The truth is, the "grooming" accusation is a particularly brittle fig leaf, and not just because the books in question are clearly not pornographic. The war on libraries is part of a larger GOP assault on the very concept of public provision of education in any form. Part of the reason is a larger right-wing skepticism of the concept of a "common good." In 2019 for the New York Times, journalist Monica Potts wrote about how her small community of Van Buren County, Arkansas had gone to war over the existence of the library. This was before the current book-banning craze, and so the anti-library forces in her community were more upfront about why they wanted the library gone: Because Republicans believed that it was a "waste of taxpayers' money" to provide that resource. In her interviews with residents, Potts discovered a deep hostility among conservatives to the very idea of learning and education, and a desire "to keep people with educations out."
"Call me narrow-minded but I've never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree," one resident told her.
"The people who didn't frequent the library argued that the community didn't really need it anymore, anyway," Potts writes. "After all, if you have internet, you can get whatever you want in a day."
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One can immediately understand, in the age of Donald Trump, how turning people away from books and towards the internet benefits the anti-democratic desires of the GOP. Books range in quality, of course — they let Ann Coulter write them, after all — but overall, there's a stronger chance of someone developing qualities of thoughtfulness and empathy if they actually read books. The internet has a lot of great stuff on it — you are reading this article there! — but it's also notoriously good at turning people's minds to mush. You're unlikely to join up with QAnon or become radicalized by incels at the library. The internet, however, is very good at turning otherwise normal people into blithering idiots who love Trump and hate democracy.
-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com
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