It seems like the highest fruits of civilization are the target:
President Trump on Friday signed an executive order that aims to eliminate seven federal agencies, including ones that focus on media, libraries, museums and ending homelessness…
…The president targeted the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which is the parent company of Voice of America (VOA), as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency that supports libraries, archives and museums in every state.
He also dismantled the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which aims to prevent and end homelessness in the U.S… (and more) (my emphasis)
Libraries, museums, art galleries, and open universities (they all used to be, now they’re all closed) are what justify humanity: they are our glory, the pinnacle of human grace. It’s art and culture and creativity and imagination that, along with care, make humanity worth shit.
(It should go without saying that the amount of money spent on libraries, archives and museums is a rounding error on Federal expenditures.)
Care is the other thing that makes humans more than a bunch of brutal, murderous, rapist, cruel chimps. Universal health care, hospices, housing for the poor, food for the hungry: these are what redeem humans, that make us more than a waste of skin.
Art and hospitals justify humanity. Caring for animals makes us more than beasts. I have no idea why some people want to be a bunch of murderous fucking chimpanzees, where the strong rule of the weak, and everything but power and money is denigrated.
If you’ve never experienced real pain, go visit a burn ward or a psych hospital. Our bodies make us vulnerable to horror. In face of that horror, it is art, learning and caring for others that make the world more than just Hell.
The people who laugh at prisoners being raped, who think that prisons should be about hurting prisoners, who think torture is acceptable, that mass murder of civilians is acceptable, become what they hate. Rapists by proxy, torturers by proxy.
This doesn’t mean turning the other cheek. By all means we should defend ourselves from monsters. But in so doing we must not, ourselves, become monsters.
To defund libraries, museums, archives (where our history is stored) and help for the homeless is to be a beast: less than an animal, since most social animals do care for each other. Libraries and public art galleries, in particular, are a ladder up and a solace. A place where anyone can go and experience the flower of human imagination, leave this world aside for a time and enter the worlds of creation. The internet is not a substitute, we can not be sure that the free resources here will remain free, and there is something extra to the physical presence of art and writing.
Trump is a Philistine, and so are most of his supporters. The ideals of civilization, the highest expressions, are care and art.
Mark Pontin
Ian W: ‘I have no idea why some people want to be a bunch of murderous fucking chimpanzees, where the strong rule of the weak, and everything but power and money is denigrated.’
Sure you do, Ian. It’s because they *are* essentially murderous fucking chimps, who only have money and the power this gives, and wouldn’t be on top otherwise.
It’s that simple. More clinically, these people are easily diagnosed as psychopaths or malign narcissists.
The question then becomes: When the fact that a minority of human individuals with psychopathic, predatory traits seeks power over others and has throughout recorded human history generally constituted the ruling class of most human societies is something tacitly recognized but publicly repressed by the human race, what kind of species are we?
Bill
https://restoringmayberry.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-potential-of-libraries.html
Brian Kaller has a very good article about libraries in Ireland and how they helped people expand their horizons. In fact I think all his articles are good.
Bill