For years, New College of Florida in Sarasota, Florida was the honor college in the state university system. It was also a bastion of liberalism and inclusion. The day we toured the campus with our daughter, Megan, our guide was a delightful transexual guy who sold us on the college.
Megan started her freshman year there in 2007, surrounded by young men and women so intelligent, creative and visionary that now in 2023, they are already leaving their marks on the larger world. The ones Megan knew well voted twice for Obama, understood the danger that trump and the far right presented to the U.S. and to democracy. You won’t find a racist or homophobic among them.
Today, January 31, it became clear that Florida’s trump-clone governor intends to transform the college into a conservative and religious institution. He appointed 6 new board members last month and today, at a board meeting, ousted the college president. He said the school has been “too focused on racial and gender ideology and will be reformed by a new board he put in place.
According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, DeSantis said that he immediately wants $15 million for faculty recruitment and scholarships at New College, with $10 million of that being recurring funds every year. As DeSantis said, he wants to give Florida college students an anti-woke agenda.
Translated: only white christian heterosexuals will be welcome here now.
This entire drama is an extension of the governor’s banning of books, of certain topics that can be taught in public schools, of how parents rather than educators should determine what their kids learn.
Translation: no critical race theory, nothing about gender options, a history minus slavery, racism, and LGBTQ people. Diversity is bad, inclusion is bad, DeSantis considers them “indoctrination.”
When you listen to him talk, you hear his arrogance, his dangerous focus, his authoritrian persona. He claims that Florida is the freest state in the nation because he overturned the federal bans during the pandemic, apparently discouraged the collating of death and illness stats during the pandemic.
In October 2022, he created the voter-fraud squad which, in one publicized event, arrested 20 alleged fraudulent voters, most of them ex-felons who believed their voting rights had ben restored when the people of Florida voted in their favor. That vote happened on November 6, 2018 in Amendment 14- Voting Rights Restoration. This amendment “restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.”
The appeals and dismissals of these 20 continue.
Good Ole DeSantis claims he’ll ban abortion in Florida. Right now, it’s still legal up to to 15 weeks.
He claims that the 2020 election belonged to trump but was stolen for Biden.
He insists he has made Florida the “most free state in the country.”
The joke, of course, is that it’s free only if you follow his rules, his edicts, his bullshit, racism, and homophobia.
It’s suspected this idiot will run for prez in 2024, as the republican nominee. On one hand, it would be positive because it would indicate trump’s republican star has faded. Or maybe trump will be in prison (wishful thinking) given all his legal troubles.
On the other hand, DeSantis as prez would be more dangerous to democracy than trump. He’s younger, brighter, and as morally corrupt or more corrupt than trump.
This is the guy who flew a plane of illegal Texas immigrants – many of them Venezuelan – to Martha’s Vineyard.
This is the jerk who ran the ad of himself as Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick. Take a look at it at the beginning of this post. It pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this dictator wannabe.
