MAGA Republicans Are Now Threatening Librarians With Prison

In states all across the country, legislation is popping up from Republicans that would send librarians to prison if they lend a book to a child that Republicans feel is "inappropriate" for their ages. This comes as Republicans are swearing that they aren't banning books, but these pieces of legislation ARE making certain books illegal for children, and public librarians will be the ones paying the price. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Even as Republicans continue to say that there aren't actually any book bans across the United States. We just, we just banned them for certain people, state by state in red states across the country. In fact, seven states right now have, uh, past laws that would actually put public librarians, not just public school librarians, but the librarian down at your local public library would put them in jail if they loan a book to a underage person that Republicans in that state deem to be inappropriate for that age group. We now have the morality. P uh, police threatening to jail. Librarians, seven states have already passed these laws. Another 20 states, or excuse me, another 12 states have proposed another 20 pieces of legislation to do the same thing. And it's because as these states, all these states claim, like you got librarians renting, pornography out to children.

Oh, I'm sorry. Have you ever actually spent any time watching television, like watching almost literally any movie that's not put out by Disney, but y'all won't even watch Disney movies anymore because you think they're terrible too. Like, what do, what do you, what do you want kids to watch? What do you want kids to read? Because you can find a problem with really anything that you look at. Hell, commercials are overly sexualized and children can see those, and y'all can't ban those, right? They, they, they all have internet access too. I don't know if y'all republicans know this, but man, you can find some real obscene stuff on the internet, it's not even that hard, but you're not threatening to put any of those people in jail. Just librarians. Librarians who sit at a desk, a kid walks up with a book, they stamp their little thing, scan the barcode, and hand it and walk away.

They're not forcing the kids to take these books that Republicans think are obscene. The kid walks up with the book, the librarian scans it, and that's the end of the day. Like they're not telling the kids, Hey kid, you want to read this book? Come on, let me show you. That's not a thing that's happening. Here's the deal. We are going right back as a country to the moral panic that emerged in the late eighties and early nineties. The music, oh my God, it's killing our children. The rap music, the Marilyn Mansons, oh, the hair metal bends of the eighties. They're corrupting our children. We've gotta put the warning labels out there. We have been through moral panics in this country more frequently than we can count, and we're just back into another cycle of it. You know, there was a moral panic over the Simpsons when that first came out

And a moral panic over South Park. Of course, that one, you know, a little edgier than the Simpsons, obviously. But either way, Republicans always need a good freakout. And right now the freakout has gone to books. I, we spent decades in this country telling kids, put down the video games, pick up a book for God's sakes. And now Republicans are saying, don't you dare pick up that book. You go get back on that video game where you slaughter people left and right with an assault rifle like a good American. Don't you dare read? That's where we're at. Like go sit in front of the TV and absorb that violence, and brainless culture instead of picking up a book. That's where we've arrived as a society, because Republicans want to keep us stupid because that's the only way people vote for Republicans is if they are somehow some way just fundamentally stupid.