eSCAping Type 1

Get it?

I haven’t posted in a while because, well, America is still somehow going crazy.

This right here freaked me out:

Bloggers almost had to register with their state for publishing approval if they are potentially paid for any posts about government officials. Depending on their blog’s content, some writers would also have to file periodic reports with the state disclosing information such as who paid them and how much. Failure to file a report would result in fines of $25 a day, up to $2,500.

It didn’t pass, but I can’t believe it was even written/presented/discussed. Yours truly would be getting fined on behalf of several old political posts.

But what I really want to talk about is our ongoing book ban.

Yup. So, basically, in order to comply with new laws (like “Don’t Say Gay” and Critical Race Theory restrictions), some American public schools were directed to empty their libraries and cover classroom bookshelves pending government investigations. As of 2022, 565 books have been banned.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps claiming that only “pornographic and inappropriate” materials have been removed from schools. Um, no. Please watch the videos below for proof of his lie:

 

 

Now, a lot of people are saying this isn’t real, that it’s only a few books being questioned and moved, not inexplicitly banned. But, obviously, as a parent/English teacher/writer/book-lover, I find this event to be way more horrible than most people seem to realize. So, I’m using this post to exploit government officials to convince you that you should also be very concerned.

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First, please go read Fahrenheit 451. Or, actually, since some Americans are really against reading, here’s a video clip you can watch instead:

It’s a realistic science fiction novel written by Ray Bradbury in 1953 about a future dystopian society that’s eerily similar to our current livelihood. Like, these characters submerge themselves with television shows projected on their walls and then immediately insert earphones upon leaving their house. It’s completely normal/common for overdose deaths to occur every day, or for someone to get hit by their super-fast-moving car. And then the government is basically like, “Yeah, that’s sad, but we’re not going to fix it.” Sound familiar?

But the major plotline is this fictional world’s book ban: books are so evil that houses with them found inside are immediately burned to the ground by city “firemen.” Some say that books were simply shortened over time to keep up with the fast-paced future: “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending… Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume.”

Others say that more and more “minorities” (“...dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico….”) found more and more parts to be offensive (“Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.”) Either scenario seems incredibly plausible for our current society.

All because of a Book Ban, these people were never ever shown any other perspective. They had no idea what life was like outside of their society. They’re so fixated on themselves and technology that no one even notices the fighter jets zooming literally right over their heads.

Spoiler Alert: In the end, the city gets quickly, unexpectedly bombed and they all die.

But, Meg, it’s just a book. Stop being so dramatic. We’re doing it to protect the kids. We’re not going to die because of censorship.

Oh, you know who else wanted only one type of person in this world? Who started by burning any book that suggested otherwise? Who used that to convince followers that different perspectives were bad and needed to be eliminated? Who was just protecting the youth by advocating for a cleaner future? Hitler, that’s who.

Or during The Red Scare in the 1950s when books that maybe had any sort of communist theme/author/wording/idea were instantly removed from public libraries? You know, evil books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye and Robin Hood? Many people lost their jobs because of this. But this high level of government censorship was generally supported since it was all about “protecting kids.”

Or how about when the teaching of evolution was questioned with the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925, leading to the complete removal of minor things like Charles Darwin’s lifetime of work from public schools’ textbooks?

 

The number of similarities between all of these real, historical examples and our current American society is INSANE. Please find me any sort of positive book banning… I’ll wait…

But beyond all of that, I really wish that people would realize that kids are a lot smarter than society gives them credit for.

Believe me, when my students read books like In Cold Blood they KNEW – without anyone telling them – that they weren’t being coerced by a gay author or by the two murdering sociopathic subjects or by the challenging reading level. They knew my objective in choosing that particular book because it is simply a GREAT example of thrilling nonfiction creative writing. Plus they trusted me – literature choice was quite literally part of the job that I had to get a Master’s degree for.

And if any parent ever had a problem with their own child reading any part of any book for my class, all they’d have to do is TELL ME and we’d create an alternate assignment just for them. (That happened. A few times. It’s ok!)

I’m sorry if a book has more of an influence on your kid than you do. I’m sorry if your kid is only exposed to other lifestyles at school. I’m sorry that some of your dinner-table conversations might be uncomfortable. But it sounds to me like if you’re worried about a book indoctrinating your kid, you’ve got some other pretty big parenting issues to deal with.

Now, of course I’m sad for them, but I’m selfishly sad for me, too. Books take a lot of work to write and publish –

“And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper… It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it’s all over.”

I really don’t want my YA novel to be withheld from readers for some obscure reason. My book is intended to help kids, not hurt them. I hope my theme has more power than my characters’ race or sexuality.

 

So, yeah, hopefully, I at least showed you why this issue deserves your concern. I really hope I’m wrong regarding this particular act of government censorship, but remember, history repeats itself.