It could be that some New Hampshire Republicans just need to do a little more reading

Yahoo

21-05-2025

"The far right now dominating the American Republican Party is selling an idea of liberty that in practice amounts to unfettered freedom but only for the like-minded." (Getty Images)
I don't spend a lot of time thinking about why Democratic politicians struggle so much to connect with working-class voters. That's for the party leaders and candidates to figure out. But it's entirely possible that Fyodor Dostoyevsky partially diagnosed the problem almost 150 years ago, when he wrote in 'The Brothers Karamazov': 'The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular.'
Recent Republican success winning over the working class is a little easier to understand considering America's Puritan roots. The right has long made political hay by convincing millions of voters that the degradation of society is most evident not in corrupt fiscal policies but in expressions of human sexuality. Every legislative session has its examples, and this year one of them is a book banning bill now headed to the governor's desk.
House Bill 324 is touted by conservatives as 'parental rights' legislation meant to keep certain books out of the hands of impressionable young people. It reads: 'This bill prohibits material that is obscene or harmful to minors in schools and creates a procedure for removal and cause of action.'
'Obscene,' of course, always refers to sexuality and not the cherished Americana of extreme violence. And, importantly, it does not encompass the most glaring national obscenity: economic inequality.
Whether or not you buy the Republican argument that HB 324 targets only 'flat-out pornography' in schools — which seems unlikely because that's already covered under New Hampshire's existing obscenity laws — author Jodi Picoult is correct in her assessment of the bill's true intent and the price we all pay for censorship: 'These parents will tell you that the books are exposing kids to topics that are salacious or revolutionary. What kids are really being exposed to are lives and mindsets different from their own, which creates compassion and empathy.'
The bottom line is that what Republican New Hampshire lawmakers — and many conservative parents — don't like is LGBTQ themes in literature. Why? Because they are convinced that the four horsemen of the American apocalypse will ride into town dressed in drag. But the riders they should worry about have always been with us, gulping the rarefied air of Pullman palace cars and private jet cabins.
The American right's fixation on sexuality is bad enough on its own, but it is downright confounding when coupled with Republican-backed efforts that exacerbate economic inequality. Only one of those things is an existential threat to the American experiment, and I promise you it's not Picoult's 'Nineteen Minutes.'
HB 324 is an unnecessary bill that exists only to scratch the Republican itch to crush content it deems symbolic of Western decline. But the real threats to society are found elsewhere.
For example, consider New Hampshire Republicans' myopic repeal of the Interest and Dividends Tax, an action undertaken in service to the state's economic elite. That move should be constantly discussed and dissected in this state, especially now as lawmakers work at cutting hundreds of millions from the next state budget. But conservatives would rather fish in libraries for words and themes to be offended by. Meanwhile, those with the least in New Hampshire are on the threshold of fresh harm from the right's cold budget priorities.
If you want more evidence of this dynamic, consider the 'big beautiful bill' now in the works in Washington, D.C. Once again, a few will win and the struggling many will lose. But the trick to sneaking garbage like that through is to make people look for threats in the wrong places. Immigrants, diversity programs, books with titles like 'Gender Queer.' Republican voters are made to believe that those are the issues pulling at America's seams and not the obvious culprit: the 1 percent's scorched-earth pursuit of limitless wealth.
Riding shotgun with all of this is the rot of hypocrisy. The far right now dominating the American Republican Party is selling an idea of liberty that in practice amounts to unfettered freedom but only for the like-minded. That is why the party so consistently defends bigots and punches down on the vulnerable. You can see evidence of this in the always-uneven Republican application of 'local control.' How is HB 324 in alignment with local control? How are any of the laws targeting transgender rights in alignment?
Well, they're not, because 'local control' isn't a Republican principle. It's a label applied or removed as a matter of philosophical convenience.
The New Hampshire Legislature's latest go at book banning is unsurprising, considering the puritanical forces as old as the nation itself that continue to influence conservative ideology. But if they're as concerned about the degradation of society as they say, one can only hope that they'll realize before it's too late that the call is coming from inside their house.
Because sexual content in a novel isn't going to be America's undoing, but the continuation of policies that increase the nation's already obscene levels of economic inequality almost certainly will.