The Closet Professor

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” 

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997)

In his 1997 book The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan warned us about the “dumbing down” of America. He warned of a time when our “critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…” Sadly, Sagan’s prediction is coming true, and that time is upon us. We must do all we can to prevent that darkness from taking hold. In his book Cosmos, Sagan wrote, “Our passion for learning … is our tool for survival.” We will perish as a nation and lose any freedom we have if we allow this “dumbing down” of America to persist.

Last month, Montana withdrew from the American Library Association (ALA). A few days ago, a Texas state commission will disassociate with the progressive American Library Association following accusations that it pushes Marxism and gender ideology through children’s literature. A right-wing group of women in Alabama calling themselves “Clean Up Alabama” are advocating that the Alabama Republican party push to disassociate with the ALA. Republican officials in at least seven other states (Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming) are also pushing to completely withdraw from ALA.

The ALA provides member libraries with resources and benefits like discounts on professional development, insurance and employment aid, continuing education, and other programs. They also provide a code of ethics for librarians, and we all know that many Republicans, especially those loyal to Donald Trump, do not believe in codes of ethics. They are no longer satisfied with banning books and classes that teach about LGBTQ+ and other minority histories. They want to get rid of the libraries that keep and lend them, too. Right-wing extremists are on the march to destroy the intellect of America.

In the 1930s, the German Student Union began a campaign to ceremonially burn books in Nazi Germany and Austria. The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representing ideologies opposed to Nazism. These included books written by Jewish, half-Jewish, communist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, pacifist, and sexologist authors among others. The initial books burned were those of Karl Marx and Karl Kautsky, but came to include very many authors, including Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, writers in French and English, and effectively any book incompatible with Nazi ideology. In a campaign of cultural genocide, books were also burned en masse by the Nazis in occupied territories, such as in Poland. Today, the Far Right and Christian Conservatives are wanting to ban books that were written by African Americans, LGBTQ+ authors, communist, socialist, anarchist, and liberal, authors among others. They may not be burning books (although some actually are), but they are taking them out of circulation in libraries and schools.

Sinclair Lewis First published It Can’t Happen Here, in 1935, when Americans were still largely oblivious to the rise of Hitler in Europe. The prophetic novel tells a cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy and offers an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America. In the book, Doremus Jessup, a Vermont newspaper editor, is dismayed to find that many of the people he knows support presidential candidate Berzelius Windrip. The suspiciously fascist Windrip is offering to save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. But after Windrip wins the election, dissent soon becomes dangerous for Jessup. Windrip forcibly gains control of Congress and the Supreme Court and, with the aid of his personal paramilitary storm troopers, turns the United States into a totalitarian state. While today, Democrats hold the White House and the Senate, Republicans control the House of Representatives, though with a slim majority, and are firmly in control of the Supreme Court. The rhetoric of right-wing politicians, not only in the United States but across the world, are claiming that when in power they can save the nation from sex, crime, welfare cheats, and a liberal press. They will also suppress the ability to think as they are taking away the tools to learn to think.

Sagan was quoted in Lily Splane’s Quantum Consciousness as saying, “It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.” I will take that one step further, it is not just the responsibility of scientists but all educators, librarians, and museum professionals to never suppress knowledge. The far right has always vilified college professors and intellectuals because they fear the truth. They are so afraid of someone thinking freely, that they brainwash people with 24-hour news channels like Fox News and Newsmax. They even seem to be gaining ground with CNN, though MSNBC holds steadfastly to presenting opposing viewpoints. 

Sagan also said in The Demon-Haunted World, “The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.” However, in the current state of America and many other countries with far-right parties gaining ground, fascist conservatives (though not all conservatives are fascist), are fighting to make sure people are not able to hear a better argument. Susan recently sent me a joke that went like this, “How many Trump supporters does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Trump says it’s done and they all cheer in the dark.” It would be funnier if it weren’t so true. For the first 234 years of the nation’s history, no American president or former president had ever been indicted. That has changed this year. Donald Trump has been charged in four criminal cases which include 91 criminal charges over a four-and-a-half-month span, and yet, he is still the frontrunner, and by a considerable margin, for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.