Efforts to restrict libraries represent the ultimate red herring | GARY COSBY JR.

Red states are making legislative moves to restrict libraries and punish librarians for distributing books that conservatives deem unfit. Meanwhile, blue states are making legislative moves to protect libraries and librarians and prevent book bans from taking place.

Of all the pointless battles of the culture war, this one might be the most pointless of all.

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I love libraries. Libraries are repositories of knowledge, art, literature, history, science, theology — you name it and you can find it in a well-stocked library. And that is how things should be. The library should be the least political, most unbiased place in the world, where a person can find books and information on any subject.

I frequent the Tuscaloosa Public Library. It is a good library, terribly underfunded, and I wish it could be twice its size with at least twice as many books. I see children in the library all the time and love it. What an awesome thing to see those kids checking out books and developing the wonderful habit of reading.

Do you know what I don’t see? I don’t see unescorted children in there checking out those terrible books the red state people are so worried about. I see children in the library with their mothers, mostly their mothers but occasionally a dad. The parents are doing what parents are supposed to do — supervise their children. Amazing, wouldn’t you say?

Here is the thing about libraries. No matter which books they house and loan to the public, those books do not leap off the shelf and assault potential readers. There are no spells placed on the books by publishers or Democrats that cause someone to fall into a trance and pick that book over all others. In fact, I have watched this closely and I have never seen a book remove itself from the shelf without a human hand doing the moving except in movies like "Ghostbusters" or the Harry Potter series.

Again, shocking, since it seems that these red state politicians have not noticed this phenomenon. To look at the hysteria is to look at a group of politicians who have manufactured a crisis, which simply does not exist, in order to gain political points with constituents.

This leap of logic is an absurdity. Red state lawmakers are targeting LGBTQ books in particular, as if these books have some sort of power to convert the entire society. The Holy Bible, the most powerful book I’ve ever read, has not done that. Some LGBTQ books certainly won’t accomplish it.

It is my opinion that the culture war is largely a political red herring to begin with. Lawmakers in states both red and blue seem to have reached a level of incompetence that is unprecedented. I can point to absurdities on both sides that are so bad one can only scratch one’s head in amazement at where these strange people came from and how they managed to get elected to public office. And let’s not even talk about the level of governmental incompetence in Washington. That’s like “Boss Level” incompetence.

If you can distract people with issues that are, at best, peripheral, maybe they don’t look at how you are spending their tax dollars. Maybe they don’t look at the conditions of the prisons. Maybe the don’t take the time to see how badly managed their public education system is.

The real issues governments are specifically charged with like building and maintaining public infrastructure, maintaining law and order, providing clean water and sanitation services, those fundamentals where there are so many failings and so many failings yet to come because of poor handling of those issues by those entrusted with overseeing them, are ignored because lawmakers have distracted the public with a non-issue that affects a minuscule slice of society.

It is far easier to raise the public ire over some library book than it is to actually do the job they are elected to do. If that doesn’t irritate you to the core, maybe you need to go check out your public library and see that it is a great environment where nefarious activity simply isn’t happening.

To put the coup de grace to this issue, the internet is the real problem when it comes to the distribution of disturbing information and there are almost no controls in place to govern that informational Wild West. By the way, unless mom and dad are paying extraordinary attention, and I mean looking over their child’s shoulder day and night, the child can access any topic at any time without restriction.

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That one idea renders this library fight utterly ridiculous and demonstrates better than anything I have said before about the red herring nature of this fight to restrict libraries. The internet is the problem, but are lawmakers working to restrict that fire hydrant of disinformation? Not a chance, because they and their parties are using it to flood you with their own variety of disinformation.

There is no greater demonstration of hypocrisy in government than this library fight. It should not be happening at all. That it is is perhaps the perfect indicator of where we are as a society.

Gary Cosby Jr. can be reached at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Why do some politicians want to restrict libraries? | GARY COSBY JR.