Or…

This —-> https://t.co/aBk6AyBGe1

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) November 8, 2021

McAuliffe wasn’t that good a candidate, and Youngkin not that repellent.

I still don’t think Virginia nationalizes, because “All politics is local.” Yes, parents are upset about school, but it doesn’t boil down to Zoom. Covid overturned a lot of apple carts. I know from personal experience that not all the people screaming at school boards or about CRT or library books have kids in schools. Parents were angry about their kids being exposed to Covid or being forced to wear masks. That issue has abated; politicians are finding ways to stoke the anger and deflect it from themselves. Greg Abbott has run in front of the crowd again, proclaiming Texas schools have “pornography” (his word) on their shelves and promising to root it out.

Governor Greg Abbott directed Texas education agencies on Monday to develop standards for preventing "pornography" and "other obscene content in schools," citing two memoirs about LGBTQ characters which include graphic images and descriptions of sex. https://t.co/4YGcnPt88A

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) November 9, 2021

I’ve read his letter. He bashes the Texas Association of School Boards for not directing school boards to remove this “porn.” But TASB is a voluntary group with no power over its members. And school boards in Texas don’t oversee library holdings or purchases; school administrators do.** Abbott knows this, but he calls for the state agency, TEA, to direct districts to do what they already do: have a procedure for reviewing challenged books. Abbott knows these procedures exist, but he’s trying to convince people he’s keeping the elephants away, that but for him every school library in Texas would have nothing but porn on their shelves. Which would at least increase library usage in high schools.

Covid isn’t doing this anymore; Republicans are. Nazaryan’s analysis is misplaced. Parents aren’t outraged because schools closed last year. They are outraged because Republicans are stoking their fear and anger rather than trying to calm them. They are doing that to avoid responsibility themselves.* And it’s not even parents; it’s people who are angry, and don’t have any place to direct that anger. Republicans are creating that target and once they win the mid-terms (if they can make it last that long), the elephants will magically disappear, no longer the danger lurking around us.

Abbott knows the term “pornography” will inflame people. That’s the only reason he uses it. Once he’s ridden the outrage he hopes to create into another term, this will go away. As he says in his letter, providing pornography to minors is a criminal act. Of course then we’re back to deciding what “pornography” is.

I don’t expect to see any school librarians in the dock on criminal charges anytime soon. Especially not if Abbott wins his primary.

*In fact McAuliffe/Youngkin may have more to do with incumbents than with Democrats. No, Mc Auliffe wasn’t the incumbent, but a Democrat was. OTOH, Youngkin only won by two points. There really isn’t much to nationalize there.

**Let me draw a line under this point:

Gov. Greg Abbott asked the Texas Association of School Boards on Monday to determine the extent to which “pornography or other inappropriate content” exists in public schools across the state and to remove it if found.

...

The school organization said it was "confused" why the letter was sent to the association, "which has no regulatory authority over school districts and does not set the standards for instructional materials, including library books."

"The role of a school board primarily includes establishing a strategic plan for the district, adopting policies in public meetings, approving the district’s budget, and selecting and evaluating a superintendent," a spokesperson for the group said in a statement. "In most school districts, the review and selection of individual library materials traditionally has been an administrative responsibility managed by professional district staff."

Abbott, like politicians before him, is playing on public ignorance of what school boards do, to keep responsibility away from himself.  He screwed the schools over with his contradictory and overreaching orders, and now he seeks to muddy the waters further by blaming the least responsible for what he alone was responsible for.  The TEA is going to say "Pornography is bad" (open question to Glenn Greenwald: should we be giving space for porn  on the shelves of public school libraries?) and that'll be the end of it. The more salient question is how to ban books about the history of Roe v. Wade and books about non-cis gendered people, and about the experienes and problems of being non-white in America, without riling up people who will actually vote to oppose such open and obvious censorship.  The vocal minority is just that a minority.  There are signs they are stirring a sleeping giant, but I'm not putting any money on the outcome of that fight, if there ever is one.