It is no accident that Ron DeSantis blocked AP African American Studies courses the week of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. While the law DeSantis was claiming to enforce was part of his ‘Stop The Woke’ campaign announced last May, his team deftly made sure his current action was ‘breaking news’ this past week.
Noel, did you read Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King, or listen to his recent podcast Bone Valley? If not, you’ve GOT to. Both are a visceral experience. Florida is a vile SHITHOLE and has been for years….Desantis is just more predictably filthy scum risen to the top. Keep hammerin’!!
I like to read history but only one chapter at a time because it's so depressing. I'm slogging through John Meacham's fantastically written but emotionally wrenching bio of Lincoln, "And There Was Light." Many things to think about. On the dark side, by 1865 we had been fighting over the same damn things for over 100 years, and now 160 years later we're STILL fighting over them. Slavery, of course, but also Native American rights, and the endless bickering between the cities and the frontier (or "deep-fried backwater" as you so aptly put it). The Lincoln bio led me to the Caning of Charles Sumner (has a wikipedia entry), and while we haven't gotten so stupid and violent as to have one senator beating another on the senate floor, the people's reaction was eerily familiar: "Deplorable," said the Yankees; "damn Yankee deserved it," said the good ole boys. That led me to the Southern Code of Honor (also has a wiki entry), which was settled by dueling until it was outlawed shortly before Lincoln was elected. Get this: if a southern man lied, and another man called out his lie, the liar was obligated to defend his honor by killing the man who called him out.
This journey into our nation's dark past was pretty damn disturbing, but I think I got a bit closer to what drives MAGA and the gun culture and the whole white working class male mental illness that's holding us back from love, tolerance, peace, and all those "woke" things that bother them so much that they stay up nights thinking up ways to hurt us. Understand, these are my people - my father grew up in Appalachia, and my family is full of men who worked in factories building cars. They can fix machines and build houses and get a pickup truck unstuck in the snow. I'm lucky in that the men in my family are almost all good people who might have been brought up racist but found a way to move past it and at least be decent, if not woke. Ha, not a one of them voted for Trump - they know a con man when they see one.
And that's the light side of the darkness. Lincoln presided over a war that killed more than half a million people. It was coming long before he was elected and he couldn't stop it, but by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and pushing for the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, he changed history so that millions and millions of people in the future could live in freedom and dignity. I question whether it would have happened without Lincoln - probably, but not until much later. One person doing the right thing...that's where it begins.
You're one of them, Noel. So am I, and so are your readers, and many, many others. Seems like a good time to quote Croz:
Ron de Santis uses opression as a political tool. It doesn't matter what is being canceled or whom. And this strategy has its own demise embedded. The oppression bubble will flip him.
There will be work/death camps across Florida before the decade's done, I'm sure of it. If you're not a white, straight, Christian male, you're not welcome in Ron DeSantis's Florida. And if we won't leave on our own, he will find a way to make us. If that means spilling our blood in the process, then so be it. I see what's coming and I'm terrified for myself and for my family.
As we all have repeatedly heard about Putin, he won't stop until he's defeated. The same is true of Trumpism and the GOP (really, one and the same)...they won't stop until they're resoundingly defeated.
Yet, Democratic turnout was down in 2022. The impact was blunted by Republicans who voted for Democrats and a middling (but not insignificant) turnout by GenZers.
What's it going to take for massive Democratic turnout in 2024?
So glad that your thoughts are making it to print, Noel. So important. Thank you!
Once again, a true indictment of the Republican machine.
Noel, did you read Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King, or listen to his recent podcast Bone Valley? If not, you’ve GOT to. Both are a visceral experience. Florida is a vile SHITHOLE and has been for years….Desantis is just more predictably filthy scum risen to the top. Keep hammerin’!!
That power slap is terrifying.
I like to read history but only one chapter at a time because it's so depressing. I'm slogging through John Meacham's fantastically written but emotionally wrenching bio of Lincoln, "And There Was Light." Many things to think about. On the dark side, by 1865 we had been fighting over the same damn things for over 100 years, and now 160 years later we're STILL fighting over them. Slavery, of course, but also Native American rights, and the endless bickering between the cities and the frontier (or "deep-fried backwater" as you so aptly put it). The Lincoln bio led me to the Caning of Charles Sumner (has a wikipedia entry), and while we haven't gotten so stupid and violent as to have one senator beating another on the senate floor, the people's reaction was eerily familiar: "Deplorable," said the Yankees; "damn Yankee deserved it," said the good ole boys. That led me to the Southern Code of Honor (also has a wiki entry), which was settled by dueling until it was outlawed shortly before Lincoln was elected. Get this: if a southern man lied, and another man called out his lie, the liar was obligated to defend his honor by killing the man who called him out.
This journey into our nation's dark past was pretty damn disturbing, but I think I got a bit closer to what drives MAGA and the gun culture and the whole white working class male mental illness that's holding us back from love, tolerance, peace, and all those "woke" things that bother them so much that they stay up nights thinking up ways to hurt us. Understand, these are my people - my father grew up in Appalachia, and my family is full of men who worked in factories building cars. They can fix machines and build houses and get a pickup truck unstuck in the snow. I'm lucky in that the men in my family are almost all good people who might have been brought up racist but found a way to move past it and at least be decent, if not woke. Ha, not a one of them voted for Trump - they know a con man when they see one.
And that's the light side of the darkness. Lincoln presided over a war that killed more than half a million people. It was coming long before he was elected and he couldn't stop it, but by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and pushing for the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, he changed history so that millions and millions of people in the future could live in freedom and dignity. I question whether it would have happened without Lincoln - probably, but not until much later. One person doing the right thing...that's where it begins.
You're one of them, Noel. So am I, and so are your readers, and many, many others. Seems like a good time to quote Croz:
It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a long time gone
But you know
The darkest hour
Is always, always just before the dawn.
Very true words. I live in Florida and will fight him where I can. Next time you visit here, stay at my place. Toasty 73.
Ron de Santis uses opression as a political tool. It doesn't matter what is being canceled or whom. And this strategy has its own demise embedded. The oppression bubble will flip him.
There will be work/death camps across Florida before the decade's done, I'm sure of it. If you're not a white, straight, Christian male, you're not welcome in Ron DeSantis's Florida. And if we won't leave on our own, he will find a way to make us. If that means spilling our blood in the process, then so be it. I see what's coming and I'm terrified for myself and for my family.
As we all have repeatedly heard about Putin, he won't stop until he's defeated. The same is true of Trumpism and the GOP (really, one and the same)...they won't stop until they're resoundingly defeated.
Yet, Democratic turnout was down in 2022. The impact was blunted by Republicans who voted for Democrats and a middling (but not insignificant) turnout by GenZers.
What's it going to take for massive Democratic turnout in 2024?