Reading Rights

 The following essay was first published in the Courier-Tribune in 2015 in a truncated form, before our local paper devolved into the pointless iteration of its former self that it is now. I have updated the essay to reinforce the central theme for the severity of the modern problem. For more on the local and national attempts to ban books, you can click on the links throughout the essay or go to ala.org.

Imagine the horror that you would feel if someone broke into your house, piled all your books into a wheelbarrow, dumped them in the front yard and set them ablaze. Now imagine that you have no legal recourse in the face of this persecution. You cannot call the police (they're the ones burning your books). You cannot seek remuneration for the damages. All you can do is look on in horror through your freshly kicked-in door as your beloved, possibly irreplaceable books burn. Knowing some of the books in my own collection, I might consider throwing myself on the pyre, if the censor's henchmen didn't do it for me.

This nightmare scenario may seem like the opening of a dystopian novel where an evil government seeks to subdue the people and their ideas. In fact it is just a slightly histrionic paraphrasing of actuality. Throughout history, groups and governments have sought to usurp the right of the people to own, read and share the ideas in books.

Likewise, throughout history, members of those oppressed groups have risen against totalitarianism and worked to keep those ideas alive and those books on our shelves. True, most of us rightly support the side that favors freedom of ideas.

Here in the United States, we might breathe a sigh of relief, realize the sun is still shining through the windows and that our beloved books are safely intact on our shelves. Those horrible book burning realities happen in other places and other times, but not here in America. We gratefully live in a land where our right to access those ideas is protected. It will help to strengthen our appreciation for those rights to think about those other places, yes, but we know that it is not a reality for us here at home.

Right?

We are rightly comforted that our right to read what we choose cannot be infringed. And, just a few short years ago, I might have said attempts to ban books were at low ebb. Though that right has constantly been challenged here at home, it is now a far more serious and significant threat.

Local and national groups all over the country have declared war on school librarians and their collections. There are several libraries in North Carolina that are, as you read this, wading through the banal mass challenges of so-called "patriotic" cadres that shred collections in order to eliminate LGBTQIA+ affirming literature or books that show certain parts of our national history in an unflattering (although entirely factual) light.

These attempts are not new. It used to begin innocuously. A young person might bring home a book and their parents are naturally curious about the content. In that book is a subject matter that the person finds reprehensible and that offends their personal sensibilities. If it stopped there; if that offended individual simply forbade their child from reading the book, or if they removed it from their own shelves, it would be enough. 

Now, groups financially strengthened by monetary injections from politically supportive billionaires and super pacs, reaffirm the offended person's right to complain, and then seek to audit entire collections to remove any other books they don't like. These generic, unironic ‘patriots’ then work to gain seats on their local school and library boards, town and county councils, and seats in the state general assembly, in order to prevent everyone else from reading or accessing those books, too. 

It is happening right now, even as you read this essay. People who say they have the best interest of children at heart are working to remove our right to free access because they are scared of books that show the world in a different light than they can tolerate. This fear is actively undermining our democracy and its foundational principles.

One of these groups, the un-ironically named extremist group "moms for liberty" (these groups do not have the capacity for irony) hosted North Carolina's Lieutenant Governor for a breakfast meeting. This mammal is running for the big chair in our state in 2024, much to the joy of a very wide range of evangelical, far right Christian Nationalists, a thought that ought to make any freethinker bilious.

Every year, the American Library Association sets aside a week in the early autumn to honor those books that have been banned or challenged over the years. The point of Banned Books Week is to look at both sides of the dialog while guarding the intellectual freedom we enjoy to read what we like. Librarians across the country are dedicated to providing freedom of access to books and ideas and with help from the American Library Association and our state library associations, we highlight those books that have had attempted bans or challenges and the reasons why.

In recent years, this educational program has taken on a more desperate, intentional tone. As splinter groups and factions coalesce into a kind of anti-history, anti-education, anti-literary junta that fully intends to rewrite history and prevent the rest of us from reading whatever we want, the threat to our liberty grows exponentially. It is happening now. It is gaining momentum now. Political pressure in states across the nation to ban books, to limit access, to stop appropriate programming and to defund and force libraries to “go private” is intensifying.

In our own community, we have had this important discussion regularly though it used to be necessary to discuss only once a year to keep it fresh in our minds and in the minds of our political leaders. The topic of banned and challenged books worked as a kind of apotropaic against the worst impulses of crypto-fascist cabals around our nation. Perhaps our work to keep this fresh in the public's eye wasn't enough. An annual visit to the list of banned books is no longer anywhere near enough. Every day must be Banned Books Day. Until the existential threat of book banning and political attacks on libraries (school, public and academic) slows or ends, we cannot afford to be hopeful that an annual celebration is enough.

In my somewhat limping attempts to review books, I let my audience know that if a book I suggest is offensive to them it is okay to put that book right back on the shelf. If a parent or guardian decides that the content of a certain book is inappropriate for their child, I fully support the right of that parent to decide on that topic for their family. We encourage people to explore new ideas, but we know well that some of those ideas might not agree with everyone. That's part of free access.

We do not work to prevent anyone from reading something simply because an individual or small group does not approve of it. That is antithetical to the national experiment which promotes free access and free inquiry as the underpinning of its democratic mechanisms.

Some people have approached me saying, with heartfelt concern, that it isn’t appropriate to have books about LGBTQIA+ lifestyles and information about gender, sex or racism in the Children’s Collection. “We don’t think little kids should have access to that,” they say with big, sad eyes. But the fact is, most librarians will not allow a child to check out without their parent there, and it is the right of the parent to choose for their child. As such, if the parent is active in their child’s reading choices, then that child will not be exposed to anything their parent or guardian disapproves of. “But,” they will say, “this new ‘woke’ literature is dangerous for the children, it has no place in the library to begin with”. 

The "for the children" argument is a fallacy. You don't have to like a book and you can choose to keep your children from reading it. To try to take a book from the hands of all children because you don't like it is ludicrously narcissistic. While this intention is the hallmark of the ideological movements working right now to take books off shelves, it is totally and by definition un-American. And make no mistake, they aren’t concerned for the children. The same groups that are funded to remove books from libraries “for the children” also keep lobbyists well paid to keep any legislation from passing limiting actual threats to children, like unfettered access to assault rifles. 

Though the discussion of banned books has, in the past, striven to understand both sides of the debate and educators and librarians have worked to promote the rights of both sides as well, we are now entering a new phase of the debate. It is well within the right of any group or individual to voice their objections to a book, just as it is well within the right of any group or individual to have access to that same book. We can no longer chalk up these protests and ban attempts to free speech. They are politically motivated and funded by political organizations. They are anti-democratic and their worldview is always bigoted, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic and they consistently use evangelical and ecclesiastical ideology to back their desire to remove books from libraries. There is no coincidence that the newly named Christian Nationalist movement is pro-book banning.

 

To balance between and understand both sides used to be the most important task that librarians and freethinkers had. However, in today's much more dystopian reality, the intent to stay balanced must be overshadowed by the intent to keep the challenged books available despite attacks and attempted bans. Our work to educate can no longer be enough. The shelves of our school and public libraries have become the front line in a war of ideological struggle where one side is literally an emissary of the totalitarian nightmare regimes of the last century. The nemeses of all we hold dear are deluded into thinking that trying to remove history and sexual education books is the most patriotic thing they can do. Our work now is to prove them wrong and stop tolerating their challenges and, ideally, end their era of power. We can no longer find hope in the idea that, at heart, every American loves democracy. The fascist, totalitarian impulse is behind the scenes of these groups and at the heart of the anti-democratic movements, in general. We’re no longer just educators. We’re now working as a kind of highly educated and specialized guerilla force, trying to save the foundation of our nation’s right to free access, inclusivity, equity and open mindedness. Every right we hold dear is at stake and our enemy is well-funded, self-assured and so adept at the casuistry of the televangelist and extremist politician.

George Orwell said, "Those who control the past, control the future. Those who control the present, control the past." The 'those’' in this quote represent the enemies of the freedoms we depend on and love. It is time to decide and know what we are prepared to do to save our way of life. And, make no mistake, this is the fight of our lives. If the goons' groups have their way, we lose everything.

It is that simple.

Introduce a little anarchy

Why do men have to wear neckties to work or church? What possible purpose can a 40 dollar bit of fabric around our neck actually serve? It's not practical, not necessarily anymore attractive. Yet, society demands we wear them. For years, my job’s official dress code required it. It didn't matter to the ones who made the dress code that the necktie was actually a symbol of wage slavery, of white supremacy, of the capitalist ‘members only’ mentality. 

I hated wearing a tie, and often didn’t wear one the whole day if I could get out of the fabric noose. I called it my “social ligature” and groused about it whenever I could. I fussed so much about the stupidity of requiring a strip of material under my collar and over my shirt buttons that my bosses jokingly called me an anarchist. 

Were they actually right?

When women began burning their bras in protest in the 1960s, much the same motivation was behind their urge for freedom. The bra represented sexual oppression by the patriarchy that had been widespread for generations. It was a symbol of what society deemed appropriate for females and that appropriateness scale was set by people who didn't have to wear what was culturally demanded. Men set women's clothing standards. The need to be free (not just physically from straps and underwire) from the patriarchal bonds within our culture drove the movement. They were called feminists and anarchists. Stuffy news commentators called the bra burners wild and unhinged. They managed to eventually turn the narrative of the protests into something squalid and pornographic, suggesting that women were sex-addicted and wild, thereby taking the power of the original protests and making it seem silly and trivial.

But were these feminist pioneers really anarchists? 

The answer to both questions is a resounding, thunderous, “YES”. Giving up these symbols of thralldom is the basis and underpinning of the anarchic mentality. And yet, just like everything else culture tells us about things we should fear and ignore, it purposely gets this definition wrong, too.

As such, anarchy is perhaps the most misunderstood term in our social lexicon. The anarchy movement (if such a thing can be categorized as an organized movement) got a very bad reputation a century ago when small groups of so-called 'political anarchists' decided to hurl nail bombs at people. History provides an example of this all-too common misapplication of the term by describing the Italian terrorists Sacco and Vanzetti as political anarchists. They were actually nihilists, as all terrorists are.

Political anarchy is an oxymoron. Anarchists may work together for a common goal, but they never have clubs or parties. They typically don't believe anything good can come from organizing or joining a group. That activity too much resembles cooperation and cooperation usually means following rules set by someone. This is antithetical to the anarchic motivation.

In fact, if we were to redefine anarchism more effectively for the modern era, we might choose to refer to its inherent distrust of all group participation or organization at any level of the social experiment. Rules are to be challenged rather than blindly followed. The deep dysfunction in our government, today, is, to the anarchist, what happens when people just go along with what those in power deem appropriate, for far too long.

We cannot be serious when we say or sing "land of the free, home of the brave". Not when so many people are actively being fettered by established rules that keep some in power and money, while others struggle just to survive. An anarchist looking at this failing system would call our nation a capitalist empire, complete with our own non-monarchical aristocracy—can you say billionaires and lifetime politicians?—with an inbuilt and carefully maintained oppressive economic caste system. For this reason, no party, however defined in this system, is really anarchic in nature, especially not those that seek as their main doctrine to abolish or limit government. 

For instance, the farcical "Libertarian Party" (note the capital L) fancies itself an anarcho-capitalist ideology that holds as one of its core motivations the reduction of government while setting itself up as an ideal of the Founders' actual original idea. This apparently made up relationship to actual democracy and political anarchy (so-called) misses completely what anarchism actually is. Yet the Libertarian political philosophy gains traction among people who fancy themselves anti-tax, pro-capitalist rugged individualists, whatever that really means.

The reason the Libertarian Party never succeeds in gaining power is because, despite what they profess, they aren't actually a party of rugged individuals looking to break up government monopoly so people can live in a radical free market economy where those who are smart enough also make the most money. They are merely capitalist extremists. They actually want economic and policy control. Otherwise it might be communism. Their dogma is based on Randian objectivism in pretext (based on the hack philosopher and would-be kleptocrat Ayn Rand's ludicrously terrible books). Without even trying, Immanuel Kant dismantled objectivism long before Rand or her followers were spawned, but like all such hordes, the ability to read isn't required to be a groupie.

Anarchy doesn't have a party system. It doesn't need one. It doesn't participate in the group political process. Anarchy is internal within the individual, not extant in the masses as a whole. For this reason, it defies definition by political or cultural values. It bubbles up in one person when that person begins to question why things are the way they are. The internal impulse to challenge rules that exist with no real reason is how anarchy begins. But it doesn't seek power, nor does it wish to decide what is right for the whole population. While it simultaneously reaches for complete or universal objectivity in its criticism of the entire political and cultural experience, anarchy seeks to unravel the sweater and then the yarn and then liberate the sheep before they can be sheared again. It has no respect for establishments, even its own.

An anarchist, therefore, isn't someone who throws bombs or is just apparently a nonconformist, though these might sometimes be symptoms of anarchy’s misuse. An anarchist wants to take apart the machine because within the dismantled mechanism lay the chains of repression and oppression, of hate and bigotry and misogyny, of greed and lust for power.

Anarchy is often labeled as destructive, and truly, we might agree that the urge to take apart stupid rules is somewhat destructive. Yet, because it has no blinkered economic or political motivation, no ideological reins guiding it, no hypocritical need for power or control, it operates outside the normal definitions and accepted understandings of daily life. The illusion of destruction is the shadow of those century-old bombers, not of reality. 

Anarchy seeks to eliminate all barriers to freedom, to remove all scaffolds of power, to challenge every impulse and motivation for gain or control; it wants to question and then break the rules of normative behaviors ascribed to us by our culture. It rages against the machine by challenging the mentality that we need leaders because that implies the need for followers, which anarchy implicitly rejects. That these leaders are inherently good or that they have our best interests at heart is as silly as it is repugnant to our deeply repressed anarchist thinking.

What possible good can come from the anarchistic mindset? 

In its elemental form, anarchism is pure curiosity about—an undiluted desire for absolute freedom. Like a three-year-old child who is exploring the world intimately and cannot be shown enough data to fill the void of its intense, black hole-like curiosity, anarchism wants to understand things both at the galactic and atomic levels. It challenges what we are told to believe and it wants to know why we choose to  believe and then it wants to turn off the switch of belief to see what happens. 

How do I survive if I don't get a haircut and choose a white-collar job? What happens if I reject class and party affiliations; what happens if I prove that my belief system is inherently self-deceptive? These motivations to question power structures are healthy and necessary for any growing individual, but they are frowned upon by the establishment. And we all have the urge to question, whether we admit it or not or whether, strictly speaking, it is allowed or not.

For all of us, there are tensions that must be endured, veils that cannot be torn, boundaries that cannot be crossed, but at no time are we given real, objective reasons for these rules. (I’m not talking about monogamous relationships, here. Rather, I’m referring to the pressures to conform within our societal structures of power.) We merely go along for the ride, assuming that we have some obligation to do so, because that's what people do and have always done. The anarchist in all of us wants to know why we obey these pressures, as it gets busy crossing the uncrossable barriers and removing the obstructions to true freedom.

Society has taught us to dismiss anarchy as something unconscionable. We tend to think of it as unhinged, desperate, futile, rebellious, perhaps immature or intentionally reckless. We hear punk rock music or see stone-throwing protesters at a riot when this word is used. Yet, anarchy isn't wild or unaware of consequences or solely impulse-driven or interested in murder or dependent on terrorism or extremist ideologies. Some may indeed apply these definitions as a way to draw attention away from the disruptive intent of anarchy and back to themselves or their concocted political identity or to create a scapegoat, but all of it is really an avatar for gaining and solidifying power.

In fact, anarchy wants to break our dependencies on the illusions we all hold dear. It intends to question the normative behaviors our cultures demand of us and show why they don't really matter, or, are built on clouds and illusions. 

Anarchism isn’t ignorant or unlearned. It has an entire pantheon of freethinkers to learn from. Socrates, Spinoza, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Kant, Descartes and many others were most assuredly not rule followers, and as a result of their own anarchic tendencies, they broke the dominant hold of social pressures and changed the way we think and learn. The Founders, by breaking their connection to and destroying the hold of the Mad Hanoverian king on the colonies, were anarchists in the truest sense.

Because of this deep connection to prominent thinkers, anarchy actually loathes logical fallacies and self-referential "because I said so'' dictums. It doubts and challenges those who want power, those who want money, those who seek to oppress or repress for control. It is allergic to the host of apologia that shore up the foundations of the worst ideologies. Anarchy hates chains and wants to break them. This is why it is the ultimate anti-fascist movement. When we refer to the “F word” as it was used in the last century or as it once again raises its hydra-like heads in our own land, anarchy alone shouts and points to show clearly what is actually happening. Even if you don’t think you’ve got the tendency, when you say that the people seeking control of our nation are fascists, you’re speaking with the terminology of anarchism.

What about ethics or morality? If anarchy is so dead set against the abusive power structure, it must also despise things like gender, traditional roles, family values (or any values), individual rights or assigning labels, right? Doesn't this desire to dismantle hierarchies and establishments of power and nonsensical status systems also ultimately cause it to laugh and ridicule the politics of the individual? Won’t it scoff at veganism or gluten-free consolations; at pantheistic or polytheistic beliefs? Truly, anarchy mocks all self-labels, not because it wants people to all be blank, grey automatons (this is actually what totalitarian systems desire), but to force us to do the really hard thinking about why and how we have come to these labels for ourselves. It seeks to create an opportunity for each of us to make sure what we claim about ourselves isn’t part and parcel of the cultural strictures that it so laments. 

If this is true, isn’t it likely that anarchy actually exists to break protective barriers which shelter the innocent? Isn't this actually an immoral position?

The anarchic mindset is concerned with freedom. If you are not truly free, then whatever binds you is an unethical fetter. No anarchist will ever challenge an individual's right to select their own destiny or to love whomever they wish, so long as they aren’t just doing it because society demands it. There are certainly some who would consider this rash, ignorant, valueless, defeated thinking, but only because they oppose the argument for true freedom.

Judith Butler put the solution to this problem beautifully, though, not directly mentioning anarchy, "'We're constantly learning what freedom is and what equality is and what justice can be. And those challenges—the anti-slavery movement, the suffrage movement, the movement for LGBTQA+ rights—each of those struggles involve challenging people's existing ideas of who's

equal, who has the right to be free, and how do we define justice. We are all the time struggling to achieve that goal."

This is why anarchy has become a byword for terrorism and destruction, and certainly why it has gotten such a bad rap over the years. The people in power hate anarchy because it seeks to eliminate the illusions they create to keep the populace docile, but also, because people in power know that their power is tenuous at best. That power is incredibly susceptible to ideas that challenge the world they wish to create. This is why certain groups work so hard to "protect children" from books that teach actual history or that answer questions about gender, sexuality, race and misogyny; or that fight experiences that defy monochromatic, repressive value systems. Nothing could be more unstable, harmful or deadly to the free, pluralistic society and yet, this is exactly how things are in America and other countries in “The West”. If you grow up to think that anarchy is bad, or if the term ‘intellectual’ becomes a dirty word, those in control win.

Certainly, you don't have to like punk rock music, wear torn jeans, have a brightly-colored mohawk or throw punches at fascists (though, that last one does sound fun) in order to be an anarchist. Each of us has the seed of anarchy in our breast, waiting for enough free thought to grow and blossom into the powerful flower of freedom. One might find, with a little careful reflection, that many more of us are actually anarchists than we know.

Freethinkers, the incurably curious, those interested in questions of liberty and freedom, sexual and gender rights, equity, equality, unimpeded access to information, dedication to tearing down hack social mores that exist because "that's how its always been"; even the stark refusal to wear a tie or other garments of social control, even just the urge to read banned books or promote free speech, are all serious symptoms of anarchy. 

We are told that patriotism is supporting the founding principles of our nation, but only on holidays and only in a red, white and blue flag shirt or hat. But, if we care about freedom, if we care about people and if we care about bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice, it is the sign of being part of the anarchical counter-culture, which is slowly poisoning the roots of the kudzu-like growth of totalitarianism as it sends its tendrils into every aspect of our national life. 

We all have a little, some more than others, but it has never been needed more. If you're tired of following stupid rules just because someone you didn't vote for decides to eliminate your freedom to decide for yourself, it may be time to introduce a little anarchy.

Reasoning Across the Emotional Divide

 I speak weekly to my aging father who leans right politically. He labels himself as a Nixon Republican, which any student of history will have to frown at, knowing what we know about the 37th president’s time in the executive office. Growing up in this solidly conservative reality, I learned early that there is some good on the conservative side of policy making and that the Republican Party has a history of quite progressive ideas and leaders (see Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush for examples). I’m no longer politically a conservative or a Republican because it has become evident to me that whatever the right had going for it in terms of policy and principle has been permanently lost with its recent violent lurch rightward. The goons are now in control.

This populist, nationalist lean isn’t a new development. Recent historical events (beginning with Senator John McCain taking on running mate Sarah Palin and culminating with January 6th, 2023) have made it evident that the right has lost its ever-loving mind. They deal in casuistry rather than policy, appalling showmanship rather than leadership. Right-leaning media platforms make a mockery of any discourse that isn't already morally imbecilic. These (online and cable TV) networks spread conspiracy thinking and inane versions of reality like potent virulences. The combination has been lethal for our democracy.

My father’s position on much that is going on in the world today comes primarily from his right wing TV news channels and discussions with his friends. He's not on social media, but it is apparent, even without exposure to the Russian troll-fed propaganda on those networks, Pops has become a bit of an extremist about much that is going on. 

And yet, the issues he's 'up-in-arms' about are never what I expect; it's never the really egregious, scary problems; the infractions of liberty, the threats against our establishments, the attacks on our democratic processes, the undermining of our precious freedoms. Instead, he seems to be caught up in culture war jargon, even if he doesn’t know what most of it really means. He’s become a parrot that repeats the words and emotions fed to him, morning, noon and night from his TVs. Most of us have.

Since Pops is the one person on that side of the ideological divide that I have regular contact with, he has become a proving ground for a philosophical experiment that I’ve been working on. How do we break the barriers of ideology and talk about the tough issues again? 

Pops is not a college graduate, nor did he work in education, information services or economics. He’s no dummy, however. He retains his late 20th Century smarts about modern events. When I asked him if he was interested or upset about the former president having been indicted on 37 counts of felony possession of top secret and other confidential documents, he said he’d heard about it, but didn't know the details. He betrayed no real emotion, but I got the sense that he didn’t believe it was a big deal. Later in the conversation he asked me if I knew what the word "woke" meant. When I said that I had some idea of what he thought it meant, he went into a deeply impassioned rant about how Democrats are ruining freedom using that word. He was quite adamant about it.

Note the difference, though. The historical event of ‘great pitch and moment’ he was aware of but with no emotion. The other thing of literally no import—except propagandized scapegoating—he knew about and was really angry because of it. The dichotomy between the culture war jargon from propaganda-filled TV and Pops’ lack of interest with the actual scary things happening in our society fascinates me. It proves that there is a chasm even for him, but the gulf between the sides isn’t so much intellectual as it is emotional. As I reflected on our conversation I was caught by the odd misplacement of his strong feelings.

For some time, I have suspected that there was more involved in the apparent ideological schism than just a difference of opinion. When we noticed that some of the people we are friends with began to—like Pops—become a bit more extremist about their political and religious beliefs, I wondered what had changed. I knew part of it was social media; if ever there was a place for people to have their worst ideas reinforced by algorithms, trolls, bots and other, like-minded users, it was Facebook and Twitter.  

Likewise, I noticed that people on the opposing (read: ‘left’) side of things had become more militant. When the hardline right wing grew radical (and more unhinged), the people left of that movement went harder left and seemed to get a little more easily offended and willing to embrace news that was not objectively verifiable. They also got very touchy about anything that challenged strongly-held beliefs. It seemed a natural balancing reaction considering how far into the bleak landscape of authoritarianism the right had moved, but at the heart of it all was a consuming, righteous outrage about the “other side”. Deep, powerful emotions, irrational, always raging, erupted with the sharing of “opinions” and woe to those who tried to take a more civil, reasoned approach to disagreeing.

At first, I thought that it was just that things on the fringes of the political spectrum were rougher, generally. Actually, there’s no real difference in informational intake on either side. Both halves of the schism get their news in the same ways, but because it is spun with whichever political or religious flavor the user prefers, we tend to follow the content that confirms our inborn biases. Since bad news gets clicks and good ratings, if the channels and platforms can make their users unreasonably angry about a topic, regardless of where it falls on the political spectrum, all the better. They can moderate their content to swing people harder left or right from there.

There’s a perfect example of this in George Orwell’s masterpiece novel, 1984. Called “the two-minutes hate” every worker of Oceania’s Airstrip One (totalitarian England) had to stop and gather before a huge screen where Emmanuel Goldstein, the ideological enemy of Big Brother is portrayed. During this hateful interlude, the workers are expected to hurl spittle and vitriol at the screen, working themselves into such lathers of outrage that some people actually collapsed. No one can resist the visceral whoop of rage because it feels good to be angry at something. It is never made clear what Goldstein has done to earn this hatred, except that he’s “the enemy”. 

The helplessness and bleak totalitarian nightmare of their lives has to be relieved so that they continue to be compliant and docile. If they rage at Goldstein, they will not rage at the injustices perpetrated on them by Big Brother’s regime. After the two-minutes hate concludes, there is a moment of patriotic revelry, where all unite in mutual adoration of Big Brother, once again transported to heights of passion. 

Sounds all-too familiar.

Orwell knew well what we seem to have forgotten. When we try to cross the chasm of our cultural polarization, we’re not faced with well thought-out opinions or even reasonable (if not totally rational) hopes and beliefs. It is unreasoning emotion, stoked up by feelings of perceived persecution and grievances too deep to ever be solved. 

People (all of us) seem to not be able to help reacting with our anger. We have been conditioned to guard our beliefs with feelings, rather than logic. This has made us more tribal, more othering (prejudiced), more intolerant, more credulous and more unironic and literal. Thus, we react with anger when challenged and take whatever information caused that anger as if it were Gospel. We never seek to objectively verify them, because we feel they are right.

And yet, if I speak to my friends calmly, rationally, with empathy and open mindedness, we seem to agree on more than we disagree. Although I loathe the phrase ‘agree to disagree’ for reasons of semantics and personal snobbery, I find that we can actually find common ground even where we differ fundamentally if we lose the emotional tone and try to speak objectively. We can—as the founders intended—be free to dissent and not have pitched battles about tough topics or create scapegoats or make enemies of our friends.

Pops is still wise enough that he’s not going to start a family fight with me over a difference of opinion, nor I with him. I know that he’s also never going to stop watching cable TV news. He’s set in his ways and he likes the noises and light and I think it makes him feel like he’s participating in the process of democracy when he gets angry at what they tell him the problem is with this country. Nevertheless, between the extremities of both of those positions is a place where he sometimes listens to reason and defers to a different, less emotional take. It's taken time to get past the strong feelings for both of us, but it has been worth the effort.

My hope within our community is that we aren’t yet so blinded by artificially stoked outrage that we can no longer speak rationally together. I’m not fully convinced, but I’m hopeful that finding this non-emotional pitch is the only real solution to our current divisiveness (that, congressional term limits and an end to Citizens United, of course). 

Our nation is teetering on a series of emotionally-charged ideological time bombs ready to explode us into an authoritarian nightmare much like Orwell’s less and less fictional 1984. And, although I won’t say that all people have been duped, many of us are too emotional to see what actually matters and what is at stake. One of the hallmarks of a newly developing despotic regime is that people are so amped up and outraged over perceived challenges to their way of thinking that they put a “strongman” in power who eventually removes anyone’s right to be free. 

I hope, to quote Christopher Hitchens, “No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine.” I'm also quite certain that unless we start trying to find common ground with our fellows, the chasm will be too wide and we will forget that we’re brethren in this fight for human rights and liberty.

It isn't necessarily imperative that we speak solely about politics or religion or their many subcategories with our friends (like LGBTQ+ rights, gun violence, billionaire-funded super pacs, book banning and the devastating erosion of the wall that separates church and state). Yet, while these two topics go without discussion because of the vitriol of their proponents and while exposure to the loss of liberty brought on by credulity, we also lose our ability to bring the conversations back around to reason, logic, skepticism and doubt, kindness, open mindedness, love and eventually—hopefully soon—civil discourse.

Bad Harry

It is difficult to understand what leads people to become heroes in the eyes of the public. Especially when, looked at objectively, those heroes have dubious moral and ethical motivations. No one who has risen to the historical level of hero (I suggest Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Thomas Jefferson, etc.) are exemplars of perfect virtue. All humans are flawed, but making people into heroes tends to negate these flaws or makes us like and revere people to the point where we willingly ignore them, always to our peril. Recent history has once again reminded us of the danger of hero worship, as millions decided to revere an individual who was actually inept, dangerous and violently stupid. It isn't the first time.

It will not be the last time.

And yet, heroes and their worship persist. Literature provides a perfect place to examine and challenge dominant ideological forces, especially as regards our tendency to unquestionably revere people and make them heroes. Fictional characters are malleable and we can more easily question their motivations or change our perspectives to regard them in a different light. These interesting thought experiments are not new (nor are they limited to literature, since many of our heroes are also cinematic, but for my purposes, I’ll consider cinema as a part of literature for this essay). People have been asking whether the protagonists in literature are actually good guys for a very long time.

Our subject, then, is a modern hero whose storyline is now deeply familiar to almost everyone. Like all heroes, his mythos has been read by millions and his literary (and cinematic) universe is beloved by billions. It’s no wonder. The story of The Boy Who Lived is a classic tale that has echoed across the eons. The ill-favored orphan who winds up becoming a leader and a hero who fulfills a prophecy, destroys a despot and ends a deadly regime is a very popular storyline that we can never get enough of. Luke Skywalker and King Arthur are just two, but there are aspects of this in Batman and Superman, as well.

And yet, few young adult literary heroes have had as much gravity for the modern consciousness as Harry Potter.

In a recent re-reading of the books (I read them as they were initially released and re-read them about a decade ago) I decided to take the advice of a handful of nonconformists online and tried to think about Harry not as a hero, but as a terrible, unpredictable and deeply flawed person in his own right. I didn’t bend the tales so that his enemy, the ominously named Lord Voldemort, is the good guy, however. Instead I maintained that Harry was just another main bad guy in the story.

Coming from the side of early childhood development it isn’t hard to see why Harry is actually quite damaged. As his mythos reveals, he is orphaned at a very early age and was (according to the books, anyway) about one year old when Lord Voldemort broke into his parents' home and killed them in front of Harry. He, too, is attacked, but rather than dying, he is permanently scarred, though the magic spell blows back and kills (presumably) the Dark Lord. He is rescued by wizards who—rather than taking him and raising him from his infancy as foster parents—give him to his mother’s sister’s family who hated magic, feared wizards and loathed and feared the boy.

During the early part of his life, Harry was kept in a cupboard under the stairs, fed the family’s leavings, treated like dirt and was verbally and physically abused until he was eleven years old. At no point is he ever held, comforted, read to, given gifts, played with or allowed to enjoy free time. He is despised and reviled rather than loved and he has no recourse, no means of escaping his nightmare reality. 

As he gets a bit older, he is made a servant rather than a child and is bullied endlessly by his older cousin, Dudley. When he is rescued and told that he’s actually a magic user and that he’s going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry’s aunt and uncle work very hard to prevent him even being welcomed back by the extended family that knew and loved his parents. After each school year when he has to return to his surrogate family, he is abused and maligned even more than before.

Any human child subjected to this in the real world would have a very difficult time growing into a fully-functioning, well-rounded adult and would always show the gaps in their development. Perhaps intentionally, Harry’s author shows these gaps, but we readers likely don’t recognize them for what they actually are, because we’re too busy rooting for Harry to win. This is because we feel akin to Harry or, if not, we understand the injustice of his situation. We’re used to cheering against the bad guys, and so we hope for the destruction of Harry’s awful family and his enemies. In one scene, when Harry is being badly treated once again by his surrogate family, this time at the zoo, he makes a glass pane disappear on the exhibit of a Burmese Python so that his cousin falls in and is put in mortal danger. An outsider might (ignoring the magical elements) see this as the act of a very unhealthy young person who needs help. However, we support Harry’s actions and we are righteously indignant at the treatment he received.

This is just one of many times that Harry puts other people in danger for his own gain or for revenge (or both). He quite often lies, cheats, manipulates people, breaks the rules, disregards the authority of school staff, ignores his friends’ safety, focuses his rage on people (who regularly earn it) and is always compulsively looking for ways to get revenge for mistreatment.

Harry is kept in check by his two best friends Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasely but he frequently disregards their warnings and continually expects them to put their own lives in danger so that he can solve a mystery (read: get revenge on Voldemort). Although not the only character of dubious personality (Harry’s author quite eloquently creates many deeply flawed characters who act as real humans do, seeking their own interests) Harry in this reading becomes a kind of intolerable black hole of misery for the people around him. In one book, The Order of the Phoenix, Harry spends the entire story raging at the people who love him and burning bridges with people who are trying to keep him safe while endangering them and in one case, even putting his Godfather in an ultimately fatal situation. When, at the end of the book, he is accosted by the school's headmaster, who wishes to console Harry’s loss, Harry just rages some more and breaks up the office.

By the end of the books, Harry does realize that he has the ability to destroy Lord Voldemort and he also begins to take stock of just how much his friends have sacrificed to put him in the role of The Chosen One. He even begins to see how much of a problem he has been to his friends who, on several occasions, become so angry at his single-minded drive, that he is actually forced to take personal inventory and change his tack in order to maintain their friendships.

Much like anyone subjected to the trauma and loss Harry faces in the stories, he becomes an empty shell of a person. He is never really able to become an individual in his own right, nor does he recognize his own value outside of the battle between dark and light magic, until well after he destroys Lord Voldemort. His only sense of meaning is what has been foisted upon him in his youth for the battle. As such he is much more like a sociopath who mirrors other people’s behavior to fit in rather than someone who actually has and feels emotions. His rigorously immoral behavior, ignorance of consequences, lack of a moral compass beyond his own desires and flat refusal to value other people's feelings are all on display in each book. His anti-social disorder is also obvious in the way that he treats his love interests early in the stories.

I’d make the argument that Harry is actually a psychopath. He has no trouble killing and frequently does so, either directly or by failing to save people or by failing to obey necessary boundaries that keep the rest of his friends from using magic to harm. In the first book, in order to save himself from a situation he never should have been in, he kills a teacher at the school. He never shows regret for this, since the teacher in question was in league with Lord Voldemort. It was most assuredly a "kill-or-be-killed" scenario, so we actually wish to absolve Harry of his culpability, but he never should have been involved at all. Harry was eleven years old.

He kills several people, in fact more than any other wizard except the Dark Lord. It is, of course, important to acknowledge that three of these four people were magical variants of Voldemort, but then, murder is murder. By the time the books close on Harry as an adult, he has caused more chaos, ruined more lives, killed or injured more people and all by the time he’s 18. All of it might be forgiven, considering the odds, the fact that he became a tool to be used against evil and that he was part of a prophecy he didn't make, except that Harry rarely shows any remorse for his actions and is actually given carte blanche by the headmaster of the school to do as he wishes with very few serious consequences. Giving free reign to people with dangerous personality disorders and horribly traumatic childhoods isn't the ideal soul in which to sow the seeds of heroism.

Anyone reading this who is a Harry Potter fan (and I am one, believe me) will no doubt be fuming at my description, but they might be hard pressed to actually show that I’m wrong. They might say, “but Harry is a good guy!” or “Harry did what he had to do!”. This is true, but I don’t think it is sufficient to negate the thesis: Harry is too flawed to be a good guy.

When we revere characters, we do so at the risk of ignoring their flaws, which often far overshadow their virtues. However, to assuage the hurt feelings of those people upset with this essay, I can submit two things that actually may help to redeem Harry, at least in part.

First, people in the stories love him. Not that being a psychopath prevents people liking him, per se, but the people who actually do love Harry and treat him well earn his slightly inhuman loyalty. Once he makes a connection, he is devoted to that person even when he is fighting with them. Second, of course, is Harry’s bravery. Courage is a virtue that eliminates other flaws. No one stops to ask whether those running toward danger are good people. We assume they are, because of their bravery. The chief personality trait which lands Harry in his school house (Gryffindor) is his fearlessness. Fear likely was burned out of him by his unbelievably awful childhood, but he nonetheless is a very courageous character, who shuns cowardice and loathes it in his friends. Yet, that bravery likely is born in his inability to see consequences and his impulsive desire to get revenge.

Despite the awful consequences of this experiment (I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see Harry as a good guy again) I do think that there is a valuable lesson in it. It doesn’t take much to swing ourselves out of the gravity of public opinion far enough to challenge our strongly-held beliefs. It has also helped me to mistrust my tendency to idolize people, especially those people that everyone else agrees are good and honorable just because they're popular. 

I reserve the right to make up my own mind. However, any discussion about literature is a good discussion that sharpens the critical faculties and encourages literacy. In that case, this is a worthy exercise, even if it does wind up being quite upsetting for fans (including me).