Looking at how the media reacted to the reaction by Americans at the cancelation of some of Dr. Seuss’s books, it’s hard to tell whether they’re being obtuse on purpose or if they truly misunderstand the American people so much that their bubble stops them from experiencing reality as it is.

Case in point, here’s what one Business Insider reporter had to say about why conservatives were mad about Dr. Seuss, and I’m going to warn you, the explanation is so stupid that you may get dumber for having read it:

“The current obsession among right-wing media with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head etc. is among the most bizarre manifestations we’ve seen yet re: their fear of white people becoming a minority. That’s really what this is all about. Fear of not being in control,” senior political reporter John Haltiwanger tweeted.

The current obsession among right-wing media with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head etc. is among the most bizarre manifestations we've seen yet re: their fear of white people becoming a minority. That's really what this is all about. Fear of not being in control.

— John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) March 8, 2021

In other words, Haltiwanger believes the only reason people are mad about these books being taken out of circulation is, more or less, because white people want whiteness to prevail…which makes absolutely zero sense. It especially doesn’t make sense when you inject the whole idea of “white people becoming a minority” as if Dr. Seuss’s books were the only thing keeping up the birthrates of white people.

White people didn’t inject racism into these books. The left did. Seuss didn’t write these books in question with any racist intent, and no one reading them became an ounce more racist for seeing them. It took the left arbitrarily making it racist for it to be a racial issue.

The real reason conservatives (and it’d be more accurate to say Americans across the political spectrum) are mad over the cancelation of certain Dr. Seuss books is very simple; we don’t want to be the culture that burns books because we disagree with what’s written in them. We want to be a society that’s mature enough to make our own decisions about what is and isn’t bad, and to be able to weigh what is and isn’t racist for ourselves. What we don’t want is a group of hyper-sensitive busybodies with chips on their shoulders and a holier-than-thou complex declaring what is and isn’t appropriate for our culture to see. We especially don’t want corporate businesses making that call for us as well.

America is a land of grown adults who value being able to make decisions for themselves. If a business wants to pull something for business reasons, then that’s one thing, but we don’t need these people pulling it because it’s no longer appropriate for general audiences to consume. Yes, the product is under their control, but the call on what America thinks is not.

Yet the insistence from corporations and activist groups that America isn’t intelligent, mature, or independent enough to handle ideas is a constant insult that is usually dismissed as a need to maintain some kind of racist status quo. That only further insults Americans, with conservatives being the most vocal in opposition.

So the reason behind the anger from conservatives has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the preservation of both knowledge and ideological independence. For shallow people like social justice advocates and left-leaning journalists, these are concepts that are tough to wrap the head around, but it’s very simple when you stop to think about it for more than a few seconds.

We don’t want to be told what’s good for us, and we don’t want a small group of very ignorant and ridiculous people deciding what is and isn’t morally correct.