 As Republicans continue to screech about how Big Tech platforms like Facebook are censoring conservative voices while they simultaneously dominate these platforms on a daily basis, they themselves have taken a liking to cancel culture as of late. And saying as of late isn't necessarily correct because let's be honest, conservatives have always been the censorious cancel culture lovers that they claim that the left is today. They've always been the ones to clutch their pearls if film or music or books are a little bit too risque or don't, you know, line up with their political and ideological views. So this new bookbending spree that they're going on as of late, it started back in twenty twenty one around the same time that a critical race theory became a phenomenon in this country. Now, that issue is a manufactured issue that was pushed on the mainstream by Christopher Rufo, who is a Republican Party operative. And since that kind of took ground in the United States, they then subsequently started to try to ban lots and lots of books and that has continued till this day. So let's go back to this NPR report from November of last year. It says in the latest call from a Republican leaders to ban certain books in schools, South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster is telling his state's Department of Education to investigate a graphic novel on queer identity being available at a school's library. He says the content in the book is sexually explicit and pornographic. The book, Gender Queer, a memoir by Maya Kabab is recommended for grades 10 and up by its publisher and tells an autobiographical story of a person who is grappling with their gender and sexual identity. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott sent a letter to the state's School Board Association saying public schools shouldn't have pornographic or obscene material. He did not provide any specific examples of content. But Texas State Representative Jeff Kasen called on the state's Attorney General to investigate sexually explicit material in schools, including Gender Queer. Another Texas lawmaker running for Attorney General identified a list of eight hundred fifty books that he says should be questioned. Many of those books are written by women, people of color and LGBTQ authors. Several other states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Maine and Missouri, have also targeted certain books available in schools, often telling stories of young people of color and narratives that include U.S. history of segregation and racism. Now, fast forward to 2022 and they are ramping up this effort, especially in states like Texas. So NBC News reports records requests to nearly one hundred school districts in the Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin regions. A small sampling of the state's twelve hundred fifty public school systems revealed seventy five formal requests by parents or community members to ban books from libraries during the first four months of this school year. In comparison, only one library book challenge was filed at those districts during the same time period a year earlier record show. A handful of the districts reported more challenges this year than in the past two decades combined. So keep in mind that these are the same folks who claim that cancel culture is bad. These are the ones who scream about a gender neutral branding for Mr. Potato Head and Cat in the Hat getting canceled after the actual company who publishes these books themselves decided to retract a couple of books. But they were just screeching about that. But what are they doing? We see almost a nationwide effort in different states controlled by Republicans to get a ton of books banned. I mean, a book about gender identity and sexual orientation for 10th graders. I mean, at that point in time, believe it or not, you are developing your sexual orientation. You've already developed that in many cases and you're you're questioning your gender identity. So to have this book there for children who could use this as a valuable resource. I mean, it's just it's unnecessarily cruel. They're taking away books that talk about racism. This is all part of their effort to combat critical race theory, i.e. history, anything that portrays the United States in a negative light. That's bad. We've got to get rid of it. I want to censor it. So who's the real sensorians? Who's the real cancel culture people? And see, the thing about censorship is that eventually it always ends up backfiring. And that's specifically what happened when a Tennessee school board went a little bit too far in banning a book called Mouse, which is a book about the Holocaust. As Slate reports, a Tennessee school board recently voted to pull the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Mouse and its cat and mouse retelling of the Holocaust from the school curriculum. The school board members cited violence, nudity in humanoid mouse caricatures and profanity as the reasons. One member, Tony Almond, said it shows people hanging. It shows them killing kids. Why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? Why do they promote this sort of stuff? We're talking about the Holocaust. Do you not think that kids should learn about the Holocaust? How do you want them to portray the Holocaust in a rosy manner? I just I don't know what they want. They just want to erase history. That's what they want to do. And, you know, they're freaking out about nudity from mice. I hate to break it to you, but if you go to a pet store and you see a mouse, guess what? It's not going to have any clothes. Oh, no, let's let's clutch our pearls because the mice are naked. They are fucking insane. They are deluded. But guess what? They always have been. And thankfully, this censorship actually backfired on them because guess what happened after this book was pulled? It subsequently became one of the best selling books in the country. So the backlash to their censorship actually blew up in their faces finally. And will they learn their lesson with respect to other books like genderqueer? I really don't know, but it's really nice to see them kind of reap what they sow, right? You try to suppress something, you try to hide something and then it blows up. Love it. Love to see it. So the question I have is, why are people who usually scream the loudest about cancel culture conspicuously silent when it comes to this issue? I mean, I see a lot of free speech advocates online, but they don't say anything about this. Oftentimes when we see efforts to suppress free speech with regard to BDS, the free speech defenders never say anything about this. And there's a reason for this. We are currently undergoing a cultural change where the GOP has managed to successfully recapture culture. This has kind of been their goal for a really long time. And they have successfully portrayed the left as the ones who are sensorious. Take political correctness, a really old term rebranded into critical race theory and make it seem as if really it's the left who are sensorious. Meanwhile, they're clutching their pearls at naked mice and trying to ban books in schools across the country. It's just, it's truly ironic, but most people won't even know that they're doing this because we're not talking about this in mainstream media. We're not talking about the far right devolving from proto-fascists to just outright fascists in many cases with regard to Marjorie Green and Lauren Boebert. We're not talking about this because we're too busy talking about the PC police on the left and the far left. This is why things in this country are so bad currently because the Republican Party has shifted so far to the right and everyone else is buying into the narratives that are being pushed by people who are paying lots and lots of money to push these narratives. So it is the GOP who always has been the sensorians. That's not to say that the left doesn't ever get a little bit too sensorious sometimes. I disagree with some efforts to de-platform certain folks and whatnot, but disproportionately, the censorship has always come from the right and evangelicals, they're the pearl clutches. So don't let them try to twist the narrative and reframe this entire situation. They've always been the sensorians and this effort to ban books is awful and we should be pushing back against this vehemently so.