Who needs books, who needs to read serious writing, who needs critical thinking skills, who needs libraries, who needs to be educated, who needs what should be the common knowledge of our civilization? You can find everything you need on your own on the internet. Right?

One Can Immediately

 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.

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"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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 Perhaps it's a sign that they're still traumatized by the 2016 election. Or, more likely, it's just that elite members of the pundit class have subconscious anxieties when they see rich people actually held to account for their crimes. But far too much media chatter after Donald Trump finally faced indictments got caught up in a hand-wringing contest over who was most fearful this would somehow help him electorally. Well, score one for common sense over the received wisdom of the punditocracy: A new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows Trump's already low favorability ratings have plummeted even further, to 25%. 

-AMANDA MARCOTTE IN SALON.COM

I automatically Like

 I automatically like people who share my wacky sense of humor. I automatically like people who read the same books that I read. I automatically like people who attended my land-grant university. I automatically like people who share my political views. Psychologists call this phenomenon implicit egotism. We like people who are like us. P.S. I also automatically like people who like psychological jargon like IMPLICIT EGOTISM.

 David G. Myers  -  HOW do we know OURSELVES = Notes

I automatically like people who share my wacky sense of humor. I automatically like people who read the same books that I read. I automatically like people who attended my land-grant university. I automatically like people who share my political views. Psychologists call this phenomenon implicit egoism. We like people who are like us. P.S. i also automatically like people who like psychological jargon like IMPLICIT EGOTISM P. 3

Fear of losing trumps subverts chances to win. Fear of losing is more powerful than the opportunity to win. P. 89

William, James pointed out that it is best we forget many things. P. 84

Psychology's biggest question: how do nature and nurture form us? This author seems to lean more on nature. P. 74

Birth order predictions of family dynamics and personalities have been overdone. Birth-effects tend to evaporate after accounting for family size. P. 72

Social psychologists must be the most jargon-laden social scientists in the Western world. They have a specific scientific sounding name for every commonplace phenomenon.
Anything seems obvious once it happens. They call it "Hindsight Bias." I knew it! I knew it! I knew it was going to happen (after it happened). Remember: Hindsight Bias.
I have my own jargon. One I call "A Leg Up."
I put my pants on one leg at a time. One leg in the pants. Second leg in the pants. One at a time.
One Leg Up. I don't put my pants on a nail and jump into them.
I am not a social psychologist. I came up with this on my own. P. 42

Most of us see ourselves as better than average.  P. 55

 Now I've got to give credit to the Dunning-Kruger Effect: incompetence doesn't recognize itself. We've got something here to hang our hat on. In other words, if you're stupid and ignorant you don't know it.

To succeed you must be willing to fail. P. 167

Mere exposure breeds content. P. 203

The author claims that replication failure does not doom "psychological science." P. 208

 

I certainly see it in the conspiracy theories, whether it’s birtherism or fluoride in the drinking water. Birchers had a theory that fluoride was essentially poison and part of a Communist plot; that this was big government forcing people to put poison in their bodies.

And I see it in a more explicit racism. Trump had dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes a couple months ago. Nick Fuentes, who is a Holocaust denier and white supremacist, recently said that his organization, the Groypers, is really an extension of the Birch Society. He called it a prelude to the Groypers.

The last area is a very hard-line culture-war stance, especially around issues of education, books, and what young people are being taught. The idea that progressive education and a rich exposure to a variety of texts and ideas and perspectives is fundamentally un-American—it tramples on the genius of American history and of the Republic—and that schools and libraries and texts that people are exposed to have to be policed.

-MATTHE DALLEK IN THE THE new Republic

 Life can be full of surprises. Like I woke up this morning. Like I had a nice conversation with my mother this morning. Like the ladies who went to the tomb on that first Easter morning were certainly surprised by what they discovered. As Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"