#i hate you desantis i hate you abbot i hate you trump

[memecatwings]

when you hear about how trump and his republicans are likening migrant workers from central and south america to an invading army its like. wow. no wonder the die hard trump supporters are nut jobs. no wonder hatred of non white immigrants has been on the rise for years. this is what you believe? that people risking their lives to feed their families are a threat to you personally in your indiana suburb? xenophobia turns your brain into swiss cheese. people are people

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Book-banning wingnuts are a tiny, vocal minority

“The Moral Majority” is a stupendous marketing gimmick: it allowed a small minority of vicious, paranoid, hateful creeps to brand themselves as a “silent majority” who were all around us, afraid to speak their minds.

The impact of this wasn’t merely in convincing politicians and the press that the views of these unhinged, fringe conspiratorialists should be taken seriously — just as important is the zap it put on the heads of their enemies, the people who wanted to love whom they loved, take care of one another, and let folks be themselves.

For these people, the Moral Majority created the impression that they themselves were the minority. These people were convinced that their broadly shared, commonsense values — entiirely compatible with the Christian gospels, as it happens — made them outliers.

This is such a useful move for the far right that they’ve pulled it over and over again. Take the climate emergency: the looming peril it presents to all of us is so manifest that the vast majority of Americans support taking immediate, decisive action to address it. However, Americans think they’re all alone in this, underestimating popular support for climate action by 50%:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32412-y

Take the whole Sanders 2020 platform: Medicare for All, a $15 minimum wage, student debt cancellation, an end to foreign military adventures, funding for rail and infrastructure, a climate transition, and taxes on the super-rich — wildly popular among the electorate, but somehow credibly pooh-poohed as unrealistic because “no one will vote for it.”

The latest mutant strain of right wing culture-war swamp fever is the supposed crisis in library books, spawning a million viral videos of swivel-eyed, spittle-flecked “Christians” demanding that school libraries and public libraries divest themselves of books that mention gender, sexuality and race, in the name of preventing “groomers.”

Ironically, this latest blood libel’s most prominent public figures are a collection of kid-fiddlers and human traffickers from Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbot (who trafficked a baby!), to the pardon-thirsty ephebephile Matt Gaetz. As ever, it takes one to know one:

https://doctorow.medium.com/takes-one-to-know-one-104d7d749408

The book-burning crowd sure do know how to put on a spectacle, but it’s mere puffery. Americans may be weird, but they don’t want to ban books. They really don’t! A new survey from the Everylibrary Institute confirms it:

https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/bookbanpoll

The nonparitsan pollsters at Embold Research asked 1,123 registered voters from August 31st-September 3rd how they felt about book banning, and those people gave a resounding no. For starters, Americans love libraries. Libraries have a higher approval rating than any governor, than Donald Trump, than Joe Biden, than the GOP and than the Democratic Party. Don’t mess with libraries.

Majorities (D-95%, I-80%, R-55%) oppose book banning and will consider politicians’ policies on book bans at election time.

Only 8% of voters think “there are many books that are inappropriate and should be banned” (this isn’t evenly distributed — only 31% of Republicans oppose book banning under any circumstances).

Only 18% of voters want books banned on the basis of race and “CRT.” More than 90% of voters oppose the list of classic novels that the right has proposed banning from classrooms and children’s collections at libraries.

Only 1/3 of voters support bans on books about sexuality. 75% of voters will consider book banning in the coming midterm elections. The majority of voters are “concerned” about book-ban bills.

You are not in the minority. You are the majority. Those book-banning freaks at the school-board meeting? They are freaks — they are on the fringe, out-of-step with American values and the American electorate. Don’t let them convince you otherwise.

[Image ID: The public burning of non-German writings and books on the opera square Unter den Linden in Berlin, by students of the Berlin universities.]