DeSantistan

Since I just wrote a memoir post about some time I spent in Florida as a kid, I figured I would do something with this languishing draft that has been hanging around for some time now.

 As a kid, I lived in Florida for a few years. It was in the days of little or no air conditioned anything. All the Crackers wore shirts with permanent sweat stains, red necks and straw hats. The three schools I attended in those 3 1/2 years were ovens. Gory Elementary, a 40 year old three story school near downtown Tampa was so stuffy, kids often fainted from the heat.

My time in Florida was full of some good times, and some very dark times in my young life. Maybe it was the dramatic shifts of Life's intensities that embedded such clarity now of those earlier years of my boyhood. I had come to Florida under a cloud and left it 3 1/2 years later a wiser but jaded preteen who carried a chip his shoulder for the next 15 years.

Florida in the early 1960's was a wild and crazy place. I did not really pay attention at first to the madness that swirled around me until the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. After that, I paid more attention and when I left Florida a couple of years later, I left unimpressed and glad to see the Sunshine State in the rear view mirror. There was a sickness that saturated Florida back in those days. The chronic corruption, racist attitudes, racist actions, and general nastiness that permeated much of the day to day interactions soured me on Florida.

Today, over 60 years later, it appears not much has changed in Florida except that the state has become air conditioned and over developed to the point that Orlando is a suburb of Tampa and the expansion of the greater Miami area is taking a very serious toll on the Everglades. The ugliness that had always existed beneath the surface when I lived there as a kid was still a bedrock of the Florida dynamic. 

The racism of today's Florida is not so overt, but definitely more insidious than when it was out in the open during the Jim Crow years. The rabid sleaziness and corrupt ways of the inbred bureaucracies that ran the state back then are still cesspools of self serving good old boy networks.

Florida was and still is a place where unscrupulous White Folk run the state like they own it. Only now, the power structure of the White power brokers is being challenged like never before. The smart ones know their time is coming to an end. They are running scared now and in desperation are governing the state through knee jerk restrictive legislation designed to maintain white control into the foreseeable future and beyond.

To bolster their fight against losing control of the state, Florida has been manipulated into electing a Dictator, uh, a governor who perfectly represents all that is ugly and evil about Florida.  In his 2022 State of the State Speech, Desantis said:

 “Together we have made Florida the freest state in these United States.” He added that the state, “has become the escape hatch for those chafing under authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates and restrictions.”

His words could have come directly from "The Idiot's Guide to Authoritarianism". One of the rules all authoritarians use to some degree is over utilize bullshit to cover their tracks. Tell them what they want to hear and then do the opposite. Rhonda appears to be a true believer.

Florida is nowhere near as free as it was before Rhonda came to power. Selective freedom given to some while restricting freedoms for others in no way creates more freedom for the greedy White power mongers. It just makes them evil assholes and ruins the ideal of freedom for all. Florida had plenty of those assholes when I lived there over 60 years ago. Now, it is obvious they are full to the brim with them.

Later Gators ........................................

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Picking a song for these post sometimes takes me longer than writing the post. Not sure why. Today was no exception. It took more than a few tunes before I found the one that fit my mood or the post, whichever one comes first. 

I have not heard this Johnny Winter tune in many, many years. Again, not sure why. It certainly deserves a place in my music quiver. 

Please enjoy this Johnny Winter classic, "Evil on My Mind".