Was Dr. Seuss Cancelled?

In the New City story line for SparkQuest, the government is a authoritarian regime that exercises strong censorship and repressive policies. This arose, in my mind, from an collective trauma stemming for the Second American Civil War, sometimes called “The Cyber War”. The war was a conflict first over the territories of the Internet, and then real-world territories, the culminating conflagrations of the current “Culture Wars” between conservatives and progressives in America. After the war, the victorious Democratic National Convention sought to complete its project of repressing all harmful and hurtful “misinformation”. To do this, they enlisted the help of AI monitors on all communications channels, especially social media — which by this time was dominated by “direct neural link” interactions enabled by implanted computer/brain interfaces. Eventually, the “Machines” began to dominate so much of life, a new war against an new enemy united humanity. We lost. Now a fragment of people are trying to restart civilization, often trying to resurrect the projects of the past.

Robert Keft, the founder of New City (among others), served on the DNC side during the civil war and fought against the Machines. In Keft’s mind, the reason civilization fell was its lack of unity, and that lack of unity was linked directly certain types of “misinformation” and retrograde viewpoints of the old world. He could not allow such disunity to destroy on of the last fragile footholds humanity had on the planet. So he developed a socialist society build on progressive values, but that slammed down the iron fist of censorship and prosecution on any he saw as threatening that system: zero tolerance.

I’m basing the backstory of New City on the extreme polarity revealed on our last year in crisis; especially the rise of “cancel culture” (sometimes called “call out culture”) and the demands for more accountability and censorship on social media. In my mind, New City is cancel culture gone wrong.

I’m not writing it this way because I want to mock or discredit the progressive agenda. Quite the opposite. I’m a progressive-leaning moderate who finds much of the progressive change taking place right now wonderful and exciting. The systems of our society have favored too few people far too much — at the expensive of others, and its time for a reckoning. However, I’m writing the story this way because I think there is a dangerous over-compensation possible that could end up undoing the short term success of the current awakening and arrive at a world no one wants. You will be the ones who will decide.

A good place to start is to figuring out “cancel culture.” Watch the video below about how six Dr. Seuss books have been removed from sales and print by publishing company due to racist content.

Think about the following questions and then write your response in the comments section:

1. Think about the examples in the video and any you may have come across in the books. Do you find this content offensive? If not, what should be done for a person who does find these books offensive or hurtful?
2. We have most of these books in our children’s collection. Should we throw them out?
3. Dr. Seuss’s publishing company is volunteering to remove these books, so some point out this isn’t “cancel culture”. Others say it is cancel culture — a dangerous trend of censoring thought and language and of removing history and content of the many in order to please the overly-sensitive few. Do you think it is or isn’t?
4. You might be surprised at some of these things people say are racist or intolerant and should should be boycotted or removed. Did you know some people accuse The Lord of the Rings of being racist? There are people to advocate boycotting Harry Potter due to J. K. Rowling’s opinions about transgender issues. What would it mean to you to loose these books? Would you be willing to give them up if they were hurting others? Why or why not? Is there a third option possible besides either accepting them without questioning or getting rid of them entirely?