Intolerance | HerSavvy

Tag Archives: Intolerance

by Norma Shirk | February 15, 2022 · 7:22 am

Keep Banning Those Books!

Politicians in search of a chance to appear relevant so that they can justify their grift for PAC campaign donations are busy banning books. Texas and Florida kicked off the latest round of book banning. They’re going after books written by women, Jews, and African-Americans; covering themes like violence, racism, slavery, the Holocaust, and LGBTQ issues.

Other states quickly jumped on the bandwagon. A group of moms in Williamson County, Tennessee have been fighting to ban books on the grounds that their children might read something that makes them “feel uncomfortable”. Can’t wait for their kids to grow up and get a gander at their first employee performance review. Many bosses think making subordinates uncomfortable is the way to motivate them to work harder.

The latest book banning in Tennessee comes from the McMinn County School Board which just banned a young adult book called Maus, by Art Spiegelman. Apparently, in McMinn County, middle school kids need to be protected from reading a Pulitzer Prize winning story about how Mr. Spiegelman’s father survived the Holocaust. I had never heard of Mr. Spiegelman’s book but now I can’t wait to get hold of a copy to find out what all the fuss is about.

Years ago, I eagerly read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain after I heard it was periodically banned from school reading lists. It turned out to be a story about a raft, a boy and his friend interspersed with uncomfortable satirical vignettes on American society’s racism and intolerance. Hmm….

Being banned is the greatest thing that can happen to a book. It attracts attention. Kids might actually set aside their sex and violence fueled video games to test their literacy skills. Here kid, the electronic version of the book has the same forbidden stuff as the hardback!

The publishers of the banned books will thank the pols for the free marketing. More profits!

The authors will thank the pols. More royalty checks!

Your local public library will thank the pols for driving people into their hallowed precincts in search of the banned books. Look we have lots of other books you might enjoy! See your tax dollars really working for you!

Amazon will thank the pols for helping them make another billion-dollar profit from shipping the banned books to individuals who can’t find copies at their local bookstore or who don’t want to wait their turn on the library’s waiting list for the banned book. Maus is currently an Amazon best-seller. Don’t miss out, renew your Amazon Prime account now!

Everyone, google “lists of banned books”! Time to get your hands on books that will outrage your sensibilities and make you uncomfortable!

As for the pols and their enablers, why bless their little hearts!

About Norma Shirk

My company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, helps employers (with up to 50 employees) to create human resources policies and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to help small companies grow by creating the necessary back office administrative structure while avoiding the dead weight of a bureaucracy. To read my musings on the wacky world of human resources, see the HR Compliance Jungle (www.hrcompliancejungle.com) which alternates on Wednesday mornings with my history blog, History By Norma, (available at http://www.normashirk.com). To read my musings on a variety of topics, see my posts on Her Savvy (www.hersavvy.com).

Like what you’ve read? Feel free to share, but please….. Give HerSavvy credit. Thanks!

Hope at a Time of Despair

We’re a few days away from Christmas and it’s difficult to see signs of hope.

We’re heading into another covid winter as infections and deaths again rise. More than 800,000 Americans have already died from the covid virus. Vaccines are widely available and medical evidence indicates that the unvaccinated are the ones dying now. But too many people claim they have a Constitutional right to their “freedom” to refuse the vaccination.

This argument distorts the Constitution. Constitutional freedoms extend only to the point where one person’s rights infringe on the freedoms of others. By claiming a right to reject the vaccine, anti-vaxxers increase the risk of infecting others, thus infringing on the Constitutional rights of others to live virus-free. Anti-vaxxers also increase the likelihood that we will never reach herd immunity and that the virus will mutate into a form that is vaccine resistant.

Unfortunately, the political and social disputes about covid and the vaccine are just the latest symptom of the twin diseases of political intolerance and violence. Our country has a violent history. Therefore, it is disturbing to learn from recent surveys that around a quarter of Republican Party supporters believe it is acceptable to use violence to win political disagreements. Meanwhile, the leftist fringe infecting the Democratic Party screams a message of tolerance through an intolerant program of “wokeness”. Significantly, these pampered pooches haven’t agreed to give up one iota of their privileged, coastal-elite existence to bring their utopia to fruition.

Since no one is listening to each other and the few voices of reason have been drowned out by a sea of intolerance, there is a mad scramble to impose intolerance through the capture of the political process. Too many states are passing “secure voting” laws that are designed solely to suppress the votes of people who are deemed politically and socially undesirable and inferior. Virtually all the states are racing to create gerrymandered districts that will distort the outcome of elections over the next ten years. Our Constitution stands in grave danger of becoming more useful as toilet paper.

So where do we find hope in this time of despair? History teaches us that intolerance eventually burns itself out due to its own excesses. The Inquisition eventually ran out of victims to torture and murder in the name of God. The American Civil War ended when the “secesh” states ran out of people to fight and die on the battlefield. The covid pandemic will end when the virus runs out of people to kill.

My hope is that our country will reject intolerance sooner rather than later. My despair is that we value our lives and the lives of others so cheaply that we are willing to watch so many people die before our intolerance finally burns out.

About Norma Shirk

My company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, helps small businesses create human resources policies and risk mitigation programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to help small companies grow by creating the necessary back office administrative structure while avoiding the dead weight of a bureaucracy. To read my musings on the wacky world of human resources, see the HR Compliance Jungle (www.hrcompliancejungle.com) which alternates on Wednesday mornings with my history blog, History By Norma, (available at http://www.normashirk.com). To read my musings on a variety of topics, see my posts on Her Savvy (www.hersavvy.com).

Like what you’ve read? Feel free to share, but please….. Give HerSavvy credit. Thanks!