Shooting out the lights

I've been following discussions in Congress on providing more Federal aid to state governments as a way to stimulate the economy and prevent further layoffs. It seems the holdup has to do with some in Congress believing paying states to keep teachers, firefighters, and yes, librarians on the job doesn't stimulate the economy.

While I think that's wrong for a lot of reasons I won't go into, it also misses the point. Republicans know full-well that state and local governments provide vital services. Particularly when it comes to education and information, though, I believe these people are ideologically opposed to the idea of people being well-informed and thinking for themselves.

Just look at the highly effective conservative message machine. From Fox "News", to talk radio, to Sarah Palin's Facebook page, conservatives have a monolithic worldview which they want to be uniformly adopted by their faithful. Its almost like the scene in Die Hard when the thieves shoot out the lights the LAPD has set up trying to isolate them. Republicans want us to be in the dark so they can get back to running what amounts to a global political machine, not unlike the ones which existed a hundred years ago in places like Chicago and Kansas City.

Public services such as libraries are a threat to this because they provide people with the help and information they need to cut through the "approved" message and get the story themselves.

It also doesn't help that most public sector employees are unionized and therefore seen by Republicans as a Democratic constituency to be defeated.

Sadder still is the realization that many people are quite happy to be told what to think. Just look at all the lies and misinformation spewed out by the Tea Party folks, such as "death panels". Mother Jones has a sobering interview with former congressman Bob Inglis of South Carolina, who lost his seat because he wouldn't automatically call President Obama a "socialist" and reinforce the Tea Party's paranoid worldview, in which they think mysterious bankers have already bought and sold people based on they Social Security numbers.

The prevalence of such paranoid conspiracies show how badly some people need an independent voice to help them sort fact from fiction. Librarians are equipped to do this.

Unfortunately, though, I think the folks who are getting their information fed to them in an increasingly cocooned world of cable news and Internet conspiracies are not interested in stopping by the reference desk for help on where to look online for the actual details about such things as the federal deficit or the condition of Social Security and Medicare.