Frank Strong

The saturnine man over there talking with a lovely French emigree is already a Nazi. Mr. C is a brilliant and embittered intellectual. He was a poor white-trash Southern boy, a scholarship student at two universities where he took all the scholastic honors but was never invited to join a fraternity. His brilliant gifts won for him successively government positions, partnership in a prominent law firm, and eventually a highly paid job as a Wall Street adviser. He has always moved among important people and always been socially on the periphery. His colleagues have admired his brains and exploited them, but they have seldom invited him-or his wife-to dinner.

He is a snob, loathing his own snobbery. He despises the men about him-he despises, for instance, Mr. B-because he knows that what he has had to achieve by relentless work men like B have won by knowing the right people. But his contempt is inextricably mingled with envy. Even more than he hates the class into which he has insecurely risen, does he hate the people from whom he came. He hates his mother and his father for being his parents. He loathes everything that reminds him of his origins and his humiliations. He is bitterly antiSemitic because the social insecurity of the Jews reminds him of his own psychological insecurity.

Pity he has utterly erased from his nature, and joy he has never known. He has an ambition, bitter and burning. It is to rise to such an eminence that no one can ever again humiliate him. Not to rule but to be the secret ruler, pulling the strings of puppets created by his brains. Already some of them are talking his language-though they have never met him.

There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal-a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him-intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.

I mean, come on.

Who Goes Nazi?, by Dorothy Thompson

Every time I re-read this I'm gobsmacked by how much JD Vance's life story is just a fleshed-out version of the four paragraphs on Mr. C. It's uncanny.
harpers.org/archive/1941...

🚨Call to Action, Texans we need your voices! 🚨TEA & The SBOE want to mandate what all TX school children MUST read, and the book list is out of touch with TX students & families. It was clearly created to stifle certain ideas & voices & funnel students toward a narrow tightly controlled worldview.

There is evil and then there is this

It isn’t healthy to be this angry all the time. But it also isn’t healthy if this doesn’t make you angry.

Thank YOU!

there's no good reason every public school student in a state should have to read the exact same books

Call to Action: The State Board of Education is considering a list of required readings. It's bad. We need your help to stop it.

Texas English teachers and librarians, we need your help. Read @frankstrong.bsky.social post about the "proposed" Texas Required Reading list and then WRITE your State Board of Education member about your concerns. All the details here: ➡️ substack.com/home/post/p-...

And this is a great example of messaging--especially if you've got a Republican board member who's not going to be moved by complaints about the list's lack of diversity. bsky.app/profile/ghos...

You can find your SBOE representative here: wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home

Call to Action: The State Board of Education is considering a list of required readings. It's bad. We need your help to stop it.

Urgent call to action, Texans: we need to write to our State Board of Education members and tell them NOT to adopt the proposed required reading list they’re considering at the the end of the month. It is BAD. I wrote about why here: franklinstrong.substack.com/p/call-to-ac...

Thank you! I feel like I have a thousand more things to say about this list, too.

Oh, Rand is on there. So is Margaret Thatcher's eulogy for Ronald Reagan.

Call to Action: The State Board of Education is considering a list of required readings. It's bad. We need your help to stop it.

Urgent call to action, Texans: we need to write to our State Board of Education members and tell them NOT to adopt the proposed required reading list they’re considering at the the end of the month. It is BAD. I wrote about why here: franklinstrong.substack.com/p/call-to-ac...

OMG same.

Of course! Feedback received.

From a book challenge in Conroe ISD:

Q: For what age group would you recommend this resource?

A: MAYBE a mature high school age

🤦‍♂️

“This is exceptional. @thelibrariansfilm.bsky.social is a beautiful, really important documentary.” —Jenna Bush Hager.

“Art can speak to the heart sometimes in ways the news can’t.” —Sheinelle Jones

Watch SJP talk about the documentary on The Today Show.

www.today.com/video/sarah-...

On today’s episode of pRoTeCt tHe ChiLdReN:

Check out this Conroe ISD formal book challenge to “I am Billie Jean King” by @bradmeltzer.com

Complaint: May result in “Aggressive gender equality and heterosexuality.”

🤔🤨🧐

Good (but depressing) article on the impact US book bans are having on publishing and marketing of LGBTQ stories, particularly in kidlit. Thanks to @adibkhorram.bsky.social @beccapodos.bsky.social @missdahlelama.dahliaadler.com and others speaking up about this!
thehill.com/homenews/lgb...

60+ Small Tasks to Defend the Right to Read: Book Censorship News, January 9, 2026 No one is coming to save us, so we must do it ourselves. Here are 60+ small tasks to help defend the right to read in 2026 and beyond.

You combat hopelessness by doing something. In an era of unrepentant book bans and library attacks, you show up. You learn. You show up again.

Activism and advocacy are a practice.

Here are over 60 tasks for helping preserve the right to read, wherever you are.

bookriot.com/how-to-defen...

This is both entirely predictable and beyond belief.

kind of darkly funny that "gender studies" is the stereotypical "useless degree" because gender studies will help you understand a large and important chunk of the current psychosis in american life

Don’t know if I’ve ever read truer words.

So much of American history is just impulsive and extremely stupid elites, who don't believe in consequences because they have never personally experienced them, doing highly consequential stuff because they're bored or believe it might make them richer. I guess a lot of our culture, too.

Mapping Texas Book Bans SY 25-26 - Google My Maps Mapping Texas Book Bans SY 25-26

I made an interactive map! This is a look at the effects Tx book-banning laws have had just *since the end of last school year*. I made it because it's easy to hear a shocking story about a book ban and then forget it and lose the larger picture.
www.google.com/maps/d/viewe...

Good catch.

Greg Abbott is BRAGGING about this. He sent out a press release this week listing SB12 & SB13 as accomplishments--as if they aren't actively harming Texas kids. If that pisses you off as much as it does me, it's a great day to donate to @ginafortexas.bsky.social. ginafortexas.com

Thank you! Glad to be in this fight with you!

Texas worked hard to take the lead in book bans in 2025. I'm grateful @frankstrong.bsky.social and @txfreedomread.bsky.social work so hard to make these quiet bans public.

And, even with all their work, this reckoning is a vast under-count.

Primaries are in March. Are you registered to vote?