In response to Cuccinelli’s attack on public pools, David Toscano and Jim Nix answer back

In order to combat the asinine statements made by Virginia Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Del. David Toscano and Charlottesville Democratic Chair Jim Nix visited the Onesty Family Aquatic Center on Friday to talk about the benefits of public pools.

According to Cuccinelli’s recent book, public pools are a threat to private pools. In the world of right-wing psychotics like Cuccinelli, the public sphere (i.e., ‘Big Government’) is in an unceasing battle with the private sphere, and only one sphere can ‘win’. If the former is allowed to continue to grow, the individual rights and liberties of Americans will apparently be eliminated.

Cuccinelli’s reasoning is no easier to dismantle rationally than religious beliefs because each rest equally on faith and individual beliefs, not science or logical reasoning. Cuccinelli perceives the government, of which HE IS a part, as the ultimate source of tyranny while neglecting to see the world’s true source of tyranny: human kind’s own pride, hate, fear, and ego, all of which Cuccinelli appears to know intimately.

Arguing that public pools are a threat to private pools is a continuing part of the fear narrative that the Republican Party has knowingly and unknowingly expounded upon with mixed success. For those who already viewed government and the so-called public sphere as a threat before the Tea Party bowel movement in American society, the upwelling of Tea Partiers only agitated this view through mere repetition via continuous media coverage.

That is, public pools are no more or less threatening to private pools than a shadow is to its holder. But the consequences of winning this philosophical battle, although it may seem insignificant, are immense.

If Cuccinelli and his wealthy anti-government friends can convince Virginia and the rest of America that public pools, public transit, and other such public services are a threat to the private sphere, then this mode of thinking can be used to entirely dismantle all and everything public in America.

I’m not arguing that Cuccinelli is articulating a well thought-out argument that is part of a broader plan to sink the logic that undergirds the social-welfare state. That would be giving Cuccinelli far too much credit. I am arguing that regardless of its explicit connections with other anti-government/public arguments, each ‘win’ on this rhetorical front is another trench dug closer to the heart of America’s much needed social-welfare state.