The savagery, rage and evil of the murderers, looters and haters of America these past few days should clarify to any sentient individual that the left and its allies will do anything to completely dismantle this country.  Seeing the picture of a store owner being stomped upon, hearing the cries of a black resident whose neighborhood stores have all been destroyed and learning that the so-called protestors burned down low-income housing clearly demonstrate the loathing for this country. Dan Bongino asserts that this "is not a protest anymore, it's a coup."

This devastation is boundless and the burning of one of America's last remaining independent bookstores represents the ruthlessness and barbarity in the hearts of those who would support Antifa and their ilk.  Tony Daniel writes

Venerable Minneapolis science fiction and fantasy bookstore Uncle Hugo’s and its sister store in the same building, Uncle Edgar’s, which specialized in mysteries, were both burned to ruins… by rioters.

The store took its name from two major awards in the genre fields, science fiction’s Hugo awards, and mysteries Edgar’s. Independent bookstores are a threatened American institution, and Uncle Hugo’s was considered a flagship operation.

Author-signed copies, particularly first editions, were an Uncles specialty. Everything was destroyed by the rioters’ firebombing of the establishment.  Countless specialty books, priceless to readers and collectors... burned to crisps and cinders.

We all know who burned Uncle Hugo’s. It wasn’t 'Nazis,' or the cops in some kind of conspiracy to cast blame. It was the Minneapolis rioters. Book-burning scum, in other words.

Uncle Hugo’s burns (YouTube screen grab)

In his book titled A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq, Fernando Baez searches for a theory to explain book destruction. He writes that "the book is… a proposition that seeks to configure everything in terms of reason and not in terms of chaos."

In short, it is understood that "our souls persist only through language."  Consequently "humanity and books are inseparable."  In fact, "books are not destroyed as physical objects but as links to memory, that is, as one of the axes of identity of a person or a community.  There is no identity without memory.  If we do not remember what we are, we don't know what we are.  Over the centuries, when a group or nation attempts to subjugate another group or nation, the first thing they do is erase the traces of its memory in order to reconfigure its identity."

And that is precisely what Antifa, social justice warriors and other groups who despise this country wish to do.  They insist that our country has no redeeming features; that it is a hotbed of racism and hatred.  They wish to rewrite history as exemplified by the 1619 Project.

In the 1960s and 1970s

"the rise of Marxist professors swept through our universities. Thousands of university students were indoctrinated to interpret American history as an ongoing drama of class conflict and nothing more. We see the effects of this education playing out today. Well, the revisionists are at it again. Similar grift, similar bad history and similar bad motives. But this time it’s worse, the long-term effect more pernicious." 

The 1619 Project

"is being taught in K-12 public schools, from Chicago to Washington, D.C. This means children, unable to discern fact from fiction, will be subjected to a politicized, false history of their country. It would be one thing if Mrs. Hannah-Jones, The New York Times and the Pulitzer committee were ignorant of what they were creating or supporting. But they are not, as evidenced by the fact that 1619 Project is still funded and lauded — irrespective of the devastating critiques it faced by real historians."

They will never learn of William Hamilton, an African-American orator and journalist who wrote:

"How sweet it is to speak of good men . . . who ought to be deeply inscribed on your memories, and in your hearts."  He was speaking to members of the New York Manumission Society -- an organization founded to promote the abolition of slavery."

 So the logical extension of the 1619 ideology is for vandals and rioters to deface public monuments and destroy churches and synagogues. After all, Antifa

"is a revolutionary Marxist-anarchist militia movement that seeks to bring down the United States by means of violence and intimidation. As a September 2017 report in The Atlantic notes, Antifa is responsible for 'a level of sustained political street warfare not seen in the U.S. since the 1960s.'”

They persistently engage in a form of cultural cleansing to break the spine of America.  This depravity and destruction is an "attempt of one culture to impose itself on another and transplant new memories in a society."  It starts with the shame imposed upon white school children and works its way through the university system where students are exhorted to demand the total dismantling of the country politically, economically, and socially.  It plays upon the identify politics that claims a never-ending battle among different groups.

How ironic that when the purveyors of evil burned down Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's, they destroyed the magical context of science fiction and fantasy whose characters show steadiness, bravery and wonder.

By destroying these books whose fictional characters are the embodiment of virtue and courage, the savages exemplify the gulf between those who would work to create a truly just society and those who would disingenuously claim the same.

They have no respect for life and the "cultivation of humanity."  As Vigen Gurolan in Tending the Heart of Virtue states "the great fairy tales and fantasy stories capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, where characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds."

The very essence of books is the profound ways that people learn beyond their experiences.  In reality, "the destruction of a bookstore hurts people’s souls, even if they don’t realize this" [because it destroys] the very possibility for growth and change in a community. You are killing hope."

Whoever would support the rationale for such destruction has decided to embrace cowardice, and greed.  The pictures of young people looting stores, destroying entire neighborhoods and maiming other human beings has absolutely nothing to do with the heinous crime against George Floyd, may he rest in peace.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com