Trump’s Dept. Of Education Rolls Back Anti-Book Ban Guidance, Says Bring On The Censorship!
from the party-of-free-speech-strikes-again dept
Because we’re all just riding Mr. Trump’s wild ride down the greased slope towards fascism, the nation just has to keep getting worse day by day until the rot has set in permanently.
Trump’s first term in office unleashed a lot of latent censorial desire in like-minded Republicans, who soon started assaulting constituents’ sensibilities and rights in quick succession. Book bans were suddenly acceptable again. Openly hating women, minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals was now just part of day-to-day business.
Some of this went on the back burner, mostly due to courts recognizing the inherent unconstitutionality of these laws and acts. Some of it got shelved temporarily after the government was in the hands of a regular type of president, rather than a dead-eyed despot with delusions of grandeur.
Unfortunately, someone who was considered an aberrational embarrassment on the presidential timeline, has made a return to the nation’s top office. And he’s brought all of his bad ideas and terrible people with him, along with four years of burning resentment.
This, as reported by ABC News, is just another one of things that are going to be commonplace for at least the next four years, if not longer so long as enough members of the American public prefer the warm touch of a boot heel on their neck, rather than be forced to treat other human beings like… human beings.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has announced that it is rescinding all past guidance issued against the removal of books and will no longer employ a coordinator to investigate instances of unlawful book removals.
The department also announced that it has dismissed 11 book ban complaints and six pending complaints. According to the DOE, the complaints alleged that the removal of these books “created a hostile environment for students.”
We like to think federal departments and agencies serve the people. But, ultimately, they don’t. They serve whoever’s currently in charge. Most incoming presidents won’t drastically re-design federal entities in their own image, at least not immediately. Others will do it just because they can’t stomach the notion of anything but abject fealty.
This is what Trump, his cabinet, and his supporters want: a heckler’s veto they can deploy at will to silence people they don’t believe should be treated as equals. It has nothing to do with “protecting” children from content. It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with this, either.
The Trump administration’s Department of Education states that the books were targeted because school districts and parents “have established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials.”
The statement continued, “Because this is a question of parental and community judgment, not civil rights, OCR has no role in these matters.”
Trump wouldn’t be handing this over to parents if he didn’t believe only the parents who think like he thinks will do everything they can to restrict the content everyone has access to, not just their own kids. And the only word with any meaning in the phrase “parental and community judgment” is “judgment.” Whatever this small, but very active, minority decides to judge as unworthy of public access will be banished from public libraries under the guise of saving kids from “age-inappropriate” content.
This is an insult to true American values, as well as an insult to the communities that are going to suffer from the Dept. of Education’s decision to let neighborhood fascists decide what content is publicly-accessible. Not only will they suffer from the loss of access, but they’ll have to open their wallets to fund defense of unconstitutional laws and book removals — acts performed against their best interests by the people they’ve elected and appointed to serve their interests.
It’s ugliness all the way and all the way down. Those of you celebrating Trump’s return to office and the steady escalation of hatred across the nation are no better than the fascists you continually pretend you’re insulted to be compared to. Just don’t ask for any sympathy when the bloodlust you’ve stoked finally results in your faces being torn off by the leopards you’ve invited into your hearts and homes.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, book ban, censorship, department of education, donald trump, free speech
Comments on “Trump’s Dept. Of Education Rolls Back Anti-Book Ban Guidance, Says Bring On The Censorship!”
If I were a betting man, I’d bet that we’ll see the first government-sanctioned book burning by the midterms. The level of government that sanctions the burning will be irrelevant.
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Anyone who burns a book should be burned alive with it.
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No. No, they should not.
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Let’s not copy the witch burnings thing.
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So-called witches were burned mostly because some people didn’t like them, which mostly shouldn’t be a punishable offense.
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No, they weren’t.
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Herman this is honestly worse than you just being a straight up Neo-nazi.
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I’m going to burn a Bible, a Quran, and a copy of The Art of the Deal in your honor.
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The physical book stuff is stupid, but less concerning (except for older texts that are out of print and not available digitally). I’m more concerned that they’ll turn towards digital collections, the internet archive, etc. Everything they do just seems to be a test run for something worse and things immune to the earliest, dumbest stuff they do will be vulnerable the next round.
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Who knows, maybe they’ll just shut off the whole internet in their bigotry-fueled haze of stupid.
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I’d actually love to see them try. Not only would they fail, but they’d cause such a economic stumble that they’d lose support from all the wealthy people who finance them because they’d cost the wealthy so much when their stock prices drop from the volatility. The rest of us would route around the damage as networks are wont to do.
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That’s about the one safeguard there is against a section 230 repeal imo.
Sure, the big companies can handle it, but it’ll still lead to economic disaster considering every little other thing it’d touch.
If the plan here is to kill the US within a year, it’s working.
Support your bookstores and libraries, whenever you can. The remedy to the Anti-Intellectual onslaught are books.
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Dems: Trump’s going to ram the country into a wall if he’s elected.
The voters: NAHHH, he would never! You’re just lying!
Trump, day 28:
The voters: surprised pikachu face
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The OCR does not, and should not, have any influence of any kind on a local library’s decision to carry or not carry any particular book. That’s up to the library’s management and the local community, whether that community be San Francisco or Salt Lake City.
This post, written with the shaking hand of overwrought rage, seems to imply that local community standards should have nothing to do with anything, unless of course the “right sort of people” are enforcing those standards. That is an extremely authoritarian position, as the author seems to wish that these community standards mirror exactly his own.
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Are you stupid?
What this article says is that the federal government will no longer try to uphold the first amendment.
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Every conservative Christian who thinks their TRASH standards should govern what books are available in public libraries believes they’re “the right sort of people” to create and enforce those standards—even if they’re a minority in their community. For what reason should a minority of bigots have the right to decide what books everyone else can check out from/read inside a public library? For what reason should I be unable to check out a book about LGBTQ people if some Bible-thumping asshole says that book offends their delicate sensibilities?
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“This post, written with the shaking hand of overwrought rage,”
On that single point we are in agreement bro.
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The irony in this line is hilarious. Well done sir!
Remember, kids. If a government is trying this hard to ban books, you should damn well be interested in finding out what those books actually say!
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Watch Trump try to ban the Bible next.
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He will start selling the approved trump burning Bible. It’s the only Bible that you can keep purchasing to do your next book burning.
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And here people are telling me not to talk misery.
God damn it this entire term’s gonna be one long trainwreck. Can we just go and re-do the election and boot them out already?
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No, we can’t. Adapt or perish, but stop complaining like you enjoy doing that more than you enjoy existing.
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at this point we should call them a misery troll since they keep spaming misery posts and random links
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because that’s all you do didn’t you say you would take a break for months you lied
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“Can we just go and re-do the election and boot them out already?”
No, but you can shut your fucking pie hole.
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It's not censorship, not a ban, either
For all the time you idiots try to pretend various ACTUAL censorship is somehow not that, this is in no way censorship.
The content of public libraries is subject to democratic decisions by the people (i.e. government).
If the government tried to tell a PRIVATE library what they could stock, that would indeed be censorship. But nothing like that has happened or been attempted in a long time.
M0r0ns.
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And yet, of all the book bans happening around the country, almost all of them are the result of a small handful of people making lots of complaints based on their ideological beliefs (both political and religious) rather than a majority of a community coming together to say “we don’t want this content here”. For what reason should a minority of bigots be able to determine what books everyone else can read in/check out from a public library?
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Always forgetting one very important word
School
public school library
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Yes, I do tend to mention school and public libraries in the same breath in cases like this, so omitting school libraries in this instance is an oversight that I regret. That said: The same logic applies to school libraries regardless of the omission.
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You know liars go to hell right?
So are you lying or truly this stupid?
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A kiddie porn enthusiast is pro censorship?
Shit that’s about as unheard of as a priest fucking an alter boy.
Or a man who brags about fucking goats.
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The abuser is pro- censoring books that teach kids how to protect themselves from abusers.
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Your claim is contradictory.
If it’s not censorship, then it’s not necessary. If it’s not censorship, then it’s not having the intended effect because they’re admitting vociferously that they’re trying to restrict access to books (i.e. censorship).
That’s not actually how public libraries tend to work, so this statement is hilarious. Librarians are hired to curate collections and there’s often guidelines about what constitute valued content. It’s not “democratic” in the sense that random Karens get to dictate what should be added or removed. It’s not representative such that a random elected official who doesn’t have official oversight of the library gets to weigh in. The librarians will often carry books that aren’t relevant to large portions of the population but are highly valuable to some. And if some of those people are poor, the library may be the only place they can find it.
The stupidity of your claims is outmatched only by the unearned confidence with which you utter them.
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“This just in: village idiot thinks that suggested moderation is censorship and book burning isn’t; more at 11.”
Oh look, now this is back too while we’re at it. https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/senators-again-attempt-to-ban-pre-teens-from-social-media-160535890.html
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please show actual links that aren’t questionable
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Mate, it’s a news article.
But since you insist, here’s the actual congress website page on it https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4213
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and i bet your the misery troll above this as well
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I get it you don’t like me but I’m just trying to bring this shit to attention, alright?
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understandable
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In hindsight, there’s no way this thing would survive the courts, is there?
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i don’t think so
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The FSC v Paxton one COULD survive, but that’s more due to the fairly agreeable surface-purpose of the law (to keep porn away from minors’ eyes.)
But I don’t think a general age-gating federal bill would enjoy the same level of agreeableness.
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“The FSC v Paxton one COULD survive, but that’s more due to the fairly agreeable surface-purpose of the law (to keep porn away from minors’ eyes.)” it might get watered down tho
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Myeh, better than nothing.
I hear there’s a North Dakotan AV bill that uses device-based checks instead of on-site stuff. Which is good enough for even the FSC themselves to endorse it .
I see this as a good sign, might be means for a way to satisfy the moral-panicks, without going full-on censorship mode like the christofascists are wanting.
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Nope. Any method of age verification on an internet connected device necessarily violates the right to privacy and also won’t be a useful deterrent for tech savvy teens who will have access through parents’ devices, VPNs, friends, social media, proxies, etc. Don’t give an inch because they will take the world.
Parents are responsible for restricting their kids’ access to adult material. It will never be anyone else’s responsibility to hinder their own freedoms “for the children.”
Also, never take such laws at face value. They’re not about restricting kids from accessing porn. They’re the first step in limiting rights and freedoms for Americans. LGBTQ content that isn’t sexual at all will be labeled pornographic under such regimes. They have admitted this already.
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Well, AV laws seem unstoppable worldwide, so I don’t really know what kind of scenario I’m supposed to be hoping for here.
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They aren’t unstoppable. They haven’t been ruled on yet by SCOTUS. Even if SCOTUS allows some state laws through, other states won’t enact them and they may get squashed years later by a less partisan SCOTUS. And there are ways around them, which is another reason why they’re a waste of time.
You aren’t “supposed” to be hoping for anything. Wait and see what happens. Deal with whatever happens.
As the script for the great movie Better Off Dead says: “Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”
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I don’t get the support. Just because the FSC endorses it doesn’t mean immediately agree with them, I haven’t seen an explanation for how this device based age verification is going to work without violating my privacy.
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You’re assuming that the North Dakota doesn’t require merely checking for an age-based filter that a minor’s parents put in place, which doesn’t involve knowing the individual’s exact age.
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I’m assuming you didn’t read the bill because it doesn’t mention minor’s parents at all.
It says that “A covered manufacturer shall take commercially reasonable and technically feasible steps to: a. Determine or estimate the age of the primary user upon activation of a device; and b. Provide a website, application, application store, or online service with a digital signal notifying if a primary user is over or under eighteen years of age through a real-time applications programming interface.”
The bill assumes only a single user ever uses a single device and that “activation” can/will determine an age (which would necessarily require some form of privacy-violating verification or else be completely ineffectual). If dad buys a computer and rightly claims to be an adult, then junior can hop on when he’s at work and access adult content, rendering the entire bill useless.
It also seems to confuse devices with operating systems, as if the legislators (probably quite likely) don’t understand for instance that you can install Linux on a computer that might otherwise come pre-installed with a Windows operating system. The manufacturer doesn’t in all cases control what a user does with a device after it’s purchased. And you can’t mandate that open source operating systems implement effective age verification when they’re often specifically seeking to respect privacy. It would essentially outlaw a lot of operating systems.
So the bill is useless, violating privacy, criminalizing 1st Amendment activities such as programming privacy-respecting code, or all of the above. Fuck that noise.
It’s another “nerd harder” bill from politicians who don’t understand technology or the rights and freedoms they’ve ostensibly sworn to protect.
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Correct, you’re assuming. That’s not what I meant by what I said at all, and you knew it. Any more trolling you want to do?
As I said, the first item in the bill can be achieved by checking for a specific type of filter, which does not require knowing an individual’s exact age because it would indicate only the fact they’re either over or under 18. The knowledge thus gained can be used to satisfy the second item in the bill. How much effort do you think is required for you to fail so hard?
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Yes, I am-that’s what I said I was assuming. When you express a position that isn’t supported by the source of the discussion, it’s a fair bet that you either didn’t read or didn’t understand the bill text. I was going with the more generous “didn’t read.” Apparently I should have gone with the “didn’t understand.”
No, I specifically didn’t know it because you said something that failed to account for the actual wording of the bill. Why would you think you could know what I knew other than what I told you? Are you telepathic?
You do understand that disagreeing with someone isn’t trolling, right? That’s a really silly position to take.
Do you get really offended every time someone disagrees with you? Grow some thicker skin.
You specifically stated that it’s a filter that the “minor’s parents put in place,” but the bill doesn’t reference parents at all. So you drew that conclusion yourself. Why do you assume that’s how it would work? You’re just making assumptions.
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I’m assuming you support government intrusion into children’s lives because AC didn’t even attempt to say the bill mentions parents, but it is natural to presume that parents (in most cases) have responsibility for putting filters in place for their minor children (teenagers) who want some independence online.
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Why would you assume what I support or don’t support based on what an AC did or didn’t say? That doesn’t make any sense.
I assume you didn’t read what I wrote very well because my previous statements on the topic are very specifically in favor of privacy for all people. You couldn’t honestly draw that conclusion if you’d read what I wrote here.
Yes, that is literally the position I have taken, such that privacy-violating age verification bills are unnecessary because, as I have said numerous times before: it’s the parents’ responsibility, not random other adults, to keep kids safe online. A random adult verifying their age and identity doesn’t do anything to keep kids safe online. The government doesn’t need to mandate this because it’s already a power and responsibility that parents have.
Paused Medicaid too. I expected it to take longer for the leopards to start feasting.
Empty market shelves due to migrant workers not showing up. Glad I stocked up on shelf-stable calories last year.
Tariffs on construction materials? Stocked up on those last year too.
I’m still C-Level in a STEM field with good health insurance and a steady paycheck. I can send my daughter to private school. I can feed her healthy food as it gets more expensive. I can get her to a doctor.
Lets see how the Trumpers do in their brave new world.
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ok
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Even Liberal Parents Agree
It is becoming increasingly difficult from these linked news articles to determine exactly which books are being removed, from which libraries, for what reason. Whenever we get into the details, we find that the books are pornographic in nature, and are being restricted from children’s and school libraries.
The new trend is for concerned parents to read from the sex scenes at a city hall meeting or board of education session. In pretty much every case, those in charge of the meeting shut the speech down, realizing that it’s inappropriate for adults, let alone a childrens library.
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Why do you enjoy being so consistently wrong?
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Reek has a public humiliation fetish and is too broke to afford a proper Dom to put him in his place while we all laugh and jeer.
Posting here is the next best thing.
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Good thing that the pedophiles, rapists, sex worker using, sexual abusers in the republican party are here to set us straight.
Get back to us when your party isn’t led by people who have to pay off porn stars.
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At least Koby isn’t doomposting.
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Sorry reek. Its crybitches turn to attention whore. Try again tomorrow.
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Y’all are the ones trying to have little girls bearing children for grown men. FOH trash.
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‘And when her sister Aholibah saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate love than she, and in her whoredoms more than her sister in her whoredoms. She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. Then I saw that she was defiled, that they took both one way, And that she increased her whoredoms: for when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, Girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity: And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she doted upon them, and sent messengers unto them into Chaldea. And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them. So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister. Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt. For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.’ Ezekiel (23) : 11 – 21.
Funny how the multiple instances of sexual content, incest and violence in the christian bible aren’t seen as in the least bit problematic while any LGBTQ+ content is instantly deemed pornographic by people like youi who are hellbent on erasing the community from public life. People who pretend to love their kids but would rather have a child commit suicide after being taught to hate themselves rather than reach adulthood understanding who they are and what their feelings mean.
It’s the same as the abortion debate, you of the right wing ‘think of the children’ crowd only care about hypothetical kids, real ones can hang, and thanks to efforts like these, many unfortunately will.
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Context and nuance simultaneously just don’t matter, and yet matter a great deal.
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One of these days I’d love it if one of the ‘non-CIS people are inherently pornographic and kids have no business reading viollent and/or pornographic books!’ bigots were challenged to read a passage like that out loud and on the record/tv, given how often those same people insist that the bible does not and couldn’t possibly violate their own bigotry-fueled book ban.
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Sadly, that would require them to grow a functional brain.
This is incompatible with their base bigotry instincts.
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Remember, everyone, the First Amendment only protects things which you can broadcast on public access TV during daytime hours, nothing less, nothing more.
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Great observation. It’s only obscene material that’s likely to be targeted.
Progtards are just so invested in gay-race communism that they don’t understand why normal people consider them evil.
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You should consider investing in some kind of anti-leopard spray.
Also your president is a nazi, a loser, and a dementia-riddled fleabag, and everyone he surrounds himself with are limp-dicked shit-biscuits for siding with him. Sorry not sorry.
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No. No, it is not.
And Tango Makes Three is a children’s book that contains precisely zero (0) instances of sexual content. It still faces regular challenges across the country from homophobic assholes who want to censor any book that has any positive depiction of queerness. If you don’t believe me, Google “And Tango Makes Three book bans” and look for the results that don’t flatter your biases.
“Obscene” and “degenerate” art is where censorship starts. The censors will always redefine what fits under those categories until they start landing on books that only an extremist would consider “obscene”. Today, it’s “pornography”; tomorrow, it’s And Tango Makes Three; next week, it’s books about the Holocaust. Much like how fascism is a people-eating machine that will never run out of people to eat, censorship is an art-burning machine that will never run out of art to burn.
Also: It’s not “gay-race” communism, it’s Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism. At least get your references right, you damp washrag.
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The first single from my autistic The Who cover band called the Progtards will be gay-race communism
Catch it on I tunes and Spotify or wherever normal people consider evil.
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Re: Re: Come on bitch don’t be shy
Hey herman what color panties you wearing today?
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If literature containing non-cishet characters is obscene, what does that make you for knowing exactly what books contain such characters? Enquiring minds would like to know.
Just waiting for the Department of Truth
To save time it’s probably best to consider every government agency for the next four yearns minimum to be named bizzaro-land style, where it’s name shows what it isn’t.
The Department of Health is anti-health.
The Department of Justice has nothing but contempt towards justice.
And the Department of Education holds a burning loathing towards any actual education.
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idk how there will be a department of anything when he is firing the whole goverment. Well i guess ICE is exempted due to their increased quotas, but whatever.
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And the Department Of Government Efficiency will itself be a lesson in inefficiency.