SURPRISE!!! NOT REALLY

Nope, no surprises left, positive ones, within the world at large. Pleasant surprise on a worldwide or national level is most definitely an endangered species. This morning, once again awakening late - now that remains a surprise - I wondered if I have the time to take a look around the world and discern some timely topic. Well, all I had to do was turn on Morning Joe, and my cup runneth over.

Needless to say, the topics that immediately arose were of no surprise. Not in this crazy world of ours. So, up for the first look - censorship. As an educator, as a voracious reader from the time I was four until now, and hopefully into the future, it is anathema to me to suggest book censorship. Actually, there is one point on which I agree. That is that books advocating and inciting and urging violence and hatred, destruction, should be banned. There is no positive or redeeming facet within them.  

 On the other hand, there might be books that I might not appreciate, or you might not appreciate, but that 3rd person will definitely appreciate it. There is no harm within it. No advocation of violence against anyone else. No tendency to increase hatred. Perhaps, though, it has a degree of understanding and or appreciation or sympathy for a different lifestyle. Frankly, I see no harm in that. If such lifestyles exist and do so without inflicting violence upon others, there is no reason, no right, no justification for that censorship.

When I was a kid if I brought home a library book of which my parents disagreed, they would simply take it away and tell me there's a better one. As a youngster, I would agree to go along with it. However, that parental dislike stuck in my head; hence, when I was older, I took the book out and hid it from my parents and read it. Generally, at night with a flashlight when the entire household was asleep. Sometimes I shook my head and wondered what the fuss was all about. Actually, I think my parents knew, but believed, possibly, that at that point I was capable of reading that book and dealing with its content. At times I could not fathom their thinking while at other times I agreed with it - deciding for myself. No harm, no foul.   

It is the right, the duty, of parents to raise their child properly and well informed and capable of facing the world. You can supervise what your child is reading but know that that supervision has a time limit, a reality check. It is far better to discuss things which might upset you rather than simply issue dictats which only encourage disobedience to those dictats.

Unfortunately, there have been thousands upon thousands of book censorships during the 2023 - 2024 school year, from kindergarten to university level. Smell the smoke of the book burning of Hitler? It is merely a difference of degree, but not. of content, action or motivation. What the hell are we doing? What are we teaching our kids? Are we educating them to suppress viewpoints of others, to violently disagree with those viewpoints? And ban them? And ban those who support those differing viewpoints? To imprison them, shoot them, deport them? As long as those views do not incite violence or hatred there's nothing wrong with them. One might disagree with their content, but certainly the content of these books is protected under the right of free speech within this country. We must resist and deny the rather determined efforts of the extreme right to ban books with which they disagree or do not like. There is no room for that within an American democracy.

And immediately we touch upon the second. No surprise this topic. That is the topic of the Supreme Court of the United States, a bench which is now overrun by extremists who had no right to be there in the first place. Two have been accused of sexual harassment. Rightfully so. Four have been accused and shown to have accepted bribes in the forms of gratuities, RVs, whatever suited the need. They have failed to recuse themselves from cases where there is obvious conflict of interest. The Chief Justice is apparently weak and cannot impose order and ethical practices on his bench. Six right wingers against three women of humanity.  This is a crucial issue and no surprise, must be attended to and remedied - in a permanent manner. No surprise at all. Definitely not.

Finally, no surprise, a topic utmost on my mind. I hate it, I fear it. I worry about it. Rising anti- Semitism. Rising decibels of howling voices of hatred, with incitement to violence, with actual calls for the extermination of Jews, within and without Israel. It has become the trendy, the in thing to do, so liberating, knowing there are no consequences which will stick so - have at it! Shout and scream and do whatever the hell you want.   Visibly violently violate the laws of decency, of justice, of the campus rules. No surprise to find that on the first day of the new term at Cornell University once again anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli protests. Yet again, a university failing in its duty to protect all within its campus.  The physical and emotional abuse perpetrated upon the Jewish students is unacceptable and yet it is tolerated and even worse, celebrated. Professors, Board members, students are harassed for disagreeing, for being Jewish!

 Many universities. take the cowardly way - that of appeasement. Any student of history, any person with a thinking brain knows that appeasement is a policy of preordained failure, generally with a huge thud and great damage ensuing. And yet they follow that policy.  

“The question of divestment has brought to the forefront strong and contrasting views, and the vote this fall will bring clarity to an issue of sustained interest to many members of our community,” said Brian Clark, a Brown University spokesperson. “We cannot speculate on the outcome.”The Brown Divest Coalition struck a deal with college bosses for a vote to be held this October in return for ending the months of pro-Hamas protests that engulfed the Rhode Island campus."

There is no making a deal with such kind of pressure. Yet there is as continued effort to do so, to aid and abet the spread of hatred, revitalize an ancient trope thousand-fold. Numerous campuses are guilty of this failing. In fact, the AAUP, the American Association of University Professors voted on August 9th to add fuel to the fire and canceled an almost 20-year-old policy of opposition to boycotts and voted this way: that academic boycotts " can be considered legitimate tactical responses to conditions that are fundamentally incompatible with the mission of higher education". Glaringly there in its glaring absence of direct statement is the resultant legitimization of academic boycotts of Israel. a rather strong giant pillar of the BDE movement.   Massive caving to pressure. Is this, was this, a surprise? Unfortunately, not.

Students and outside agitators know that there are no consequences sticking to the landing, nothing forbidding their movement.  The direction these 'protests' will take is one of more violence leading inevitably to bloodshed. 

The world will be the worse for it if we do not actually surprise ourselves and push back against this ugliness. We must remember, remind ourselves that hatred spreads and overwhelms all, including the original haters. A word to the wise.