>Did the people pursuing these bans consider having empathy with the people who value these books, and try to understand why they value them?

>Stop defending tyranny.

I think you miss GP's point. It's not that they support such book bans or the ideology that encourages that and other anti-democratic (small 'd') nastiness. Rather it's the old saw that 'you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (balsamic vinegar excepted).'

While there are many who are callous, cruel pieces of shit, there are more who live (without their knowledge or consent -- cf. rural broadcast media landscape, online bubbles, etc.) in an "information" environment that promotes such stuff as "godly" and "American" and "freedom", when that's not even close to the truth.

Which is clear from the book bans, the ridiculous "anchor babies" trope, the Democrats are all communists and on and on and on.

Yes, folks who actively foment this stuff and cynically (or even genuinely) fight to reduce liberty need to be resisted. Strongly and loudly.

But if you adopt those folks' "othering" tactics, you devalue everyone who doesn't specifically agree with you and everything you believe as evil and unredeemable, you remove a key opportunity for education, positive experience and persuasion.

Will that work for everyone? Absolutely not. But we don't need everyone, just the ones who are honest and fair-minded. And those can certainly be those who disagree with you.

If you exclude the radical reactionaries, bigots and cynical scum who seek to profit from promoting such ideas, the majority of all of us agree about much more than we disagree.

Perhaps that's something we all should ruminate on.