WESTMINSTER — I would like to thank independent bookseller and activist Nancy Braus for her essay. It is a master class in irony.
Why does Ms. Braus, the independent bookseller, “refuse to carry the creatively awful books about the perfidy of vaccines, of Anthony Fauci, or of the 'hoax' of Covid,” yet complain that “books we read and believe in are being censored daily” and “our voices are not being amplified,” as she enjoys a full half page above the fold of a local paper?
I haven't had such a good laugh in 23 months.
The facts that: 1) she enjoys the position of a local media maven, 2) in a store named as it is, 3) making a living in, literally, the marketplace of ideas, 4) marginalizing people with different views while wondering aloud where the sympathy is for her (and her “comrades'”) fury (mentioned four times), 5) censoring scholarly works with thousands of footnotes while defending narratives that cite no tangible evidence or double-blind studies, 6) as “a longtime activist,” celebrating the fact that domestic non-violent protestors have been incarcerated in horrific conditions without trial for almost an entire year, and 7) blandly asserting that people, many of whom formerly regarded as heroes, being faced with losing their livelihoods over their assertion of “my body, my choice” are only being “asked” or “pressured” into a medical intervention (while the Nuremberg Code calls these tactics “coercion”), makes seven levels of irony right off the cuff.
And there are more. Truly a masterwork.
Her screed is admirably Swiftian in its satirical scope. If she were to come out and call it a work of conscious satire, it would merit consideration for the Nobel Prize in that category of literature.
Thanks to Ms. Braus, I have dusted off my Amazon Prime membership. My friends and I will now engage in an informed, reasonable discussion of the issues of our time, citing double-blind, peer-reviewed evidence and very serious writers, without a single contribution from Ms. Braus's emporium.
We find this sad, as we are anti-Globalist and would prefer to spend our money locally rather than support huge, downtown-killing multinational corporations.
But if that is the only choice provided by Ms. Braus's and other businesses wallowing in the smug layer of palpable fear of the Prefecture of downtown Brattleboro, we can only wish them the best of luck as we gather elsewhere in large groups, to joyfully celebrate Christmas with our fellow “selfish misguided soul” “Nazi” “monsters.”