The Big Hole in Our Culture
"Independent bookstores usually reflect the burning issues in a culture at that given time. But — now — nothing"
Writing on Substack, writer and activist Dr. Naomi Wolf gives a chilling account of the cultural change in New York's Brooklyn she experienced during a brief visit there. People are free again, Wolf says, but not fully: “We are not entirely free again in the US, but we regained many of our freedoms. Not because the evildoers wanted to give them back; but because my brothers and sisters fought hard, strategically, bitterly and furiously...” And the way she describes it, they are free only on the surface, as there is no reckoning of the events of the past three years.
“It was bittersweet to know that these people would never witness us, or acknowledge what we did for them and their children; let alone thank us; let alone apologize to people like me for the years in which they were just fine with folks such as us banished to the outer edges of society, to eat in the cold streets of New York like animals, or made jobless, or ostracized.
In addition to the dissonance of seeing people who had been perfectly okay with discriminating against the very people who had fought to return to them the liberties they now enjoyed, I suffered a sense of disorientation at realizing that there was a giant cognitive hole in the middle of contemporary culture.
The staffers at the Brooklyn branch of Jackson McNally Bookstore, an independent bookstore which had for years been a stalwart outpost of free-thinking publishing, were still masked, against all reason. I walked in with some trepidation.
Peacefully, faces covered, three years on, they stacked books on the shelves.
I was astonished, as I wandered the well-stocked aisles. Independent bookstores usually reflect the burning issues in a culture at that given time.
But — now — nothing.”
There are no books written by public intellectuals on how we lost our freedom during those three years, but more than enough on walks through the city, on ´difficult conversations‘, on growing up with unusual parents, on how meaningful animals are and on how important it is to eat more vegetables, Wolf says:
“The bizarre thing about this moment in culture, is that the really important journalism, and the really important nonfiction books about the history, the racial and gender injustice, the economics, the public policy, of the “pandemic” years — are being written by — non-writers; by people who are trained as doctors, medical researchers, lawyers, politicians, and activists.
And their books are not displayed or even stocked in bookstores such as Jackson McNally.
So there is a massive hole in the central thought process of our culture.
...
Because lies embraced our whole culture since 2020, and because public intellectuals for the most part did not stand up to the lies at the time, and because many even participated in the lies (hello, Sam Harris); since horrible things happened to those of us who did stand up to the lies — most public intellectuals at this moment cannot address the really important events of the recent past.”
It is far quicker and easier to eject from polite society those who are aware of the disastrous nature of what just transpired than it is to confront head on what was done in our names. I have all but given up arguing for truth and reconciliation. It will be enough for me that I can teach my children to think and to remember, and hope that somewhere down the line there is escape from this prison of thought that has been erected cf. today's Stranger Worlds, Thoughtpolice dot com: https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/thoughtpolicecom
Keep up the great work!
To acknowledge their role is to be complicit = liability. I think we’ll never see humility from virtually any, or they will plead ignorance, just following orders or blame anyone else