Tag Archives: Florida

The NYT reports Trump plans to vastly expand his personal power as American dictator — oh, sorry, “unitary president” according to some of his think-tank toadies — by firing anyone in the government who doesn’t follow orders and exerting personal control over most of the executive branch agencies. His toadies and loyalists insist this will create a more constitutional executive branch, but they’re lying. What it will create is a Justice Department that targets Trump’s enemies, an FCC that doesn’t let the media push back against Republican lies but censors anyone who questions them.

I take the subtext as their confidence that if Trump gets that kind of power, he’ll be president as long as he wants, then other Republicans will step in. Because they’d scream like hell at the thought of any liberal having that kind of power.

And let’s not forget Trump loves that China’s current dictator “runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”

For another example we have Tennessee, where Republicans hold a nigh-unbreakable grip on power and they’re still pissed off that liberals exist. It’s not enough that liberals have no power at state level — Republicans don’t even want them speaking up. No surprise: as Vaclav Havel once said, people who think they have the One True Path can’t stand dissent.

For another example, Texas A&M just fired a prominent professor for criticizing Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. The student who filed the complaint is the daughter of one of Patrick’s allies. I look forward to all those conservatives rising up to condemn this example of cancel culture … oh, who am I kidding?

Mississippi’s attorney general is outraged the Biden White House wants to restrict his access to private medical information: his duties of office require him to know about state residents who get out-of-state abortions or gender-affirming care, dammit! But it’s totally not like he’s going to persecute anyone!

Florida Republicans want to ban the covid vaccine. Florida federal Rep Matt Gaetz wants to introduce legislation guaranteeing students’ right to pray — which they already have, legally. Oklahoma’s education chief wants a Bible in every school.

North Carolina Republicans are very keen on the heckler’s veto in schools, making sure pissed-off parents find it easier to retaliate if they don’t like what schools teach their kids and make it easier to fire school superintendents who cross the “parental rights” line.

“Gerard Kleinsmith says he hates the idea of censorship” but he’s lying: he’d sooner shut down the city library than have it include books about trans people. Bonus points that the city officials so concerned about protecting kids are all conservative Catholics, part of an organization responsible for covering up a massive grooming scandal. Related: a piece about Book bans and anti-bans. Speaking of which, Mississippi’s book-banning law will cut off kids and teens’ access to ebooks. In Arkansas a legislator wants to cut off funding to any library affiliated with the American Library Association.

“There are more trans bans than trans athletes.”

Some Republicans think the solution to mass shootings is for the media to stop covering them.

I don’t think there are more drag bans than drag queens but banning public drag performance is still wrong. Just the old tactic of screaming that whatever you don’t like=obscenity.

Florida Atlantic University is asking candidates for its new president if they’re queer.

Right-wing pundit/organizer Charlie Kirk complains the left hates manly men. Much like Matt Walsh insisting women crave alpha male heroes,  it’s hard not to notice that Kirk does not live up to his own masculine standard.

Tommy Tuberville has grumbled about wokeness but he’s fine with white nationalism.

In Nevada, Republicans are suing against a law that protects election workers from harassment.

I’ve mentioned before that right-to-lifers lie a lot. Including the claim they don’t want women punished for getting abortions.

One writer suggests Republicans would love to reinstitute slavery. I wish I could say “that’s ridiculous!”

And as Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy demonstrates, no matter how bad they get, they’ll explain it’s liberals fault for provoking them “Everyone in this country has to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves what role each of us played in getting to [Jan. 6]” Murc’s law forced their hand!

About four years ago I posted about the future Republicans don’t want, which is this one:Because nothing’s more upsetting to the 21st century’s conservatives than the idea of people Not Like Them existing unafraid.

But recent incidents make me think of the future Republicans do want, which looks a lot like the Jim Crow days. We have kids in Cincinnati posting White and Colored signs over school water fountains for a video. In Florida, some middle-schoolers made the letters of the n-word in art class, then held them up for a photo. Yes, they’re kids, and quite possibly they thought it was a funny joke, but when your jokes take that shape, you’re also telling a racist joke.

As Fred Clark points out, around the time he and I were born, jokes about blacks/Poles/Asians/Hispanics were perfectly acceptable, provided you weren’t the butt of the joke. And they can’t stand that “the racist jokes that ‘everybody’ used to laugh at can now get you in hot water.” They can’t stand being in hot water — they’re fine, respectable pillars of the community, how dare you say they’re racist? Never mind Goethe’s advice that “Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.”

Of course shit like these kids pull isn’t just about the freedom to tell jokes. It’s about having the freedom to punch down at blacks (ditto gays, Latinos, women, trans, etc.) and not suffering any consequences for it. Letting them know you and your kind outrank them and their only option is to suck it up. That was the past; it’s not the present, as Republican David Perdue recently found out. They’d love it to be the future, somewhere like say, totalitarian Hungary. A dictatorship, so long as it’s on their side, will enable them to punch down forever; if it screws them over too, they can live with it.

Of course they’re still not at that point — and hopefully they never will be — so we get things like the shrieking lies about how liberals are spreading CRT everywhere and Typhoid Ron DeFascist pushing against any serious teaching about racism. Because racist parents want their kids to grow up racist; kids exposed to reality in schools might come to see racism is bad and that yes, society is unfair to POC. And that this should change.

Of course, it’s also politically advantageous to Republicans: they’re the party white supremacists vote for so even if they believed in equality it’s against their interest. Sen. Rick Scott pretend the solution is to just stop talking about race and “we ought to judge people by their character, not their skin color.” I agree — but of course, condemning Republicans as the party of white supremacy (as John Scalzi says, they’re not all white supremacists but they’re all accepting it) is judging them by their character. I don’t want to judge Scott for being white, but I’ll judge him for stealing from Medicare and proposing higher taxes on the poor.

Meanwhile we have primary-loser Madison Cawthorn contrasting Republican “gentile” politics with the globalist enemy — I always consider “globalist” a euphemism for Jews but it’s pretty clear here. And Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor thinks it was God’s will our ancestors committed genocide against Native Americans to claim the country for Christian immigrants (she also says any sheriff who refuses to obey her interpretation of the Constitution should be executed for treason).

A small part of me, watching the shit-show the Republicans have become, feels oddly optimistic. It’s quite obvious that the right wing’s bigotry, racism and misogyny haven’t budget since the 1950s. But for years they stayed relatively quiet because they didn’t like the blowback of being called out. They weren’t sure anyone had their back.

Trump changed that. His sexism, racism and misogyny have convinced them they’re on the right side, that now is the time to speak up and insult Muslims, women, gays, blacks, whoever. If we win in the coming years, that won’t change their minds but they will be more inclined to shut up and draw back from bullying.

That would be a good thing. And while there’s no certainty we’ll win, it’s not impossible, no matter how much they strut and gloat.

Keep fighting. It’s worth it.