Don’t visit America » « Bluest of the blue

They hate libraries, too

If this weren’t so horrifying, it would be ridiculous. Trump & Co. want to eliminate federal support for libraries.

When President Trump recently proposed eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), librarians and educators voiced outrage, confusion and fear. Soon afterward, the appointment of Keith E Sonderling as acting director of IMLS highlighted the administration’s intention to reshape the agency’s priorities toward “promoting American exceptionalism” and cultivating “patriotism”.

This is where Moms for Liberty and all those reactionary assholes who get worked up about drag queen story hour have gotten us. They’ve long wanted to police the content of libraries, so why not go all the way and get rid of them altogether? Especially since librarians tend to be sticklers for the free dissemination of knowledge.

They’re trying to close the Department of Education, too. So their vision of the future is no schools, no libraries, and every woman staying home and homeschooling their swarm of kids using conservatively approved materials. I guess they’ll plan on recruiting the scientists and engineers and medical professionals society needs from abroad…except that they hate immigrants, too.

What libraries we have left will be propaganda outlets. This whole insane notion of “American exceptionalism” has poisoned our country and wrecked our ability to cooperate and collaborate with everyone else in the world, and now it’s official American policy.

I’m not at all happy to be finding myself living in one of those dystopian YA novels.

Don’t visit America » « Bluest of the blue

Comments

  2. grandolddeity says

    It kinda sounds like “heaven on earth” under the angry god ideology. I don’t think too many christians like that, either. I got the hell out because of it.

    Maybe they’ll start with the presidential libraries.

  3. microraptor says

    There are two major differences between what we’re seeing right now and the average cyberpunk dystopia:

    1) A lack of neon everywhere.

    2) Cyberpunk dystopias don’t bother oppressing people based on their gender identities.

  4. says

    this strange haunted ruins of a world they’re trying to create, i wonder what kind of depraved freak would even like it. westboro baptist types need a babylon to rail against, to help themselves feel oppressed, to get their little rocks off. how can they enjoy the ash-choked string of puritan reading rooms that will remain? the necropolis of everything that was once interesting and alive in this society? it’d bore them too.

  6. says

    repost: Felonious tRUMP, muskrat and their cockroaches are are burning down the ‘Library at Alexandria’ AGAIN. Welcome to the new Dark Ages
    https://www.rsn.org/001/the-data-hoarders-resisting-trumps-purge.html
    Julian Lucas / The New Yorker 20250320
    Can librarians and guerrilla archivists save the country’s files from DOGE?
    The deletions began shortly after Donald Trump took office.
    More than a hundred and ten thousand government pages have gone dark in a purge that one scientist likened to a “digital book burning,” and which has proved as frightening in its imprecision as in its malice.

  7. stuffin says

    “Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of dictatorship”. This quote, often attributed to Bruce Coville, highlights the dangers of information control and its association with authoritarianism.

    Soon, the public will only have FOX, Xitter, U-Tube, podcasts and blogs left providing information to the public. Trump is already using federal dollars to stifle Universities. Closing libraries, shutting down the DoE and oppression of the press is controlling the narrative to allow only praise of Trump. He has put in place plenty of lackies and has an army of mindless minions by which he will accomplish full takeover of America. The judiciary branch is the only part left to fully control. They are hanging on by a thread. If he can’t control them, he will ignore them. He sees America as a company he owns, his takeover is almost complete.

    “Information is the currency of democracy,”

    The Democrats are coming together and are planning how to stop this madness. /s

    PS, eventually Hollywood will succumb to his will and only produce movies and shows that favor Trump.

  8. says

    how can they enjoy the ash-choked string of puritan reading rooms that will remain?

    “Censorship will be complete when nobody reads any books except for the books that nobody reads.”

  9. raven says

    They’ve long wanted to police the content of libraries, so why not go all the way and get rid of them altogether?

    I’m sure the fascists would love to get rid of all the libraries.

    Fascists seek to control all aspects and institutions of society to maintain their power.

    I don’t see how they can destroy the local libraries though.
    I just checked my local library system.
    AFAICT, they don’t receive much or any Federal funding.
    It is local and state taxes and a significant amount of private funding.
    The library is widely popular and heavily used.
    They have a bond levy for part of their funding and it so far has passed every time.

    As Trump and Musk weaken the Federal government, they make the state governments stronger by necessity.
    And a lot of those state governments are Blue state governments.
    Odd factoid. 70% of the US economic output comes from…Blue counties.
    Blue counties subsidize the Red MAGAt counties.

  10. drsteve says

    I’ve been living in a dystopian Vonnegut or Dick novel. You’re welcome to join me, it’s quite a bit weirder and more interesting here, if not actually more pleasant, than YA,

  12. says

    Rage Against The Machine said this just the same as others did before them.

    Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes
    Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal
    I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library
    Line up to the mind cemetery now
    What we don’t know keeps the contracts alive and movin’
    They don’t gotta burn the books they just remove ’em
    While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells
    Rally ’round the family, pockets full of shells

  13. John Morales says

    In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/21/canada-cross-border-library

    The US has blocked Canadian access to a library straddling the Canada-US border, drawing criticism from a Quebec town where people have long enjoyed easy entry to the space.

    The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is located between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont. It was built deliberately to straddle the frontier between the two countries – a symbol of cooperation and friendship between Canada and the US.
    ‘Trump tariffs are reshaping our politics’: Canadians on their election
    Read more

    The library’s entrance is on the Vermont side. Previously, Canadian visitors were able to enter using the sidewalk and entrance on the American side but were encouraged to bring documentation, according to the library’s website.

    Inside, a line of electrical tape demarcates the international boundary. About 60% of the building, including the books, is located in Canada. Upstairs, in the opera house, the audience sits in the US while the performers are in Canada.

    Under the new rules, Canadians will need to go through a formal border crossing before entering the library.

    “This closure not only compromises Canadian visitors’ access to a historic symbol of cooperation and harmony between the two countries but also weakens the spirit of cross-border collaboration that defines this iconic location,” the town of Stanstead said in a press release on Thursday.

    […]

    US Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to queries posed on Friday.

    In a statement to Reuters, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the US was responding to drug trafficking.

    “Drug traffickers and smugglers were exploiting the fact that Canadians could use the US entrance without going through customs. We are ending such exploitation by criminals and protecting Americans,” the statement said.

    The department provided no evidence of drug trafficking or smuggling and did not immediately respond to a request for additional information.

  14. John Morales says

    Meanwhile, in the Continent: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/22/ukraine-clandestine-book-club-defies-russia-push-rewrite-history

    Risking discovery and even prison, teenage readers meet in secret to discuss texts that Putin’s troops are trying to erase

    It must be one of the most dangerous book clubs in the world. Before they can feel safe enough to talk about poetry and prose, 17-year-old Mariika (not her real name) and her friends have to first ensure all the windows are shut and check there is no one lurking by the flat’s doors.

    Informants frequently report anyone studying Ukrainian in the occupied territories to the Russian secret police. Ukrainian textbooks have been deemed “extremist” – possession can carry a sentence of five years.

    Parents who allow their children to follow the Ukrainian curriculum online can lose parental rights. Teens who speak Ukrainian at school have been known to be taken by thugs to the woods for “questioning”.

    That is why the book club never meets with more than three people – any extra members would pose further risk of being discovered.

    Apart from the danger, there is another challenge: finding the books themselves. In the town where Mariika lives, the occupiers have removed and destroyed the Ukrainian books from several libraries – nearly 200,000 works of politics, history and literature lost in one town alone.

    So Mariika and her friends have to use online versions – careful to scrub their search history afterwards. The authorities like to seize phones and computers to check for “extremist” content.

    Parallels.

  17. tasmaniac666 says

    Hi Australian here. Doesn’t seem dystopian novel, just straight out Nazi Germany. Sorry, for you us and them.

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