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There are two aspects that are striking to me that I don’t think have been touched on.
First, this is not how democracy works; alternatively, it’s how democracy works badly. It’s one thing for a scant majority to elect a person or pass a law, because those are zero-sum games. But a library! When 51% can dictate what the 49% think, we’re in scary times. There’s a political term for it, but for forum purposes I’ll just call it control. Why wouldn’t a library choose to be representative of an entire community? Those who didn’t like them could just exercise their own freedoms not to read the books, but instead they’d rather infringe on the freedoms of others. Freedom for me but not for thee.
And second, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face! The voters would really prefer not to have a library at all, a place where their kids can get books and their elders get warm or exchange a cheery hello to stave off loneliness? A place where the community, individually and severally, can go for information? Really tells the story; it’s sheer fear of knowledge and how it empowers.
What has happened to kindness and tolerance? How does someone else’s essential being have any effect on one’s own?
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