Thread by @doctorow

"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. 1/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2022/09/20/the… 2/

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. 3/

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. 4/

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. 5/

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. 6/

However, Americans think they're all alone in this, underestimating popular support for climate action by 50%:

nature.com/articles/s4146… 7/

Or take the whole @SenSanders 2020 platform: #MedicareForAll, 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. 8/

All of it wildly popular among the electorate, but somehow credibly pooh-poohed as unrealistic because "no one will vote for it." 9/

The latest mutant strain of right wing culture-war swamp fever is the fake library book crisis which has spawned a million viral videos of school board and library board meetings. 10/

These videos feature 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." 11/

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

doctorow.medium.com/takes-one-to-k… 12/

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 @ELInstituteNFP confirms it:

everylibraryinstitute.org/bookbanpoll 13/

The nonpartisan pollsters at @EmboldResearch 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. 14/

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. 15/

Majorities (D-95%, I-80%, R-55%) oppose book banning and will consider politicians' policies on book bans at election time. 16/

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). 17/

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. 18/

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. 19/

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. 20/