Dr. Naomi Wolf: "The Death of Culture: How Lies Killed Books; A Visit to Hipster Brooklyn"; '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. “People just want to move on,” I keep hearing, in my former haunts"..

Dr. Wolf weaves her magic in this piece (both content and style) and fundamentally she is describing how members of the Freedom movement, the dissidents, the contrarians, the skeptics etc. are the new comrades in arms, creating new songs and telling new stories. Standing up to wage the battle that most around us, shrinked away from. Slinked and slithered away from. I share because it is worth the read and I embed as it is written with the substack to follow.

A piercing set of paragraphs to me:

‘My brothers and sisters in the freedom movement, though we lost employment, savings, status and affiliations, fought every day — for these very folks; we fought for everyone; we fought so that some day, these young moms could indeed stroll with their babies, breathing fresh air; so that these slouching Millennials could one day indeed wander at will, not “locked down” still, not “mandated” any longer, and not living in fear of an internment camp.

It was bittersweet, seeing this demographic so chill, so relaxed, so back to “normal” — many of whom had been once so oblivious of, or so actively disrespectful of, the sacrifices we on the outside of society had waged for their very freedom.

Who knows where they would be now, if it were not for our combat on their behalf?

Still without their rights regained, like Canada? Still “mandated”, like Canada? Still scared to speak, scared of having bank accounts frozen, scared of losing licenses, scared of being beaten in protests, forbidden to travel without dangerous injections — like Canada?

We are not entirely free again in the US, but we regained many of our freedoms. Not because the evildoers wanted to give them back; but because my brothers and sisters fought hard, strategically, bitterly and furiously, for all of this liberty that I witnessed in front of me, on that almost-spring day on the crowded, tumultuous Fulton Avenue.

It was bittersweet to know that these people would never witness us, or acknowledge what we did for them and their children; let alone thank us; let alone apologize to people like me for the years in which they were just fine with folks such as us banished to the outer edges of society, to eat in the cold streets of New York like animals, or made jobless, or ostracized.

In addition to the dissonance of seeing people who had been perfectly okay with discriminating against the very people who had fought to return to them the liberties they now enjoyed, I suffered a sense of disorientation at realizing that there was a giant cognitive hole in the middle of contemporary culture.

The staffers at the Brooklyn branch of McNally Jackson Bookstore, an independent bookstore which had for years been a stalwart outpost of free-thinking publishing, were still masked, against all reason. I walked in with some trepidation.’

Enjoy and please support her literary and technical work, that too of her Daily Clout team. Dr. Wolf understands the issues at hand in ways established scientists and doctors within the specific fields do not and it is fascinating when I think about it. I know Dr. Wolf and she has also brought a finesse and balance, and actually lent depth and decency to this movement where others could not, and it is that I wish to thank her for. In a sense, she has ‘polished’ us: