Quote of the day—Mollie @MZHemingway

The terrifying mob has moved to the book burning phase.

Mollie @MZHemingway
Tweeted on June 6, 2020
[This was in reference The “decolonize your bookshelf” stuff in the QOTD from yesterday.

Also related is the QOTD of Christian Johann Heinrich Heine

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.

Read the previous link for more thoughts on why this conclusion is more than a coincidence.—Joe]

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3 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Mollie @MZHemingway

  1. I hate when I have to read NPR to see what they actually said.
    The quote isn’t out of context but it sure isn’t in context. “Your bookshelf might be part of the problem.” is the author’s attempt to say “your bookshelf is to white, add some black or Latino to it.”

    Unfortunately for the author, the rest of the article is racist BS. Straight out of the 1691 project. The trick of making a statement about X with an implication that Y is assumed to be true. “Because of 400 years of oppression, the histories written by white authors can’t be trusted.” My words, not NPRs, but a paraphrase. The statement is “histories written by white author’s can’t be trusted.” This may or may not be true. We can argue about it, discuss biases and so forth, come to a conclusion, likely of the sort “Well SOME can’t be trusted, for example Howard Zinn” but the real kicker is that implied agreement “400 years of oppression”. In order to discuss “white authors can’t be trusted” you are asked to accept that there were 400 years of oppression and that oppression is on going.

    That is a trick that happens all the time in these articles and it is a nasty trick.

    • It’s a version of the old, ad hominem attack. As the reasoning goes; being that some white people are known to be bad, then by extension all white people are bad. By that reasoning, if I test drive a red car, and it is very fast, then I can strip the finish off of a 1963 Volkswagen Bug, paint it red, and by so doing increase its horsepower and acceleration.

      If it can’t be trusted purely because it is written by a white person, because some white people have been known to do bad things, then surely, if even one black person ever did anything bad then nothing written by any black person (or anyone of any race, color, creed or ethnicity) can be trusted either.

      Not only is it lazy thinking (it frees you of all responsibility for critical, analytical thinking, comparing ideologies and doctrines, etc.), and unfair, bigoted and hypocritical, it misses any and all valid points entirely. But I suppose that I am to be put down for my “white thinking” and thus dismissed out of hand as a deceiver and a trickster motivated by a racist agenda.

      If on the other had one were to say, “Trust not Man but the Heavenly Father”, that at least would have credibility, for Mankind is fallen and prone to evil. And so, it would make sense to ignore skin pigmentation and look instead at an individual’s beliefs, doctrines and motivations. But evil seeks to focus rather on the arbitrary, and to make a big stink out of it, thus distracting the world from the important things like knowledge, principles and understanding.

      There is another, specific motivator at work here, which is the human tendency to seek a comparative advantage. You all know it well. In its simplest form it is the schoolyard bully who hates those who achieve scholastically more than he does. He seeks to bring them down to a lower level than the level at which he perceives himself to be. Toward that end the bully will pick out, arbitrarily, any characteristic of his victim and set about deriding it; “Where’d ya get those dumb shoes? Those are really ugly shoes!”, etc. “Oh; you’re white (or balck, or whatever blend of races)? Well then, you’re a no good, dumbo nothing.” is of exactly the same character. And if the bully’s target happens to have some valuable stuff he wants for himself, then he’ll convince himself that stealing it would be OK, even laudable, since it isn’t really a person he’s taking it from.

  2. He’s right. One doesn’t need books to understand that people of color have never been less oppressed than they are right now. In any country.
    The irony is he’s a blindman in a library. He can’t read Wright’s poem and apply it to what he himself is oppressing? Or that the relief he seeks cannot be got through the methods he is employing? Or that oppressor’s have used him and his tactics so many times to maintain the thing he proports to hate? It’s LOL ignorant.
    Only two things make a man lie like that. Education or inbreeding!

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