There are many reasons to dislike the ultra conservative movement, but I think it’s most vile tenet is it’s absolute distain for and distrust of education.

We see it of course in the ongoing anti-vaxxer wing of the nut wing wing of the movement. Not sure there is another wing, but we’ll wing it on that point. We also see it in the spin game they and their propaganda ministers love to play anytime one of their own likes to turn a mundane school day/national holiday parade into a real life first person shooter video game.

What was that about deplorables?

The scariest part for me is how they like to use the freedoms and benefits we all have from living in a democratic society to try and undermine the very ideals of that society.

Case in point, what happened at the Rohnert Park California public library.

Rohnert Park is a couple of towns over from Sonoma. It’s a nice upper middle class neighborhood that prides itself on making sure the money collected in taxes is spent on things the people of the town want. Safe streets, good schools, clean parks, all the normal stuff including a well stocked public library.

But that library became the focus of a subset of the conservative world called CatholicVote who are staunchly opposed to LBGTQ+ rights. So much so they don’t even want to see books relating to gay issues on the shelves and especially in June. You know June, Pride Month, the month when Big Business realizes gays can be good customers with lots of disposable income and suddenly everyone loves the gays.

CatholicVote has been leading a campaign called “Hide The Pride”, an effort to get all information on the gay community out of public libraries and particularly out of the children’s sections. We’re not talking gay erotica here, we’re talking “Heather Has Two Mommies“. Benign stuff that treats gays (gasp!) the same as heterosexuals.

How do they do it? They check all the “offensive” books out of the library, leaving empty shelves. Which is what they did in Rohnert Park. Nothing illegal, they have just as much a right to check those books out as you or I, but to do it simply to prevent people, even kids, from possibly expanding their intellectual horizons is nothing short of fascist.

Now personally I think the message it sends is that these books are so popular the library can’t keep them on the shelves which in turn just makes people, especially kids, want to read them even more.

Talk about unintended consequences. Then again, no one ever claimed radical conservatives were terribly bright. Maybe that’s why they want people to be uneducated.

And yes I know there are plenty of conservatives with plenty of initials before and after their names who obviously spent a great deal of time in school. But I think most of them just apply what they learned in the service of their preconceived biases and prejudices.

You can not call yourself an educated person and not believe that all people should have that same opportunity for education. They tried that long ago. It was called the Dark Ages.

Ah the good old days of the 12th Century. Don’t think, don’t wonder about the natural world, just farm, show up on Sunday, then go home and create more Catholic babies. Oh and give all your disposable income to the Church. It’s the only way you get to heaven!

Unlike CatholicVote I believe everyone should have not only the opportunity to explore the world around them, but the tools to do that with. Even in these days of internet interconnection there is no greater tool for the expansion of one’s mind than the public library. Good ones, like the one in Rohnert Park, are palaces of information. They practically scream out at you to explore something, anything, that grabs your attention. And the palace guards, those we call librarians, are there to help in any way they can to guide us on those discoveries.

But unfortunately there are those out there who want nothing more than to shut down the flow of information and the accumulation of knowledge. Call them ultra-conservative, call them the hard right wing, call them MAGA, whatever name they go by their philosophy (such as it is) is a simple one.

Keep the masses uneducated and they will believe anything you tell them.

Doesn’t matter if what you tell them is patently false, they will believe it.

Lock her up.

It was a perfect phone call.

By spring this virus will be nothing.

There’s a microchip in the vaccine.

The election was stolen.

Have you ever noticed that Donald Trump’s favorite word is “stupid”? Anyone who disagrees with him is stupid. Anyone who wants to tell the truth is stupid. Anyone who has more education and a higher intellect than him is stupid. Anyone who didn’t vote for him is stupid.

His followers now spew that out as a rallying cry.

Know what that makes them?

You’re smart enough to know.

Those who aren’t just end up being another brick in the wall

Shapiro Out