Open Letter to the Public Librarians of Cape Cod

The following was written back in 2012 prior to the permanent banning decree.  I put it up now because I can't find it in this blog.

Open Letter to the Public Librarians of Cape Cod

In almost all the 45 libraries studied here, and probably hundreds and hundreds more across the country, we have failed our professional duty to seek out diverse political views. [...] These books are not expensive. Their absence from our libraries makes a mockery of ALA’s vaunted ‘freedom to read.’ But we do not even notice that we are censoring our collections. Complacently, we watch our new automated systems stuff the shelves with Henry Kissinger’s memoirs. 

—Charles Willett, Founding Editor, Counterpoise, and retired librarian [remarks presented at the Fifth National Conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries]

To Brenda Collins (Cape Cod Community College), Kathy Cockcroft (Brewster), Patrick Marshall (Bourne), Elizabeth Butler (Centerville), Irene Gillies (Chatham), Jennie Wiley (Cotuit), Nancy Symington (Dennis Memorial), Jessica Langlois (Dennis), Phil Inman (East Dennis), Cheryl Bryan (Eastham), Lisa Sherman (Edgartown), Leslie A. Morrissey (Falmouth), Ginny Hewitt (Harwich), Renee Voorhees (Marstons Mills), Kathleen Mahoney (Mashpee), Sondra Murphy (Oak Bluffs), Lee Ann Amend (Osterville), Cheryl Napsha (Provincetown), Lucy Loomis (Sturgis), Tricia Ford (Truro), Ann-Louise Harries (Hyannis), Amy Ryan (Vineyard Haven), Elaine McIlroy (Wellfleet), Kathleen Swetish (West Barnstable), Pamela Olson (West Falmouth), Shirley Barron (South Yarmouth), Anne Cifelli (Yarmouth Port):

Thanks to the Internet, this letter will form part of the public record, as it is now published on The American Dissident blog site (wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com). If none of you respond, as is perhaps likely, that shall be noted. By the way, it took me about an hour to locate and compile your names and email addresses. In fact, a few of you do not even list your names and email addresses on your library’s website. Why not? 

In any case, most of you, I’ve already contacted in vain, which is why I am writing this letter. A number of you have simply ignored my communications (e.g., Osterville, Falmouth, Brewster Ladies). Others simply greeted me with frowns, while a few actually banned my flyers on their public grounds (Sturgis and Yarmouth Port). In fact, the director of Sturgis Library even instructed me not to speak to staff with regards the banning and rejected a free subscription offer to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal devoted to literature, democracy, and dissidence, printed in Barnstable. And yet why should I even be offering a free subscription? Do Time, Poetry, People, and National Geographic do that? 

Not one of you to date has been willing to subscribe (only $20/year) to the journal or express an unusual openness to the ideas expounded in it. The Clams network of libraries on Cape Cod has consequently conveyed a uniform closed-mindedness with its regard. Why? Is it because the journal’s substance is DEMOCRACY and CRITICISM, as opposed to the sex and violence you tend to purchase in the form of DVDs? Is it simply a panem et circenses issue? 

What is therefore wrong with the libraries on Cape Cod? Why do they all seem to be staffed with chamber-of-commerce-friendly directors, instead of free-thinking citizens with a definite responsibility towards democracy? Why do you seem to fear and disdain criticism so much? Why do you seem so opposed to vigorous debate and freedom of speech, democracy’s cornerstones? On the one hand, you celebrate Banned Books Week while, on the other, you ban periodicals like The American Dissident. How do you manage to intellectually justify such egregious hypocrisy? 

In the case of Sturgis Library, the collection development policy clearly stipulates: “Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view […],” “Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval […], and “Libraries should challenge censorship […].” With that regard, Sturgis subscribes to Poetry magazine, which presents the established-order point of view on what constitutes good poetry, but refuses to subscribe to The American Dissident, which clearly presents an anti-established-order viewpoint regarding poetry. One might wonder how the director intellectually justifies such an evident breach of the collection development policy. “This is a family-friendly place” and “I think there’s too much negativity” constitute her rationale. Yet such remarks clearly skirt the issue entirely and do not, by any means whatsoever, constitute a valid explanation. Besides, since when did democracy and dissidence become family un-friendly, while sex and violence family friendly? Perhaps librarians need to take courses on logical argumentation. By the way, the staff at Sturgis have been friendly and quite helpful. Clearly, this letter is not directed at them. As for the two trustees, Ellie Claus and Betsy Newell, with whom I met, they proved as closed-minded as the director. Dan Santos, the third trustee, didn’t even bother showing up for the meeting. 

As you certainly must know, the above policy statements come directly from the American Library Association’s “Library Bill of Rights.” Interestingly, or rather aberrantly, the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (Ministry of Intellectual Freedom in Orwell’s 1984) simply refuses to respond to my grievance regarding Sturgis. Not a word from it! Not even a lame rationalization, as in “we’re family friendly.” Silence seems to have become, for far too many librarians, the librarian’s modus operandi, the de facto “Library Bill of Rights.” Librarians on the Cape, rather than individuals, seem to move as a groupthink librarian herd. 

In any event, what good can it do the nation to have directors like you in charge of what the public may or may not read in its public libraries? What good can it possibly do for democracy? Why would not one of you likely accept a bulletin-board donation for a space devoted to DEMOCRACY? On top of such a board, one could write: WARNING: POSTINGS ON THIS BOARD MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO ADULT CHILDREN. 

As a tax-paying citizen, should I not be fully outraged that my voice is banned at one of your public libraries? Should I not be outraged that bed & breakfast brochures, Prime Time, and other free publications are permitted, but not my 501c3 nonprofit flyers? Even dogs have been permitted to run around inside the library! If one or even two of you do not believe in the curiosity-killed-the-cat dictum (it’s so much easier to be indignant!), read the article published in Counterpoise for Social Responsibilities, Liberty, and Dissent, regarding my struggle vis-à-vis democracy-scorning public librarians exterior to the Cape (www.theamericandissident.org/orgs/american_library_association.html). Thank you for your hopeful attention. 

Ravens Perch Gretna Wilkinson

 

Alex Buchanan, Armchair Anarchist

The following was published in issue #48 of The American Dissident.  Part 1 was published in issue #47, as was the cartoon below.  

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A Dialogue de sourds with an Armchair Anarchist

Part II

Many have been inclined to kill the messenger by character assassination: they say he is a womanizer, he is bitter, he was unsuccessfully analyzed, he is disloyal, he is even, in the words of one accuser, ''dangerously mentally ill.'' Mr. Masson himself wonders whether it was ''possible that the analysts could not hear my 'message' because the messenger was so obnoxious.'' But to those in power, all whistle-blowers, dissenters and boat-rockers are obnoxious, at least while they remain lone rebels. One protester is crazy, two are a conspiracy and three are a movement.

— Carol Tavris, social psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles

 

s a critical writer and thinker, I make an effort to avoid ad hominem.  Now and then, however, when someone blasts me with insults, usually via psychological projection, I’ll slip and blast back with the same crap, although always after I’ve attacked the message via facts and reason.  In essence, to kill the messenger via ad hominem is a very common ploy today, conscious or not, in an effort to divert attention away from the message.  Politics stands as a pitiful example of that.  It is also a tactic used when one is incapable of responding with a factual, logical retort to the messenger’s message. 

     After a lengthy nine-month or more back and forth almost on a daily basis with self-proclaimed anarchist, Alex Buchanan, I decided to terminate the dialogue de sourds, for it had become a waste of time.  Evidently, anarchy was an ideology.  Reason and facts are ineluctably the prime enemies of ideologues.  And so I wrote:  

BTW, I am not pissed off in the least.  It's quite simply that you and I hold completely different viewpoints... and that we've essentially expressed them... and that the discussion is now going nowhere... but into the cesspool of childish name-calling.  So, I simply suggest terminating the "discussion."  I've got better things to do... and hopefully you do too.   

nd of course Buchanan responded in an endlessly long email, which was his usual m.o., so I simply wrote without reading the whole thing:    “Pipedream away…  A world without hierarchies is certainly a pipedream.”  I let him have the last word, which he did in a single sentence. 

At least I float above the delusional sea of reactionary nihilism.

But then, I couldn’t resist and responded:  Not quite sure how death is somehow a delusion.  In any case, I don’t really abide by a particular ideology, unless belief in reality like inevitable death somehow constitutes one.  In that reality, when I die, I won’t give a damn about anything or anyone.  And in that sense, how not to be a cynic, for cynicism is reality.  Also, I suppose I am a reactionary because I am against in-lockstep groupthink socialism/communism and the metastasizing of Marxist DEI/CRT ideology today in all spheres of society including the press, literature, and education… and the consequent racism obsession, chaotic, uh anarchic, open borders and resultant increase in crime, drugs, sex trafficking, and unfettered government spending, absence of accountability, and war-all-the-time.  How that somehow makes me “delusional” is a quandary.  And so Buchanan wrote yet again.  

A space of perennial negativity becomes exhausting, because nothing can be created or affirmed there.  I wrote that yesterday. As well as this, which was in my journal: Slone’s cruelty has resulted in more creativity than probably would have been standard. I can at least give him that.

     How not to respond to the “cruelty” remark… and so I did.  

As I reflect, your “Slone’s cruelty” remark is indeed extraordinary.  To label all of my life’s “work” of anti-establishment criticism—hundreds of pages of essays, poems, and cartoons—as “cruelty” even outdoes the insults I’ve received over the decades from other artiste and poet cogs of the establishment, be they socialist, communist, capitalist, reactionary, or anarchist.  

And with your fine art of incomprehensible “density,” as you labeled it, I’m sure you’ll somehow weasel around the remark…

To dismiss a critic like me as “cruel” is a clear indication of your true anarchist hatred for freedom of speech, the very cornerstone of democracy—obviously NOT of anarchy.  Murder, torture, rape, etc. are “cruel.”  Exercise of freedom of speech is NOT “cruel,” unless of course one is a left-wing snowflake who hates the message of the speaker.   

ell, I guess I “cruelly” rejected his masterpiece essay (see last issue for a few examples from it!  LOL!  And, man, he really does constantly employ psychological projection!  “Berserk”?  Projection 101!  And so, the anarchist weaseled around the remark.  

My remark that you're cruel has only to do with your personality, not your "life's work." It's odd to see you even refer to what you do as "work." Who has validated it as such? By the way, your definition of "anti-establishment" is incoherent, big surprise. This is because your definition seems to demonstrate that all "the establishment" is in your head is any entity which is not you. Far from being anti-establishment, that is nihilistic solipsism. Moreover, by no metric whatsoever can you say that anarchists are the establishment. As for merely myself, I'm the furthest possible distance from the establishment as one could get. In my writing, I didn't dismiss you as cruel.

     And so, I was left wondering how Buchanan knows me so well that he can conclude that my “personality” is so “cruel.”  Hell, I never even met the guy!  Aberrantly, he ended with yet another ad hominem.

Against your bourgeois masochism, 

This anarchist who believes in egalitarian freedom

     And so I responded.  

You, clearly, are bourgeois!  If you weren't, then you'd be working in a factory, painting houses, picking grapes, or shipyard welding like I once did.  Instead, you sit and write. How much more bourgeois can one get?  You want to get paid for your writing; I do not want to get paid for mine.  So, who is really the bourgeois writer?  Again, you project!!!  Projection is your m.o..  

Your idols were/are "bourgeois" including Marx, Chomsky, Bernie, Che (bourgeois medical doctor), and on and on.   Weasel out of that reality!  And, how the hell am I a “masochist’?

     Well, he didn’t respond…