Florida Man

Florida Man Sees Himself as President

Mark T­­­wain once claimed that America is built on a tilt and everything loose slides to California. Those were the good old days - when California was considered America’s most laughable state. But let’s face reality: Florida has now replaced California as America’s laughingstock. And unfortunately, while California in Mark Twain’s day was seen as wacky in a charming way, today’s Florida is viewed as nutty with a twist of creepy.

Florida’s unlovely reputation has been an established fact for a while as evidenced by the Twitter phenomenon of “Florida Man” a stock figure of idiocy often portrayed as doing outrageous things often involving alligators. But now Governor DeSantis has made Florida’s uniquely hare-brained qualities internationally infamous by banning books and encouraging hostility toward anyone who doesn’t share his prejudices. He shut down a Florida high school course on the African-American experience and attacked the Disney Corporation for resisting his anti-gay laws.

His attack on Disney was supposed to show voters that he is a tough guy. “There’s a new sheriff in town” as he put it. This was supposed to be a boast that would let him swagger out on the campaign trail as a Trump-like bully, but the ploy failed when the anti-Disney deputies appointed by Sheriff DeSantis turned out to be a gaggle of Barney Fifes. Florida under DeSantis has become the state where the ridiculous comes to thrive.

For most of us Floridians, those of us who don’t want to be tarred with the Creepy/Ridiculous label, our options are limited. We can claim to be from somewhere else somewhere that is known for being sensible, like Canada maybe. Or we can just make up a plausible sounding state and claim it is our real home: “I’ll always fondly recall the lush green fields of my West Dakota childhood…”

Or we could look for encouragement about Florida by remembering that DeSantis won’t be governor forever. But that might be interpreted as implying that he could (God forbid) become president. However, after Trump, most Americans are not likely to support another cheesy, self-absorbed, and incompetent bigot for president.

We are just going to have to hope for the best for a while and look forward to another term for Joe Biden. In the meantime, we can take some comfort from the work of sympathetic artists like Barry Blitt whose March 6 New Yorker cover portrayed DeSantis as sharpening a hefty knife and threatening a stack of book. The title: “Florida’s Book of the Month Club.”

Alas, what a state we’re in.

 

Governor Whatever

I do not believe Governor DeSantis is a communist even though he sometimes acts like one. I feel I can speak with some authority on this issue because, a s a senior at Lakeland High School in the 1960s, I took a required course on Americanism vs. Communism.  And since then, I’ve spent time living and teaching in communist China.

 One important thing I learned in my high school class and from my China experience was that communist governments control their populations partly by indoctrinating them through the educational system. Of course, we were being indoctrinated at LHS by being forced to take the Americanism vs. Communism course, but since it emphasized the American value of free speech, it seemed pretty benevolent.  

 Free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution. In a communist country like China, free speech is not guaranteed. Government control over speech is a bad idea. China is a great country in many ways, but it is a failure where free speech is concerned. And China also fails to protect teachers from partisan meddling. Chinese teachers are forced by the State to teach only “The Party Line.”  

 I believe in free speech both for ordinary citizens and for classroom educators.In respectable American schools and universities free speech is protected by the tenure system. Tenure is designed to protect educators from being punished by politicians for failing to follow some leader’s idea of “the Party Line.”  Communist schools don’t, as a rule, have tenure  because communist leaders want to punish any educator who deviates from the Party Line.

 I taught for a year in communist China, so I know first-hand how political leaders enforce the Party Line there.I had been warned early on not to discuss China’s suppression of the Tibetans in my classroom. But one day I carelessly referred to that suppression in passing. Class discussion was suddenly and aggressively halted by the class monitor whose job apparently included keeping me from straying away from the Party Line. Educators like me, who were not protected by tenure, simply had to teach what the State demanded and could not express any independent thought, especially if such thought made the political leaders look bad. China’s communist dictatorship was exactly as I had been taught in my Americanism vs. Communism class!

 Today Governor DeSantis threatens educators for not following his idea of the Party Line. and this makes him look like a communist dictator. But I think he is probably not a communist.  Yes, he does have authoritarian tendencies. He wants to suppress teaching about injustices experienced by African Americans just as the Chinese communist leaders didn’t want me to teach about the Tibetans’ experience of injustice. Also, DeSantis criticizes tenure. But still, I don’t believe he is a communist.

 I do wonder if Governor DeSantis has thought about how he will keep Florida’s educators from straying from the Party Line in the future. Other than by doing away with tenure, I mean. Is he going to assign class monitors like the one the communists assigned to my class?

 Like the Chinese communists, DeSantis wants above all to wield power. Though the governor may want to do away with tenure and force educators to toe the Party Line, I nevertheless, don’t believe he is a communist. Real communists promote working class revolution, but DeSantis no doubt sees the working class as an obstacle to his own grab for power. I also don’t believe he is a Nazi, though his racist policies will certainly appeal to the pro-Nazi wing  of the Republican party.

 DeSantis is neither a communist nor a Nazi; he is a DeSantist. He will embrace whatever policy he thinks will help him slide his way into the White House. He only adheres to policies that he believes will strengthen his bid for the presidency. His obsession with doing or saying whatever he thinks will help him become president is so front-and-center that I’m surprised Trump hasn’t labeled him with an appropriate nickname, one more to the point than “Meatball Ron.” Since his plan is to follow whatever policies he thinks will catch the current political winds, maybe Trump should start calling him Governor Windblown.  Or even Governor Whatever.

 

Culture World 2.0: The Sequel

  Announcing the return of Culture World, a heady concoction of culture politics and history. I stopped contributing to this blog site eight months ago when I had a little accident. I take that back. It wasn't little. On the operating table my heart stopped beating, which is medically considered an unpromising symptom. However, the good nurses at Advent Health pounded on my chest for seven straight minutes and so saved my life. Anyway, I’m back now and ready to continue my blog. I hope you won't resent the nurses for this.

 

 

    A team of nurses a lot like this saved my life.  I'm glad they did and so are some of my friends.

 

start the new year, I'm going to lay out what I consider to be the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism as these doctrines or perspectives exist in American contemporary politics. I'm not going to do any more than this right now because I'm just learning how to use speech to text on my computer. I'm able to type, but my eyesight has weakened to the point where I can't see standard size print easily. That's why I'm just going to write these two paragraphs right now. I hope my typing or speaking to text skills will improve in the near future so the wisdom of Culture World can once  again be bestowed on the people of the Earth. In this spirit let me say the roots of liberalism are in reason ,justice, and compassion, while the roots of conservatism lie in tribal loyalty.

Some critics may say this distinction is biased and unfair to conservatives. Rather than just ignoring these critic or telling them to shut up, let me elaborate.  Both liberals and conservatives may believe in reason, justice, and compassion. But in the case of justice, for example, conservatives are much more likely to filter their ideals through a lens, one that asks not, "Is a an action or policy fair? -- but asks instead, "Is it fair to me and my kind?"