threatening neighbour. In a more unified nation, people of different political persuasions would seize on myths as ready-made paradigms which help make sense of events. In A Great Disorder, Slotkin explores the emergence and evolution of the ‘foundational’ myths that have helped define American culture

...

 

75 years and 1 day

1984 was published on June 8, 1949

 

kafka

Kafka died at age forty exactly one hundred years ago today.  Here's a New Yorker piece from about twenty five years ago.

snip

...

“I’ve often thought that the best way of life for me would be to have writing materials and a lamp in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar,” he ruminated to Felice Bauer. When he spoke of the impossibility of writing German, he never meant that he was not a master of the language; his wish was to be consecrated to it, like a monk with his beads. His fear was that he was not entitled to German—not that the language did not belong to him but that he did not belong to it. German was both hospitable and inhospitable. He did not feel innocently—uncomplicatedly, unselfconsciously—German. Put it that Kafka wrote German with the passion of an ingenious yet stealthy translator, always aware of the space, however minute, between his fear, or call it his idea of himself, and the deep ease of at-homeness that is every language’s consolation. Mutter, the German word for “mother,” was, he said, alien to him: so much for the taken-for-granted intimacy and trust of die Muttersprache, the mother tongue. This crevice of separation, no thicker than a hair, may underlie the estrangement and the enfeebling distortions that shock and ultimately disorient every reader of Kafka.

...

 

 

deep in the heart of trumpland

more on book banners

Even more right-wing hate 

snip

...

Some Republicans are seeking penalties and restrictions that would apply nationwide. Referring to “pornography” in the foreword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for a possible second Donald Trump administration, the right-wing group's president, Kevin Roberts, wrote that the “people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.”

Arkansas’ version was temporarily blocked by a federal judge after a coalition of librarians and publishers challenged the legality of subjecting librarians and booksellers to criminal charges if they provide “harmful” materials to minors.

Indiana lawmakers stripped away “educational purposes” as a defense for school librarians and educators charged with giving minors “obscene” or “harmful” material — felonies punishable by up to 2½ years in jail and $10,000 in fines. The law also requires public catalogs of what's in each school library and systems for responding to complaints.

...

Of course, by their definitions, their bible should be on the list too

 

 

the trump bible scam

A bit of commentary largely from Christians who are opposed = but this misses the huge numbers who are white nationalists. "Christianity" is a label that is used for many things.. often the power of one group over others. 

Maybe sales would improve with a Stormy Daniels foldout..

 

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

how comics are made

One of those labor of love kickstarter projects

a tip of the hat to John