When politicians are looking for a reason to pay cops to kick down doors, they never advertise it to you as "hey, let's kick down family's doors in the middle of the night!". Instead, they couch it in terms of "won't you please think of the children?"
When politicians want to throw doctors and women in shackles for supporting a woman's right to choose, they virtually never advertise themselves as "I believe we should imprison women!"... instead, it's "save the babies".
When a politician wants you to fear immigrants, they don't say "fear immigrants!" Instead, they try to convince you that immigrants are going to illegally vote and "steal" the election. "Without voter ID, swarms of Mexicans will vote!", you see.
And when politicians want the power to ban books, and movies and videos, they don't say "Let me ban books!"... they say "Anyone that has the resources to make books or movies or videos that could influence voters during an election is a threat to democracy, and only we can save you from that threat".
Don't fall for it.
No matter how persuaded you are that we are safe if we allow the executive branch to ban books in an election season, we are not better off of we allow Trump to ban the Woodward book "Rage".
No matter how persuaded you are that only politicians can decide what videos we should and shouldn't see, we are not better off if we allow Trump to ban the "Lincoln Project" videos.
No matter how much you fear George Soros or Fred Koch are a threat to democracy, letting president Trump (or Biden, or Sanders) ban the movie "Unfit" is going to significantly enhance that threat, not diminish it.
Some of you right now are thinking "But if we don't give Trump (or whatever administration is in charge) the power to ban movies and videos and book, people will believe the wrong thing!".
Look around. People are going to believe the wrong thing anyway. None of us are better off when we give a Trump-like administration the power to ban what we read and see.
I know some of you thinking that giving the next administration the power to throw people in prison for movies and books and videos will somehow attenuate the influence of money on politics, but it won't.
It will only serve as a giant leap into fascism from which we might never recover.
It occurs to me that since this urge to ban books and movies is largely popular on the left, it means Trump and the GOP won't go near it with a 10 ft poll. (If the left launched a "Let's Breathe!" campaign, most of the GOP would immediately die of asphyxia). That's probably something for which we should be grateful.