Ivy League librarians are demanding “abolition of policing in all its forms.” No, really.
Maybe it’s because my nerves are frazzled by the news of forced medicalization at work but I laughed hysterically when I imagined a bunch of fussy, coddled librarians trying to get by in a world without policing in all its forms. Can you imagine a group less capable of getting by without police?
Although it’s funny, it’s also been pretty scary these last few years to see just how little internal sense of values people actually have. Everything is about signaling that you belong to the right group.
Imagine if influential progressive media figures started a campaign tomorrow in favor of cannibalism, asserting that opposition to cannibalism is a Eurocentric construct, and that if you oppose cannibalism today you’re a literal Nazi. Within a week, all the same people and organizations that have jumped on the abolish the police bandwagon would be passionately pro-eating people.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Eh, don’t give them any ideas. This isn’t as impossible as we think today. I can easily imagine a campaign for “the indigenous ways of eating in accordance to ancient non-Western wisdom.”
LikeLike
You know, I remember after the Patriot Act, when librarians were cool. Our library and many others changed their entire library record-keeping systems so that if the government started requested people’s check-out records, they wouldn’t be able to turn them over.
Now, of course, they identify with the tyrants.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah… Librarians used to be pro-freedom. Now they are jailers in this totalitarian jail.
LikeLike
To be fair, they call for colleges to “begin the work of divesting from police and prisons with the ultimate goal of the complete abolition of law enforcement and surveillance from library spaces, campuses, communities.”
I remember you mentioned petitioning for Yale to stop investing in private prisons while you studied there.
I understand they go a step too far in rhetorical flourishes but the actual demand is normal. Why should libraries invest in the prison system?
LikeLike
You haven’t read the whole thing. They want to abolish policing in all forms.
Libraries don’t invest in anything. They are not for profit.
LikeLike