It declines to offer a way out of the evil

Marissa Higgins of Daily Kos reported that Gene McGee, mayor of Ridgeland, Mississippi has said he will not give the Madison County Library System a budgeted $100,000. The reason is the library has several LGBTQ+ books. He’ll block the money until the library gets rid of the books. His reasons is the books go against his Christian beliefs. Sigh. We’re not over this nonsense yet. Or conservatives have somehow been emboldened by national politics. City Council members dispute the mayor has the authority to override an already approved city budget. They don’t agree with him and will challenge the legality of his withholding the money. The book Maus (German for “mouse”) by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel depicting the Holocaust. Laura Clawson of Kos reported that the book had been the centerpiece of an eighth grade module of the Holocaust in McMinn County, Tennessee. Had been because the McMinn County School Board, in a unanimous vote, banned it for containing the word “bitch” and other vulgar words. Many are puzzled by that reason, convinced the real reason is because the topic is the Holocaust. Spiegelman, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the book, is baffled by the move, calling it Orwellian. He used to refuse interviews, but started speaking out because of the nasty guy. Clawson quoted author Neil Gaiman who tweeted:

There's only one kind of people who would vote to ban Maus, whatever they are calling themselves these days.

Gaiman’s Twitter feed included a link to a thread by taber about Maus. What he says is the reason why I didn’t buy the book when I first saw it in a bookstore 25 years ago. taber wrote:

I think Maus intimidates some Americans because it declines to offer a way out of the evil, never touches a Christian redemption for sin, and most of all, offers no peace in the crushing weight of death or the unlikely absence of it. you're not lucky to live or saved to die. Maus isn't a story told to celebrate any heroism or offer any salvation. It's not told from the perspective of a victim. It's told from the perspective of a Jew, and it's told Jewishly, with what joy may come derived from the minor ways to antagonize the machinery of destruction.

That Tennessee school board may want a more “appropriate” book because the Evangelical theology focuses on the hero and savior. This book has none because from the Jewish view there was no hero in WWII. Though there were many small heroic actions by the Jews these are tiny gestures in the face of the insistence of the murderers. Jeff Tiedrich tweeted:

fun historical fact: when my uncle spent three years in a Warsaw basement, hiding from the Nazis, it wasn't because they wanted to vaccinate him

Kurt Anderson, writing for The Atlantic, discussed human sacrifice through history and compared it to the current pandemic. Since the pandemic there have been comments about human sacrifice, such as those workers who showed up to keep a business working even though they risked their lives (we used to call them heroes). Human sacrifice is defined as a society doing organized killing of people to please a supernatural being. In the past all of those chosen to die actually died. Today there is only an increased chance of death. Anderson listed several key features of societies that practiced human sacrifice. He also discussed how well America in 2021 fit into each feature. * They were relatively advanced and had a large enough population they could dispose of people without a big loss in numbers. Most victims were elderly or of low status. * Sacrifices were often in response to a natural calamity, such as an epidemic. This is based on the belief that calamities were punishment by the supernatural. * Sacrifices happened in societies where a highly supernatural religion was deeply intertwined with state governance. * The sacrifices were of enormous scale. The Aztecs killed perhaps tens of thousands. * Those who volunteered were promised a special, honored place in the afterlife. This is “sacrificial trickery.” Of course, many of those killed didn’t volunteer. * The victims rarely understand the reasons or goals of the sacrifice. They didn’t know to which god they were being sacrificed or how their death would bring about a better life for those left behind. * Sacrifices are much more common in societies with a strong social hierarchy. The killing played a central role in helping those at the top control those at the bottom. Yes, Anderson found America fits quite well into the features of a society that practices human sacrifice. Mark Sumner of Kos discussed the word sequela. It means a long term condition that is the result of a disease. After the original illness a sequela may show up months (hearing loss after mumps), years (a brain disorder after measles), even decades (shingles after chicken pox). The 1918 flu pandemic caused a wave of depression a couple years later and increased heart disease in males born during the pandemic that showed up six decades later. We know about long COVID. However, because the virus infects so many parts of the body, nasty surprises may show up for a long time. Even if a condition is rare, because so many caught the virus, the numbers dealing with ongoing conditions could be enormous. The effects of this virus will be with us for decades. Gabriel Hébert-Mild tweeted:

We are running the craziest clinical trial in history right now, which is to see how many emerging variants modern societies can handle before a larger scale disaster happens.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Zack Beauchamp interviewing Lee Drutman on Vox (I guess these are Drutman’s thoughts). A reason why the GOP has been taken over by an extreme faction is because we have a two party system. Republicans have been quite thorough in demonizing Democrats. So if a Never Trumper doesn’t like the extremes of his party he goes along anyway or switches to the enemy. That wouldn’t be such an issue of there was also a center-right party. Conan O’Brien tweeted:

It’s a slippery slope from woke M&M’s to Same-Skittle marriage.