I was reading about the woke’s latest modern form of book burning; i.e. expurgating but not eliminating texts. And it struck me. You know what’s strange? What’s really puzzling? The dearth—even the absence—of state torturings and murders.
Using history as a guide, when the left has gained as much power as it has now, and when it has clearly lusted for more to cement its position, when it has seen its ultimate goal “sail up” on the horizon, we always got back room beatings, disappearances of troublemakers, shots in the back of the neck, frivolous arrests, woundings or killings in trying to escape, real systematic tortures.
There’s some of this now, of course, but now, right now, we’re not even close to the level of Woodrow Wilson’s goons rearranging the faces of his anti-war foes. We joke about the the FBI being the new Stasi, and even though they are clear soldiers of the woke state, they are Girl Scouts aiming for their Diversity patches next to pitiless Stasi butchers.
Yes, many of the Jan 6 trespassers were thrown into dungeons and kept incommunicado, but none of them were killed. When they are set free, they do not show us their scars. And they are, some of them, set free. True, their lives might be ruined, but they were allowed to keep those lives.
This should amaze us.
We can, and many do, predict a return to the usual norm of state-sponsored brutalities. But, for now, at least, FEMA camps remain a jest, and not a reality.
What do we have in place of rubber hoses, blackjacks, and “accidental” falls down stairs? Why don’t we still use the old sure and tried fingernail pullings? Why do we now have “cancellings”—mere shunning from polite company—instead of disappearances? What is the key difference between then and now?
Women.
Our culture is now matriarchal, or matriarchy in the ascendant. Women, abetted by weak men, invented the cult of Safety First! Women insist on protection (remember Julia?). Women demand niceness. Some call it the longhouse, an apt term.
The most important feature of the Longhouse, and why it makes such a resonant (and controversial) symbol of our current circumstances, is the ubiquitous rule of the Den Mother. More than anything, the Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior…
From early childhood onwards, girls compete using strategies that minimize the risk of retaliation and reduce the strength of other girls. Girls’ competitive strategies include avoiding direct interference with another girl’s goals, disguising competition, competing overtly only from a position of high status in the community, enforcing equality within the female community and socially excluding other girls.
The reason for these strategies, and for our current deficit of violence, is simple: women are the weaker sex. They don’t have the muscle and must rely on wiles. And women are increasingly in charge; if not in name and title, then de facto.
Men burn books: burning is a manly. Burning is definite. It is violent. In violence there is no ambiguity. A pile of books on fire delivers a plain and simple message: thou shalt not read this book!
Women bowdlerize books: sensitivity editing is hersterical (there is no misspelling). Sensitivity editing is weak. It is nice. In niceness there is ambiguity. A pile of books in which “harmful” and “hurtful” material has been purged or transformed into “caring” passages delivers a watery and loose message: be nice.
Women have already lustrated Roald Dahl. They say he is “harmful“. Men say “sticks and stones”: women say “I’m calling HR.”
Nervous females have scrubbed clean Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming. And now they have taken their talons to the best of them all, PG Wodehouse. Women have decided his words are “unacceptable”.
It cannot be a coincidence the bulk, or even all, of these modern-day selective passage burnings have been in England. For reasons that have, so far, escaped me, the rapidly disappearing denizens of that island nation have taken 1984 as more a guidebook than a warning. Winston Smith, you recall, was a kind of state sensitivity reader.
And no, dear reader, removing a book from a children’s school library with vivid and complete illustrations of the proper way to deliver oral sex is not equivalent to bowdlerizing adult books. Why would you think it was?
It’s funny, though. The same people who purge classic texts also have their lusts satisfied by placing those sexual instruction manuals in school. How are the two related?
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Don’t sell “an armed society is a polite society” short. Fingernail pulling, rubber hose beatings, disappearances, et al., may work when a people are unarmed, but many Americans are not. No doubt if this type of state sanctioned action came about, some people would suffer it without reaction, but the ubiquitousness of near instant communication would spread the word quickly, allowing others to be prepared. Back in Woodrow Wilson’s (and Stalin’s, etc.) time, communication was limited, generally, to your family and local community.
Anyone who has not watched that CEO talking to her employees about why no one is getting a bonus needs to immediately. It's the soft tyranny that requires you to be kind as psychopaths all around you destroy everything you love.
Note the language, cadence, and unhinged mannerisms just below the surface. Without the context, you would assume she was talking to third graders. It's an infantilizing mind-worm that tries to destroy your ability to make independent decisions.
https://twitter.com/conzmoleman/status/1647794410858348545