What a coincidence

The Traveling Pornography Circus

The other day a friend and I were walking down the street when the conversation drifted, as it often does in Payson, to Jim Ferris and his favorite political hobby: the pornography game.

My friend laughed and said, "You know, they used the exact same book in California."

Imagine that.

The very same book. The very same outrage. The very same speeches. The very same claims that civilization was about to collapse unless somebody rode into town and saved the children.

What are the odds?

Actually, pretty good.

If you pay attention to the right-wing outrage machine, it is always the same game. Somebody somewhere writes a script, and a thousand local politicians start reading from it. One month it's library books. The next month it's drag queens. Then it's immigrants. Then it's woke M&Ms. Then it's windmills causing cancer. The actors change, but the script stays the same.

The pornography panic is particularly useful because it pushes emotional buttons. Nobody wants children exposed to inappropriate material. The outrage merchants know that. So they grab a book, pull out a page, remove all context, wave it around at a council meeting, and announce that Western Civilization is under attack.

The audience gasps.

The politicians collect applause.

And nobody notices that nothing has actually changed except the amount of yelling.

My favorite example remains the Great Cat Litter Box Panic.

Remember that one?

Millions of Americans became convinced that schools across the country were installing litter boxes for students who identified as cats.

Think about that for a minute.

Schools can barely afford pencils. Teachers are buying classroom supplies with their own money. But somehow every school district in America was secretly funding feline restroom facilities.

The story was absurd on its face.

Yet it spread faster than a case of head lice in a kindergarten classroom.

People repeated it at coffee shops.

People repeated it at town halls.

People repeated it on Facebook.

People repeated it on talk radio.

The only thing missing was evidence.

To this day, nobody can seem to identify the mysterious school where hundreds of students are apparently wandering the halls meowing and demanding tuna sandwiches.

The story survives because it was never about facts. It was about fear.

Fear is political gold.

The same thing happens with books.

A book appears somewhere in America. Somebody declares it pornography. Soon the story arrives in Arizona. Then Texas. Then Florida. Then Idaho. Then every small town where a politician wants attention.

The details hardly matter.

The goal isn't to solve a problem. The goal is to create a problem.

Because when people are angry about a library book, they aren't asking difficult questions about roads, budgets, water supplies, housing costs, healthcare, or economic development.

Outrage is a wonderful distraction.

That's why these stories always look so familiar. They're manufactured in bulk and shipped nationwide like frozen pizzas.

This week it's a library book.

Next week it will be something else.

Maybe schools are teaching kids to communicate with aliens.

Maybe city hall is run by communist squirrels.

Maybe Bigfoot is operating a voter registration drive in the national forest.

Who knows?

The details change. The formula never does.

Find a scary story.

Repeat it loudly.

Ignore the facts.

Collect votes.

And if all else fails, tell the dingers there's a litter box in the library.

Somebody will believe it.