And the children sing: “you can’t always get what you want.”
It’s a Rolling Stone song, and its album version does actually feature a children’s chorus (over adult singers).
I mention it not because I’ve just listened to the non-choral version put up in April by the famous rock group, a special pandemic recording. Though I just did. And perhaps it’s on my mind because the song was used by Donald Trump on his way to the White House, and at the present moment it sure doesn’t look like he’s going to get a second term.
“No, you can’t always get what you want want./ But if you try sometime, you just might find/ You get what you need.”
A silver lining for Trump voters?
No. It just came to mind when I learned that employees at Penguin broke down in tears when they learned that the huge publishing company was going to publish Jordan Peterson’s follow-up to his 2018 best-seller, 12 Rules for Life.
There was weeping, and it wasn’t for joy.
You see, the young people in the company said that Peterson is “an icon of hate speech and transphobia.” Oh, and he’s also “an icon of white supremacy,” and the lamenter admitted that “regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him.”
It is really hard to sympathize. A major publishing company in an open society must be expected to publish a wide variety of material. So, buck up, as Peterson likes to say. Unless you own the place, you can’t always publish what you want.
More importantly, note that word: icon. That’s an image that stands for something by looking like that something.
How does Peterson look like a white supremacist or transphobe?
By imputation. By ignoring his arguments. And by treating his fans as wholly other and as a unified mass.
Who can be hated and denied ever getting what they want.
But such desired censorship is certainly not what we need.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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