Why are Christian Bookstores Allowed to Ban Books?

The BBQ Pit
523

Gosh, that’s a lot for you to deal with.

But I’ll take issue with your “well actually” and “pedantic bullshit” characterizations. Rather, I was correcting you on an issue where you’re wrong as shit. I tried to do so in a civil manner, but hey, if gloves are off, that’s cool too.

For fourteen years I’ve been involved with schools that have promoted literacy through “Read Across America” day, on Seuss’s birthday, with lots of Seuss and Cat-in-the-Hat tie-ins. This was an event created by noted left-wing organization NEA. For the past five years, I’ve heard antiracist educators raising, with increasing success, questions about whether Seuss was an appropriate mascot for the day, given his racist illustrations and text.

This year’s RAA day is the first one since the Floyd murder and massive protests last summer–protests whose major impact so far has been to get corporations to question their use of racist symbols. Facelifts are easier than heart or brain surgery. The anti-racist educators who wanted to use less Seuss are finally seeing some success.

So when you say, “These were all zero-interest issues for the left,” that’s just ignorant as fuck, and disrespectful to the work of people who’ve been concerned with this issue for years. Your larger point suffers through this ignorant shit, because it misunderstands the dynamic between left-wing activism and right-wing lies: it’s not that conservatives make up left-wing concerns from scratch, it’s that they massively distort what left-wing activists are saying. When you dismiss that activism as nonexistent, you’re not helping.

So, with respect, step the fuck off, and maybe instead of getting pissy when people fight your ignorance, admit you didn’t know the whole picture.

524

Alright, fair enough. I was out of line there. I apologize.

525

Appreciate it!

526

And the hive mind is back to its peaceful buzz buzzing.

:slight_smile:

527

Hah, true enough for the last several years.

But 5 years ago, I didn’t have him on ignore. He was still an annoying right-wing partisan, but he contributed to non-political threads, and even in political threads, he made arguments. They were usually wrong as hell, but at least they weren’t mind-numbingly stupid. I don’t know if it was Trump that sent him over the deep-end or some issue in his personal life, but he didn’t used to be quite this bad.

528

Heh. I may be a little shirtier than normal, having come home expecting a $300 plumbing bill and finding a $6500 one instead. Does wonders, in the wrong direction, for one’s mood.

529

I think the decisions are largely independent of Twitter, I think they go to the fact that for whatever reason, liberals have an outsized share of economic power. I’ve cited this article before about how the counties that went for Biden generate over 70% of the economic activity in the US.

But the disparity is even deeper than that. Conservatives just don’t seem to carry any weight at all in terms of consumer power.

I think a lot of it goes to the high cost of living in liberal leaning urban areas. Having lived in such areas, your housing expenses and other expenses pegged to the local economy, like insurance and restaurant meals, can be 4 to 6 times what they would be in the heartland, and the cost of living is reflected in the salaries.

This has the side effect of making certain other expenses, discretionary items that cost the same in New York City as they do in Nebraska, seem really cheap. So you can afford to buy a lot of stuff. When I was a professional living in a large city, I spent twenty, thirty, fifty bucks on frivolous stuff several times a week. So I think liberals hold an even larger share than 30% of discretionary income, because of big city income disparity.

I read something in another thread weeks ago, someone talking about how his conservative Christian family made a point of only doing business with Christian companies. I don’t know how common this attitude is but if it’s widespread it could be that the conservative Christian community is consolidating their economic power outside of the mainstream, which would further weaken their mainstream consumer power. I’m wondering if I were to watch Fox News for a day and catalog their advertising, how much overlap there would be with the advertising on NBC?

(I don’t wonder enough to actually watch Fox for a day though.)

But, whatever the reasons, corporations are going to continue to make their products and their “brand” appeal to their target audience, people with money that might want to buy their product…and that is free market economics at its finest and it’s the system conservatives have been advocating for forever.

And the fact that they are crying for some sort of vague and I’ll-defined socialistic government intervention just because the invisible hand of the free market is bitch-slapping their racist asses is just too deliciously ironic for words.

ETA: My brother just pointed out that now you’ll be able to buy “Mulberry Street” at the gun show (where, apparently, videos of Song of the South are big sellers), so there’s that.

530

He used to put effort into posts. That’s his biggest sin. Sure, he can be a right wing hack, a nutty partisan, a baiter, a hypocrite, etc… but all those things are pretty common on the Dope. But no one is as lazy a poster as our eight armed troll. He doesn’t even bother to make an attempt to back up his arguments. He’ll throw out claims and not bother with a single iota of evidence to support them.

531

Rather hard to do when not a single iota of evidence exists.

532

No. It really is just a horribly worded question. Neither you nor I has any idea what you mean. The difference is: if you thought about it hard enough, you might be able to figure it out.

533

Ok. It should read without the fear of violence. Anyways, forgive the typo on the repeated question.

534

My gut instinct is to say yes, of course, people should not have to fear violence for their offensive beliefs - however, not everyone who has a fear of violence is rational and there’s no sense indulging others’ delusions. I’ve overheard more than one Trumpist talk about their beliefs as if there’s some kind of meaningful safety hazard to being a Trumpist, which is not supported by the evidence.

So I guess I would say that people have the right to express offensive beliefs without a reasonable fear of violence.

535

There are wily Antifas lurking in the bushes with their backwards MAGA hats ready to pounce on you for not being woke enough.

536

In theory, people should have the right to offend without the fear of violence as a consequence.

In theory, I should be able to walk anywhere in the world, at any time – day or night – inebriated, and wearing my jewel-encrusted Rolex on my arm and my $3,400 Nikon DSLR around my neck, without fear that harm or crime might befall me.

In theory, I should be able to produce craven images of another religion’s prophets without fear of violent retribution.

In a very, very, absurdly narrow and academic/theoretical construction, words don’t have intrinsic meanings.

But I don’t live in a book. I live in the real world. And that real world is inhabited by a fair number of billions of people, each of whom is distinct, unique, and nearly infinitely complex – almost without regard to how they first appear when you meet them.

In the real world, things function dramatically differently than how I, or others, might believe they ought to. In the real world, any number of details might paint a scenario which radically alters vast swaths of peoples’ perception of the scenario about which we’re talking.

Which is all in response to what really is a Reductio ad Absurdum argument on your part, so – while cleaning up the typo helped a fair bit – making the question more rational may have been too big an ask of that simple edit.

537

Nothing at all absurd to actually live in accordance to a claimed principle. I don’t assault others based on their freedom of expression. It’s not hard. I don’t assault others based on their religious beliefs, regardless of how abhorrent or primitive. It’s not hard.

I learned those concepts as a child. It’s a shame we hold preschoolers to a higher standard than college aged and older adults.

538

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw, [Man and Superman]

Knock yourself out. But don’t be surprised if I continue to make reference to your shocking ideological inflexibility and metallurgically astonishing cognitive rigidity :wink:

And when policy is being discussed – as it often is (while you’re struggling mightily to wrestle that brittle frame of yours over everything and everybody) – please try to understand that politics is the art of the possible.

And … not for nuthin’ … it might genuinely be helpful if you framed things as “In a perfect world, I’d like to see … X, but practically speaking …”

Y’know … just for shits and giggles.

539

We are talking about basic fundamental rights as have been understood in the US for 100s of years. I’m not writing as if these are bizarre hypotheticals.

540

But even your ‘question’ is a radical departure from the OP, and seems to have nothing to do with anything, unless – of course – Amazon pulled Charlie Hebdo from its shelves, and I missed it.

I think I’m envious of your frequent flier miles, because you truly are All Over The Map.

And I think it is mostly a dodge: you get backed into a rhetorical corner and you change the subject.

Too cute by half, really.

541

I wish this were in my pit thread so I could give you a overuse of transportation cliches Bingo stamp.

542

It’s the thought that counts.