All things Cold War are new again
An old joke from the Cold War comes to mind this morning. At the risk of telling it badly, here goes:
American: We have freedom of speech in my country. I’m free to criticize my president as much as I want.
Russian: But is true in Soviet Union! I too am free to criticize your president as much as I want.
Now let’s back up to another Cold War tale I recalled at the very beginning of the Donald Trump administration (1/26/2017). Programmers and scientists across the country were rushing to back up climatic data in fear that the new administration would delete it and other research that conflicted with the administration’s chosen view of reality. They hoped to head off a MAGA Dark Age.
Oh, right. My other Cold War story (see update below):
Hedrick Smith in “The Russians” (1984) recounted a visit to Moscow’s Lenin Library. (Memory must serve, as I cannot locate the text online.) Smith, the New York Times’ Moscow Bureau Chief from 1971–74, had gone to one of the world’s great libraries to do some research. He needed a back copy of Time(?) magazine. But viewing such subversive foreign material was restricted. He had to present a permission slip from some office, which he had. While the clerk went back into the restricted stacks to fetch the magazine, Smith began leafing through a copy of Life someone had returned to the counter. When the clerk returned, she became visibly agitated. Smith had permission to read Time, but not Life.
In Trump’s America, soon we may all need permission slips.
And in the fullness of time, as the saying goes, comes an ACLU lawsuit challenging an Arkansas law blocked by a federal judge “that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing ‘harmful’ materials to minors.” Digby referenced the Associated Press report on Sunday:
“The question we had to ask was — do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties,” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement.
The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.
Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.
Book bans are unpopular among a majority of Republicans. A very slim majority.
“It was a pleasure to burn,” thought Montag. “Fahrenheit 451” is a Cold War novel inspired by Hitler’s book burnings and by the Soviets “sending writers to gulags and banning questionable books, while in the US [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy was persecuting writers …”
Don’t treat these MAGA clowns as clowns.
UPDATE: Thanks to Rick Perlstein for pointing me to the Hedrick Smith text for this online.