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The Sunshine State's Dark Bully

The Sunshine State's Dark Bully

Many members of the extremist establishment have a new darling in Ron DeSantis. For example, the editor of the far-right National Review recently gushed that, second only to Trump, the Florida governor is "the hottest thing" in GOP politics: "Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party."

Interesting, because what characterizes Ron's tenure (and prompts a collective swoon for him within the rightist hierarchy) is his strongman authoritarianism. Indeed, DeSantis puts the bull in bully, bellowing "culture war" hooey, demonizing immigrants, fabricating claims of voter fraud, promoting COVID-19 lies and so forth. Then he imperiously asserts government power to bully majority will, local communities, workers, the poor, Florida's environment, truth, fairness, honesty and democracy. Consider one of DeSantis' autocratic moves that, curiously, thrilled many who once professed to be small-government "conservatives." They are now cheering for him to go national with his reliance on Big Government Boss-ism to usurp the people's democratic authority:

Like other Republican-run states, DeSantis's Florida keeps manufacturing ways to restrict voter participation, in particular blocking African Americans from the polls. In 2018, however, Floridians themselves rebuked the suppressors by approving a ballot measure to expand the electorate. A whopping 65 percent said YES to eliminating a vindictive lifelong ban on voting by ex-felons — people who had served their time. This long-overdue measure of simple justice (approved, in fact, by a much bigger margin of voters than DeSantis got that year) re-enfranchised about 1.4 million former felons.


But wait — DeSantis had old Jim Crow up his sleeve! In 2019, he rammed a mean technical gotcha into state law, preventing former felons from voting until they pay in full all court fines (many arbitrarily and unfairly assessed years ago for things like marijuana possession). The fines can run thousands of dollars, so the new law priced a big percentage of these newly eligible voters out of democratic participation. It's nothing but a crude partisan poll tax to keep a select group of poor people from casting ballots.

The extreme ugliness within DeSantis has yet to be fully plumbed. Indeed, it keeps surging as his ego and presidential ambition combine and combust, spewing out evermore autocratic, abusive, self-aggrandizing schemes and scams. For example, Florida's supreme leader announced that he intends to form his own military force, a state army that would report only to him (bypassing the U.S. chain of command) "to protect the state" in case of "emergencies." What's an emergency? He'll decide.

To relax, DeSantis turns to a favorite hobby: Monitoring, scolding and proscribing Floridians' free speech rights. Stifling a human reality that even young kids know, DeSantis has outlawed potentially comforting discussions in elementary schools about sexual orientation and gender identity that don't conform to Ron's uptight Republican puritanism. His excellency has mandated that social studies textbooks not include (Get this!) any component of "social justice." Nor can schools teach anything that would "denigrate the Founding Fathers" or examine institutional racism in America. Ron adamantly opposes what right-wingers call a "woke" society — he wants one that's asleep.

Sound asleep. DeSantis went wacky this year, inviting right-wing activists to review and help ban math textbooks. Yes, math! These screechers object that some real-life topics like race and wage disparities are being included in math problems — never mind that that might make math relevant to today's students. His cadre of reviewers also rejected elementary school math books, alleging that they promote "socialist" values such as encouraging kiddos to "work together" on problems and "disagree respectfully." DeSantis's political censorship binge has nixed 42 math books for daring to "incorporate prohibited topics."

All of this comes at taxpayer expense, of course, but most intolerable is the steady drip-drip-drip of power it drains from America's democratic ideals and commitment to the common good. I can't say that DeSantis is the worst that the GOP will try to put in the White House in 2024, but he is a signpost of an increasingly assertive American fascism.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trigger Happy In The Gunshine State

Trigger Happy In The Gunshine State

Doug Varrieur likes to shoot.

Problem is, it’s 25 miles to the nearest range, where they charge $45 an hour. What’s a gun enthusiast to do?

Lucky for him, Varrieur lives in Florida. Problem solved. Just erect a makeshift range in the back yard and fire away. It’s perfectly legal.

Re-read that if you want. It’s just as nutty the second time around.

In a story by my colleague Cammy Clark that appeared in Sunday’s Miami Herald, we learn that Varrieur, who lives on Big Pine Key, once complained to a gun-shop owner about what a pain it was going to the range to shoot. The owner put him onto Florida statute 790.15, which lists the conditions under which one may not legally discharge a firearm in the state. Turns out there aren’t many. You may not shoot “in any public place or on the right-of-way of any paved public road, highway or street,” over any road, highway or occupied premises, or “recklessly or negligently” at your own home.

Otherwise, let ‘er rip.

There are no mandatory safety requirements. Indeed, the language about recklessness and negligence was only added in 2011. Prior to that, apparently, it was even legal to blast at shadows and hallucinations, assuming you did so in your own back yard. Shooting actual people is presumably still illegal, though the family of the late Trayvon Martin might beg to differ.

Because he is a responsible gun owner, Varrieur, who has been shooting in his back yard once a week for a month, took precautions, even though, again, he is not required to. They include a wooden backstop seven feet high, eight feet wide and a foot thick.

Can you imagine living next door to this guy? Worse, can you imagine living next door to a Doug Varrieur who doesn’t take the precautions the law says he doesn’t have to bother with?

For what it’s worth, even Varrieur thinks the law is too “loose” and would like to see safety precautions mandated. County Commissioner George Neugent, also a gun owner, says the law is “a little scary.”

Ya think?

They call Florida the “gunshine state.” But this madness is not Florida-centric. In Colorado, you can have a gun in class. In Arizona, you can take one to the bar. In Georgia, they’re trying to make it legal to take one to church. So this isn’t just Florida. It’s America. We live in states of insanity.

As it happens, I have been corresponding with a reader who wrote me with what I regarded as promising ideas for moving the gun-rights argument forward. They included mandatory gun-safety training and mandatory liability insurance.

The dialogue faltered on his contention that he needs his gun because crime is spiraling out of control, and the country is not as safe as it was 20 years ago.

This, of course, is false: Crime is at historic lows. In 1993, according to the FBI, the violent-crime rate was 747.1 per 100,000 people. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, it was 386.9. Almost 10,000 fewer people were murdered in 2012 than in 1993.

My reader was impressed with none of this. “Forget stats,” he said, “talk to victims.” If I did, I’d learn that road rage and knockout incidents are way up and that nightly, there are home invasions, robberies, stabbings and, ahem, shootings.

His insistence on perception over fact is emblematic of the nation we’ve become, so terrified by local TV news and its over-reportage of street crime that we think every shadow has eyes and we need guns in school, the bar, the movies, church.

Until some of us get over this media-driven paranoia, even promising ideas for ending the guns impasse are doomed. So I will close with some words of advice to anyone thinking of visiting or living in Florida or any other state of American insanity. One word, actually:

Duck.

Photo: Rob Bixby via Flickr

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via email atlpitts@miamiherald.com)