Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 11, 2023

Who needs all those books? Go ahead and ban away. Now give me a good video game, like Grand Theft Auto – now that’s a masterpiece!

i use the library, the thrift shop and ebay.

You don’t need books if you’re happy to be told what to think.

Oh, the horror on being made to think about something.

I remember reading of a religious student whose class was given, by their supervisor, a list of “undesirable” books concerning religion and philosophy that SHE SHOULD NEVER READ!! She took the list, bought some and borrowed others, and said she’d never had a better time in her life …

Welcome to DeSantis’s Florida, his idea of freedom

Who ever thought the U.S. would be the birthplace of the Christian version of the Taliban?

@Bilan Anybody who noticed the House UnAmerican Activities Committee’s McCarthyism and subsequent slip-sliding down similar slopes from then on.

“Books are challenged and banned because they have new ideas, and new ideas scare people” – me

My two cents: anyone offended with an idea is usually incapable of independent thinking. Everything I was ever told about god was a lie: EVERYTHING.

Another warning: You may be offended

I certainly hope so.

GOP does not like people to think.

The real book banning is done by the people running our libraries, who quietly decide which books do NOT appear on their shelves, and then cover that up by screaming “BOOK BANNERS” if someone so much as suggests moving a book (full of stuff you can’t read in a public meeting) out of the children’s section.

Anyone else notice the irony of Desantis saying he does not want indoctrination from the liberals?

The freedom seeking censorors, censoring freedom.

Literature can be a monkey on your back. When you feel the urge to read, just watch baseball on TV.

Just reading books and not using the information to gain real life experience just makes youa good player at trivial pursuit / pub quiz.

@Superfrog: You don’t need books if you’re happy to be told what to think

Agree. You also don’t need books if you believe what you are being told is the truth.

Well, a really great book of short stories is titled “Trigger Warning”

https://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Warning-Short-Fictions-Disturbances/dp/0062330322

I suppose anyone can right a book and write anything in the book they please. It’s the readers who decide to read it, or not, that make it a success or a failure, not the critiques.

Whats really in those books Wiley? Come on and tell us. Would you put one in your comic strip?

Personally, I hope to get my thoughts provoked. But, tangentially speaking, Whereas book stores are free (or should be) to market whatever they choose and reap or suffer the financial consequences, I feel sorry for beleaguered school boards who must decide how to allocate what funds the receive, and yet still have to answer for their choices to the public.

With ebooks you can adjust the font size and don’t need lights, so I don’t think I’ll be getting more printed books, unless they start redacting passages that somebody finds offensive.

Wiley: Books that could be acceptable for 18 and up people AREN’T usually acceptable for 6 year old children. Only “teachers” who want to indoctrinate children to accept: sex WITH the “teacher”, and/or “same sex relationships” with their friends, or accept: “You People of Color will always be victims of White People; You White People need to feel shame for past treatment of People of Color.” Or California calling for reparations to Black People for slavery when California WASN’T a slave state, and no White person living today owned Black slaves. The only slave trade occurring TODAY is sex slavery of young girls trafficked across Biden’s open southern border. AND, Tuberculosis and Polio are making a comeback in the USA since Pedo Joe was sworn in!

I don’t mind my thoughts being provoked.

Banning books should be banned!

The Motto of An Internet Troll. Told to The Count by a friend, of course. >;).

Most of the people who want to ban books don’t even read books. Or magazines, or…

If you are afraid reading a book will change someone’s thinking, then you are not afraid of books, you are afraid of thinking.

You have the right to not read something you don´t want to. You don´t have the right to deny me to read something you don´t want me to.

Christian Dominion nationalist MAGA better not be doin’ none a’ that there thinkin’. They get told, and then they do what they been told, and that there is how she’s done!

One of the best books I’ve read is Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen.

Here in the C R of California the party line is to never provoke your thoughts, just do or die…

I remember a woman who wanted to ban the “Chronicles of Narnia” since it has a sacrifice scene. She said it might give her kids some bad ideas and behaviour. I thought at the time, “I don’t want my kids anywhere around your kids, if you feel that is what your kids might get up to.”

Just so you don’g go getting any ideas.

And God forbid we encourage children or anyone else to think.

Read something.

People thinking on their own. Where would that lead?

We should all welcome the occasional thought being provoked. It builds character.

But, I want my thoughts provoked!

Here in Florida, a group has been “Fighting” the book bans by operating a “Banned Bookmobile” offering copies of banned books at Wholesale Costs.

They’ve Sold Out at least twice.

Three days ago I commented on a post by strictures who said neither god nor the devil exists. My tongue-in-cheek reply was:

The devil very definitely does exist. In fact over 8 000 000 000 devils are now destroying the only Heaven we know of.

His reply to me was:

Please get help, as you are obviously insane!

I think he missed my meaning. The Heaven of which I spoke, obviously, is this world and the eight billion devils destroying it are, just as obviously, us.

And in other news, ebooks may be censored, edited, and banned on your device without your knowledge.