Texas county may close public library entirely after judge rules it can't ban books

More of a subtext of “Don’t get in the way of our attacks on others”.

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Tiny Banned Book Library

As more states and school districts work to stifle access to information and censor what the youth can have access to, the more ways we have to find to circumvent these bans. Bring a router and a server to school, keep it in a bag. Plug them into a spot that’s hidden between a folding room divider. In the back of filing cabinets. Boot your chromebook into an OS off a USB and run Calibre. Broadcast all the books that they ban. Broadcast information about youth liberation, about the destructiveness of an educational system based in white supremacy. Give everyone access to books about deschooling, zines about where to get hormones, find healthcare, or get access to birth control. They won’t know how to stop it. They won’t know who is doing it. Never tell anyone where the servers are. Show up every day and broadcast the information they don’t want you to see. Make a walking tiny library of banned books and banned information.

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This reminds me of the era of desegregation, where people would rather destroy public programs and areas than share or be exposed to people they don’t like. :frowning:

Really - our racism and bigotry has basically hamstrung using public funds to make our local areas better.

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The Cartman County.

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Unfortunately, this often translates as “we don’t want to have things that challenge our thought process to exist.” They may want to be left alone, but they suck at leaving other people alone.

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that is true stephen colbert GIF by Obama

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Today libraries, tomorrow public school hosted youth sports. The left needs solid plans and backup plans to deal with how the GOP is willing to go scorched earth with these sort of issues. The ability to fight on our terms and not theirs is essential.

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They want to be left alone so they can bother others.

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South Park Smile GIF

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This is happening on so many scales (individual libraries in small towns to whole states), that it’s clear the consistent Republican approach is: “If we can’t censor all the books, no more libraries.” Also, they’ve made it clear bookstores are part of this (and the focus, next), so it’s more like, “If we can’t censor all the books… no more books.”

The problem is, the actual rule is “If we don’t like it, it’s out,” not “we’re banning material that hurts the children.” Because their stated goals are lies. If they make the mistake of writing legislation that does apply evenly, either the law and/or its enforcement get changed to fit.

Basically, “We don’t want people getting ideas…”

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So they’re in the “baby tantrum” club, i.e. “if I can’t play the way I want, I’m going home”, eh?

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More like, everyone doesn’t want to play my game, so I’m going to shut down the playground and burn it to the ground and salt the earth so nothing grows there…

They are taking away a resources from the larger community, because they don’t want people to read about LGBQT+ or Black history that might counter their Christian, white supremacist narrative…

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Se also “LibraryBox”, which was built on the “PriateBox” firmware for certain mobile routers with USB ports.

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I guess I should have wrote “If I can’t play the way I want, then NOBODY gets to play!”

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the “LLano” typo in their own website title page.

Not necessarily a typo. “Llano” is a Spanish word meaning a grassy plain. Until 2010, “LL” was considered a single letter in Spanish, along with “CH”. Before then, some people capitalized both parts, some just the first part. So if an older bureaucrat whose first language was Spanish was involved in preparing the website, that doubly-capitalized word may have been intentional.

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TIL. Thank you!

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It seems like Texas can’t stand Florida getting the title for the state that best personifies “a person bashing one’s head against a wall to spite the wall”.

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Not Texas, but fascist assholes all read from the same songbook.

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It’s also a hallmark of people who are insecure in their knowledge and beliefs and harboring doubts. If someone knows something to be true, and is secure in their knowledge and belief, they don’t care if there are alternate viewpoints in the world, they know the truth of their position will win out.

For example, people who know the the earth is a sphere orbiting the sun don’t try to ban flat earthers or their literature. They explain the falsehood, point out the errors, maybe get exasperated. But they don’t spend energy trying to ban it, because they know it is a fringe idea that won’t shake their understanding of the world.

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In the meanwhile, the flatearthers keep screaming “it’s a conspiracy!” even if they took a flight to the other side of the world and intentionally took the long way back.

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