$7.50
The Paradise Essays Vol 1
Author’s Note: This is the first in a proposed series of essays (“The Paradise Essays”) on the importance of libraries and the attack on our broader culture in general. Here’s hoping I write more of them!
“I have always imagined that paradise will be a type of library.”
—Jorge Luis Borges
I suppose there’s the easy answer: It’s an Executive Order. The more difficult answer is what this order portends.
I point to this specific order because it targets many important areas of our government, including, to my horror and astonishment,2 this essential organization:
The Institute of Museum and Library Services
That’s right, they’ve come for the libraries. While this isn’t surprising in the least, it does not take away the indignation and trepidation I have felt when I read this executive order, and also, when I learned that the entire IMLS staff were furloughed.
To learn more about what this means for your local libraries, please check out this statement from the organization EveryLibrary.
“Why should they have my tax dollars?”
In any rational world, how does this make sense? What is happening is the striping of basic rights from citizens, among them the right to information, and to be curious and satiate that curiosity.
I’m sure there are some people who say, “Well I never go to the library, why should they have my tax dollars?”
To which I would reply:
When I was young, I was told that I would change my mind about taxes when I make more money, and I asserted, rather stubbornly, that I don’t think that would be the case, and when I would, those who were debating with me, often some of the closest people to me, would smile knowingly and accept that while I thought that then, my mind would change.
Well, it hasn’t changed. And I don’t say that as some sort of declaration of victory, but as a statement that while my priorities are certainly selfish — I would like to make money, money is essential to functioning in our late stage capitalistic society — I also inject the needs of society when considering what is best. That word society, something that Margaret Thatcher in her less than infinite wisdom said didn’t exist (to paraphrase the Iron Lady).
I believe in society. I believe in all of us coming together and building roads, opening schools, having conversations, forming school boards, creating culture, and, yes, helping the most in need.
And I believe that libraries are the single greatest thing society has ever created.
For at least 45 years (if not more), the right in this country has demonized the poor as some sort of “Takers,” as if we live in their fever dream idea of an Ayn Rand novel3. This blistering and destructive view of the least of us is shameful. Sure, people manipulate the system, and those people should be held to account. However, the vast majority of recipients — over 90% as of 2023 — receive the benefits in good faith. It’s like saying: 9% of the food in the world has food borne illness in it, so we should definitely all stop eating! And while we’re at it, show me a system designed by human beings that is not in some way taken advantage of, and I’ll call it the first of its kind.
I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again:
I am tired of the poor being blamed for things that are not their fault, and then bearing the weight of moral judgment which they do not deserve.
All of this is to say: Libraries represent the best of us.
The average US household pays approximately $7.50 a month to support libraries. So let us please dispense with the ruse that this is in any way about government efficiency or saving money; it is simply an assault on society, decency, knowledge, curiosity, community. Nothing less than an attack on each and everyone of us, or at least those of us who do not think like Dear Leader and his cretinous cabal.
So yeah, I’d say something like that.
Righteous Anger
Yes, I am angry, and I am righteous in that anger. Please tell me — what are libraries doing that is in any way negative? Is it the books that are so scary? Or is it the people themselves, people who walk into a library with one view, a view they haven’t thought critically about before entering, but now, since they have found this book or that, are changing how they think, and thus, thinking for themselves. This is a nightmare for people like Russell Vought4, and others who want to impose some bizarre, restrictive form of Christian Nationalism upon the United States that, among other things, views women as nothing more than a uterus with an appropriately lengthened skirt.
I do not agree with a huge swath of books in libraries. However, I’d like for books like this, and this, and even this crock of shit5 to be available in every library in the country. It is a cherished right of these authors to express viewpoints that I find absurd, destructive, disgusting, etc, and it is not my job or fucking Russell Vought’s6 job to tell people what is a permissible idea in our society. How exclusionary. How arrogant.
How fearful.
People who want to ban books are coming from a place of fear. We can have a debate about where their fear comes from, or if it’s justified, but make no mistake: If someone is afraid of a book, it’s a safe bet they are afraid of a portion of life, and would like the rest of the world to share that fear. As a person who is perptually afraid, I can say I certainly identify with fear based thinking, but when does one person’s fear become a moral arbiter for another’s pursuit of a good life?
It’s not like when I was five and was afraid that the plants of a local pizza establishment would eat me that I then gave a speech the next day to my kindergarten class, fomenting that we needed to ban all plants. My fear, as absurd and real as it was, was my fear, and my fear should not be used as a cudgel for people who want to own plants.
Maybe I’m morally posturing. I know for certain that I have made the mistake over and over again in telling people how they should think. I have grown angry, I have lost the thread of the logic as I try to convince someone that my point of view is the only point of view. And maybe that’s what I’m doing here. Who can say? However, I cannot turn away from such disgusting declarations from a lawless, sadistic administration, especially when they target paradise.
Said with all due deference to the great Greil Marcus, the originator of that pressing question as an opening sentence.
Setting aside that this asinine little collection of paragraphs also targets The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and The Minority Business Development Agency*
*I just can’t imagine why this is included. It’s a real head scratcher.
Fever Dream or Not — Ayn Rand is a hack writer, an absolutely awful prose writer, and created some of the most wooden characters since, I don’t know, someone 17th century cobbler in Holland.
Vought is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and one of the featured authors of Project 2025.More on this cretin in the future. Make sure you have a strong stomach, because he is sure goddamn gross.
I actually found this book in a library, and after some louder than advisable scoffing, I picked it up and brought it with me to the table where I was writing, and used it as a very helpful research tool when I wrote this piece about Hucksters.
But seriously, his look of saurian glee is enough to really put a damper on your afternoon.