This article was submitted to Amerikaner by Grant Norman. If you would like to submit your own content, please email AmerikanerContributions@proton.me
There is a specter haunting the children’s sections of libraries and bookstores. I encountered it twice in the past week, first while trying to find a book on a recent political campaign, and then while I was visiting the library with my child. From my casual observation it appears that the shelves have been inundated with political biographies dressed up as children’s books.
The sheer amount and variety of titles available lauding mediocre contemporary politicians was so great that my mind immediately went to money-laundering. After all, the number of adults who would buy a book about Kamala Harris isn’t that large, so how much demand really is there for such clumsy propaganda?
I am not opposed to the political biography as a concept, especially not those directed at children. I grew up reading books introducing me to great Americans like George Washington and Charles Lindbergh, but the two chief differences between my childhood reading and the dreck saturating libraries is that the subjects of my interest were dead, and they actually achieved something of note. Even the subjects of biographies like Jim Henson and Walt Disney had more to their credit than this current crop of zeroes. What has Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez achieved other than making boomers mad?
Even Elizabeth Warren, the great hope for Beltway progressives for a decade, hasn’t actually done anything of note when you think about it. She says tough words to bankers. She accuses people of sexism. Sometimes she votes yes, and sometimes she votes no, as part of her job. This is hardly the stuff to fire the imaginations of young children.
I believe the causes of this crime against the memory of Johannes Gutenberg are twofold. First, the modern American left has succeeded in large part at tearing down the heroes and epics of the past and now need to invent new heroes to fill the human need for champions. Unfortunately, since nobody of importance before 2016 followed today’s acceptable left-wing orthodoxy, their roster appears to be limited to seat-warmers like Kamala Harris and Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
These new, supposed “iconic figures of America,” realize deep down that they are illegitimate and unimpressive. For the women in particular, this accentuates the so-called “impostor syndrome” (formerly called “actually being bad at your job”) they are feeling. These efforts to reach out and present their best selves to young children and their parents is a desperate way for politicians to shore up the self-concept which is under attack daily by the sheer mediocrity which they embody as incentivized by the current political system.
This embarrassing parade of books, including one highlighting the achievements(?) of Julian and Joaquin Castro, is hardly a threat to right-thinking Americans. I return to the idea of these books as money-laundering, because it is obvious that these books are not actually being read by anyone. They also point to an opening for books about real heroes. I don’t mean contemporary figures of similar mediocrity on the right – can you imagine how excruciating a children’s biography of Marco Rubio or Kristi Noem would be? – but rather of the heroes who lived and died lives of greatness. Let the major publishers throw away their money puffing up Chelsea Clinton and her ilk, the real way to win the excitement of the youth is by showing them heroes and daring them to emulate them.
Let’s take up the pen and breathe new life into the titans of old so that a new generation can discover them.