"The Death of Culture: How Lies Killed Books" by Dr. Naomi Wolf

The Death of Culture: How Lies Killed Books (substack.com)--Naomi Wolf:

"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.

It takes about two years to write a book, and about six months to publish one. It was surely time for the new important books from public intellectuals, about the world-historical years through which we had just lived, to appear.

But — no.

In the center of an altar to literate culture, it was as if the years 2020-2023 simply did not exist and had never existed.

This can’t be possible, I thought. This all — the “pandemic”,
lockdowns, denial of education for children, forced masking, forced vaccinations, “mandates” — a crashed economy — globally — this all, as an aggregate, was of course the most important thing ever to have happened to us as a generation of intellectuals.

I kept on searching the stacks. Nothing.

I checked the Top Ten Nonfiction Books in Time.

None had to do with the pandemic policies or the “lockdowns” or the mandated mRNA injections into billions of humans.

I surveyed the lanes lined with books, perplexed and saddened.

Surely the wonderful novelists of my generation, astute observers of the contemporary scene — Jennifer Egan, Rebecca Miller — would have written their Great American Novels about the mania that swept over the globe from 2020-2023 — one which provided once-in-a-century fodder for fiction writers?

No — or at least, not yet.

From some of the other important public intellectuals whom I know or whom I have followed for decades — and I do not mean to shame anyone needlessly, so I won’t name them — there were indeed some new books.

There were books on walks through the city.

There were books on “difficult conversations.”

There were books on growing up with unusual parents.

There were books on how meaningful animals are, and how wondrous is their world.

Public intellectuals produced a lot of new books on eating more vegetables.

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 McNally Jackson.

So there is a massive hole in the central thought process of our culture.

The courageous non-writers have stepped in to tell the truth, because the famous writers, for the most part, can’t.

Or won’t. Or, for whatever reason, didn’t.

This is because the public intellectuals are by necessity, for the most part, AWOL to the truth-telling demands of this time.

You cannot be a public intellectual whose work is alive, if you have participated in manufacturing, or even accepting quietly, state-run lies.

The work of the cultural elite of every tyranny, from Nazi Germany to Stalin’s Russia, reveals this fact.

Participation in lies by the artist, makes the creation of a vibrant cultural text, impossible.

Nazi art is bad art. Socialist-realist Soviet fiction is bad fiction.

Journalism in a tyranny, that is written by state-approved scribes, is always going to be a mess of cliches and obsequiousness that no one wants to read, and that cannot stand the test of time. It vanishes like snow into the cauldron of the future — even as works by the hated, forbidden dissidents who can and do tell the truth — the Solzhenitzyns of the time, the Anne Franks — are like diamonds, that cannot be crushed or lost to time.

It is only these that survive.

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.

In the world of alt-media independent exiled dissidents, where I live most of the time, we are having the most riveting, important conversations of our lives. This is because we all know civilization itself, and liberty itself, and maybe even the fate of the human race itself, are at stake every day.

In the polite elite-media circles of Brooklyn and New York, to which I returned briefly to dip a toe in the water, people are — not talking about any of it.

They are not talking about the enslavement of humanity. They are not talking about young adults dropping dead.

They are talking about fermentation. They are talking about pets. They are talking, endlessly, like stalkers who cannot let it go, about how bad Donald Trump is, down to what he has for dinner in Mar a Lago.

...The New York Times is down to running fully imaginary stories that the editors must believe someone somewhere will accept without howling skepticism: “New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market”

Then, of course, having committed that journalistic crime, the editors need to run this tragically hilarious sub-headline:

“What Are Raccoon Dogs?
The monogamous, hibernating canids, which are related to foxes, are sold for meat and fur.”

A formerly great newspaper has run its way through through bats and civet cats, burning its credibility wholesale in a gigantic bonfire of flat-out state-mouthpiece deception and uncorrected assertions for three full years, and is now digging up the specter of raccoon dogs. It is explaining their mating habits to its readers — stop the presses! — even as elsewhere in untouchable-reality-land, Dr Fauci furiously backpedals, trying to avoid charges of crimes against humanity.

I sighed, as I left the bookstore, and made my way through the freely moving hipster crowds.

We don’t fight for freedom so that we can get credit.

We don’t fight for truth because we want a byline.

We do both just because we can’t help it.

We do both because our Founders fought to the death so that we ourselves would be free one day.

And we fight so that little children whom we will never live to see, will grow up free.

But it is painful to witness the beating heart of what had been a great culture, stunned and muted in denial, and unable to function intellectually.

I guess we just need to leave the sadly rotting carcass of the establishment culture of lies and denial behind.

I say that with sorrow. I will miss the bookstores, universities, newspapers that I once revered.

I guess we have to follow the voices of the truth-tellers of the moment, to other, surprising, beleaguered campfires.

I guess we need to pitch our tents in new fields, outside the walls of the crumbling, breached, and decadent city.

I guess we need to learn new songs and tell new stories, as we find ourselves alongside other — surprising — fierce, and unbowed, and determined, new comrades in arms.".......

Read it all.



More: 

My Mind Blown by 1560 Geneva Bible (substack.com):

"This version is the one used by William Shakespeare, John Donne, John Milton — but also by the Puritans, and by our own Founders. As I read it, I understood why the Geneva Bible was banned by King James, who commissioned the official — beautiful but state-sanctioned — King James Version. The Geneva Bible is incredibly subversive and liberating, and awe-inspiring, just as the original Hebrew is transformational and liberating and awe-inspiring. Reading it, I understood why the Puritans would give up everything and sail across unknown seas to create a sacred community in the wilderness. I understood what gave our Founders the courage to challenge the greatest Empire on earth at that time.

I never felt compelled by the Hebrew Bible before, when reading other translations; it was hard to feel connected to the Being that seemed Quixotic, distant and even irrational. But in this version, the Geneva Bible, we have a God who longs for a communion with humans, and we have a much less lonely, much less punitive set of circumstances in which human development is meant to unfold. In later translations, God is made much more abstract, and much more rigidly judgmental; and priests and religious institutions are foregrounded. In this early version (and in the Hebrew), it is a heart-wrenching, challenging love story between the Lord and his creation, human beings. A very very serious relationship; but very very intimate and tender." .......

Sometimes we read the Word and sometimes the Word reads us, sister.

Ruth 2:

19 Then her mother-in-law Naomi said unto Ruth, Where hast thou gleaned today? and where wroughtest thou? blessed be he, that knew thee. And she showed her mother-in-law, with whom she had wrought, and said, The man’s name with whom I wrought today, is Boaz.

20 And Naomi said unto her daughter-in-law, Blessed be he of the Lord: for he ceaseth not to do good to the living and to the [i]dead. Again Naomi said unto her, The man is near unto us, and of our affinity.

Hallelujah!