LogFAQs > #971211734

BigOlePappy posted...

This is like Handmaid's Tale stuff.

If you're going to go the literary route, at least go with 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 like most people do.

And it's not like this is anything new. Schools all over have had banned book lists and the like for as long as I've been alive. It usually just shifts depending on which special interest group is the one complaining.

As an example, people back in the 90s wanted Harry Potter books banned from schools because the Religious Right tended to complain that they encouraged witchcraft and were otherwise corrupting to the morals of youth. Fast forward 30 years and now there are plenty of people on the Progressive Left side who would love to see them banned because they're mad about J. K. Rowling's Tweets. Fast forward another 20-30 years from now, and I'm sure some other group will find something new to be mad at.

There's often also a huge amount of cognitive dissonance involved, with people not really understanding the thing they're attempting to ban. Like schools that wanted to ban Huckleberry Finn for having a character named "****** Jim", in spite of the entire point of the book being an examination of institutionalized societal racism and doing your best to overcome it. Or the fact that Mark Twain was himself an abolitionist and writing with very clear intent. Context rarely matters at all to people who want to silence "unacceptable thinking".