Banning and Burning Books by the Bushel

THE PROBLEM with banning and burning books is that, when you get started, it becomes hard to stop. The smallest spark becomes a fire, then becomes a raging wildfire, consuming thousands of acres or books. A book censuring, banning, burning crusade (they are all differeng degrees of the same thing) is never content to merely rid the public a a few,certainly, definitely innapropriate or valueless books,few and far between though they actually are(all books tend to have value, if only limited). Whenever the advocate(s) recommend a particular book be banned, whoever the authorities are who decide which books are banned,once a single book has been banned, the experience of power becomes attractive to all involved, contagious, then, tragically, addictive. Nobody ever stops at banning a single book or a few books. The fire ultimately, inevitably consumes whole libraries, genres, authors, or topics. It happened in the ancient world, and in the modern. It is now happening in these United States of America. The spark has long been lit, the fire is yet small, but spreading rapidly, with plenty of advocates (oppononets of certain books,authors, topics, or genres) and authorities to fuel it into the far future. Book banning in America is a product, as nearly all social ills seem to be these days, of the far, extremist,evangelical Christian right wing, the very people the reverend Billy Graham warned us about sixty years ago. If these right wing religious fanatics would be content to merly practice their religion and culture in peace, rather than to control the entire country and the entire world, all would be well. But they have long since taken control of the Republican party, and are threatening to take control of the country, which is their stated goal. Their vehicle? Trump! So much for Christian morality. Book banning is becoming highly organized and a major cause for thousands of well organized well funded people, just as the "Moral Majority", in the time of Reagan, organized, grew, and took over the conservative movement and the G.O.P... Committees of religious zealots (Republicans) all across America's fruited plain are organizing at the local level, plotting strategy,voting on long lists of bad books ("bad" being actually "good" books), and presenting their lists to local libraries, including school libraries, and to city councils, school boards; to anyone with power who will listen. It is the Republicans who listen... Over the last couple of years, the number of prohibited, restricted,removed, banned books (its all the same) in these United States has grown exponentially, alarmingly, in both public and academic libraries. Books about LGBTQ people,urging their inclusion, books about racism, past and present, books aobut disastrous human caused climate change - banned. Arguably, indeed obviously, almost all if not all of the books that have already been restricted, prohibited,removed, banned in the U.S. should not be banned, but instead, should be well and widely read. Books like "The Catcher In the Rye", and "To Kill A Mockingbird", and "The Grapes of Wrath", great masterpieces and classics, all, banned. It will reach the point wherein the only books available are hagiographic, religious, insipid books espousing only trditional conservative values. Nothing challenging authority, questioning tradional, accepted beliefs, or presenting revolutionary new ideals and thinking will be permitted. When that happens, 1984 will have finally arrived, and Big Brother will be firmly in control.