Florida Man

Florida Man Sees Himself as President

Mark T­­­wain once claimed that America is built on a tilt and everything loose slides to California. Those were the good old days - when California was considered America’s most laughable state. But let’s face reality: Florida has now replaced California as America’s laughingstock. And unfortunately, while California in Mark Twain’s day was seen as wacky in a charming way, today’s Florida is viewed as nutty with a twist of creepy.

Florida’s unlovely reputation has been an established fact for a while as evidenced by the Twitter phenomenon of “Florida Man” a stock figure of idiocy often portrayed as doing outrageous things often involving alligators. But now Governor DeSantis has made Florida’s uniquely hare-brained qualities internationally infamous by banning books and encouraging hostility toward anyone who doesn’t share his prejudices. He shut down a Florida high school course on the African-American experience and attacked the Disney Corporation for resisting his anti-gay laws.

His attack on Disney was supposed to show voters that he is a tough guy. “There’s a new sheriff in town” as he put it. This was supposed to be a boast that would let him swagger out on the campaign trail as a Trump-like bully, but the ploy failed when the anti-Disney deputies appointed by Sheriff DeSantis turned out to be a gaggle of Barney Fifes. Florida under DeSantis has become the state where the ridiculous comes to thrive.

For most of us Floridians, those of us who don’t want to be tarred with the Creepy/Ridiculous label, our options are limited. We can claim to be from somewhere else somewhere that is known for being sensible, like Canada maybe. Or we can just make up a plausible sounding state and claim it is our real home: “I’ll always fondly recall the lush green fields of my West Dakota childhood…”

Or we could look for encouragement about Florida by remembering that DeSantis won’t be governor forever. But that might be interpreted as implying that he could (God forbid) become president. However, after Trump, most Americans are not likely to support another cheesy, self-absorbed, and incompetent bigot for president.

We are just going to have to hope for the best for a while and look forward to another term for Joe Biden. In the meantime, we can take some comfort from the work of sympathetic artists like Barry Blitt whose March 6 New Yorker cover portrayed DeSantis as sharpening a hefty knife and threatening a stack of book. The title: “Florida’s Book of the Month Club.”

Alas, what a state we’re in.

 

Governor Whatever

I do not believe Governor DeSantis is a communist even though he sometimes acts like one. I feel I can speak with some authority on this issue because, a s a senior at Lakeland High School in the 1960s, I took a required course on Americanism vs. Communism.  And since then, I’ve spent time living and teaching in communist China.

 One important thing I learned in my high school class and from my China experience was that communist governments control their populations partly by indoctrinating them through the educational system. Of course, we were being indoctrinated at LHS by being forced to take the Americanism vs. Communism course, but since it emphasized the American value of free speech, it seemed pretty benevolent.  

 Free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution. In a communist country like China, free speech is not guaranteed. Government control over speech is a bad idea. China is a great country in many ways, but it is a failure where free speech is concerned. And China also fails to protect teachers from partisan meddling. Chinese teachers are forced by the State to teach only “The Party Line.”  

 I believe in free speech both for ordinary citizens and for classroom educators.In respectable American schools and universities free speech is protected by the tenure system. Tenure is designed to protect educators from being punished by politicians for failing to follow some leader’s idea of “the Party Line.”  Communist schools don’t, as a rule, have tenure  because communist leaders want to punish any educator who deviates from the Party Line.

 I taught for a year in communist China, so I know first-hand how political leaders enforce the Party Line there.I had been warned early on not to discuss China’s suppression of the Tibetans in my classroom. But one day I carelessly referred to that suppression in passing. Class discussion was suddenly and aggressively halted by the class monitor whose job apparently included keeping me from straying away from the Party Line. Educators like me, who were not protected by tenure, simply had to teach what the State demanded and could not express any independent thought, especially if such thought made the political leaders look bad. China’s communist dictatorship was exactly as I had been taught in my Americanism vs. Communism class!

 Today Governor DeSantis threatens educators for not following his idea of the Party Line. and this makes him look like a communist dictator. But I think he is probably not a communist.  Yes, he does have authoritarian tendencies. He wants to suppress teaching about injustices experienced by African Americans just as the Chinese communist leaders didn’t want me to teach about the Tibetans’ experience of injustice. Also, DeSantis criticizes tenure. But still, I don’t believe he is a communist.

 I do wonder if Governor DeSantis has thought about how he will keep Florida’s educators from straying from the Party Line in the future. Other than by doing away with tenure, I mean. Is he going to assign class monitors like the one the communists assigned to my class?

 Like the Chinese communists, DeSantis wants above all to wield power. Though the governor may want to do away with tenure and force educators to toe the Party Line, I nevertheless, don’t believe he is a communist. Real communists promote working class revolution, but DeSantis no doubt sees the working class as an obstacle to his own grab for power. I also don’t believe he is a Nazi, though his racist policies will certainly appeal to the pro-Nazi wing  of the Republican party.

 DeSantis is neither a communist nor a Nazi; he is a DeSantist. He will embrace whatever policy he thinks will help him slide his way into the White House. He only adheres to policies that he believes will strengthen his bid for the presidency. His obsession with doing or saying whatever he thinks will help him become president is so front-and-center that I’m surprised Trump hasn’t labeled him with an appropriate nickname, one more to the point than “Meatball Ron.” Since his plan is to follow whatever policies he thinks will catch the current political winds, maybe Trump should start calling him Governor Windblown.  Or even Governor Whatever.

 

Culture World 2.0: The Sequel

  Announcing the return of Culture World, a heady concoction of culture politics and history. I stopped contributing to this blog site eight months ago when I had a little accident. I take that back. It wasn't little. On the operating table my heart stopped beating, which is medically considered an unpromising symptom. However, the good nurses at Advent Health pounded on my chest for seven straight minutes and so saved my life. Anyway, I’m back now and ready to continue my blog. I hope you won't resent the nurses for this.

 

 

    A team of nurses a lot like this saved my life.  I'm glad they did and so are some of my friends.

 

start the new year, I'm going to lay out what I consider to be the basic differences between liberalism and conservatism as these doctrines or perspectives exist in American contemporary politics. I'm not going to do any more than this right now because I'm just learning how to use speech to text on my computer. I'm able to type, but my eyesight has weakened to the point where I can't see standard size print easily. That's why I'm just going to write these two paragraphs right now. I hope my typing or speaking to text skills will improve in the near future so the wisdom of Culture World can once  again be bestowed on the people of the Earth. In this spirit let me say the roots of liberalism are in reason ,justice, and compassion, while the roots of conservatism lie in tribal loyalty.

Some critics may say this distinction is biased and unfair to conservatives. Rather than just ignoring these critic or telling them to shut up, let me elaborate.  Both liberals and conservatives may believe in reason, justice, and compassion. But in the case of justice, for example, conservatives are much more likely to filter their ideals through a lens, one that asks not, "Is a an action or policy fair? -- but asks instead, "Is it fair to me and my kind?"

 

 

Free Speech! Brought to Us by America's Oligarchs

According to the latest news, Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter is going forward. I wish it were not. I have no particular animosity toward Musk – my animosity toward him is generalized. I resent, in general, fantastically wealthy individuals who believe their billions are a well-deserved reward for their personal awesomeness. I want them to be more realistic about how they got rich. I want them to admit that they are not exactly awesome, but instead are cunningly adept at gaming the economic system.

To say that Musk “deserves” his estimated 275-billion-dollar fortune is to say that his actions have, on average, benefited each American family to the tune of about 2,100 dollars. Given this, I believe every American should calculate how much they have benefited monetarily from Elon Musk and, if their household total is under $2,100, they should contact him and request a payment covering the difference!

  

Okay, I’m kidding. I do not advocate harassing billionaires. I only advocate remembering that their wealth is not “deserved” in that it is not a natural result of the generous benefits they have bestowed on the rest of us.

  

And now, my next point: our news sources should not be controlled by billionaires. Or anyone else who happens to have the money to purchase them. 

 

Control of information is a tricky issue. A. J. Liebling, in a 1960 New Yorker essay wrote that “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” In other words, you can express yourself freely and unreservedly via the press only if you happen to own the press. The First Amendment does not force press owners to permit anyone to say anything through them. It only prevents the government from coercing the press. In today’s news environment, “the press,” includes by implication print media, network and cable news, and Internet sources generally. America’s constitutional restriction on government control of these sources is important. In places like Russia and the People’s Republic of China, government control of the press keeps people grossly ignorant on key issues. It’s different in America where Fox News keeps people grossly ignorant on key issues. More on this later.

 

But back to the dangers of government control. Just imagine if Donald Trump were president and we had no First Amendment press protections. Trump would most likely put someone like Rudy Giuliani in charge of shutting down unflattering news sources. Before long, our news would all read like press releases from Trump’s former doctor, the late Harold Bornstein. He was the one who wrote in 2016 that, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Just imagine the media under Trump’s control with no First Amendment protections: “The New York Times confidently reports that Donald Trump is unequivocally the greatest president America – nay, the World – has ever known!”

 

 

             Doctor Bornstein, Peace Be upon Him

Of course we do have government-controlled news sources in the U.S. – PBS and NPR, for example – and I have no problem with them. In fact, I would give them a grade of “A” in terms of their level of accuracy and their sense of responsibility to honestly inform the public. I would give the majority of prominent commercially owned news sources (Washington Post, CNN, etc.) grades ranging from B to A- and in a few cases even a solid A.

 

Except for Fox. Fox gets an F. Because, by its own admission, it is a bullshit factory*.

 

In a September 2020 case, Fox’s attorneys argued that Karen McDougal’s suit against Fox’s Tucker Carlson for his slandering her should be dismissed because people ought to know that Carlson routinely peddles bullshit. In the words of the Trump-appointed judge in the case, “Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.” Furthermore, “Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as ‘exaggeration,’ ‘non-literal commentary,’ or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same — the statements are not actionable.”

 

Translation: Only an idiot would believe Tucker Carlson.

 

The gross irresponsibility and dishonesty of Fox News and the damage it has done to our country concern me. Rupert Murdock, an unfettered, press-owning billionaire, has apparently decided that lying and stoking fear and bigotry are fine as long as he can make money doing it.

Which brings us back to Elon Musk and Twitter. Twitter has become, according to some, the de facto public square. To me it seems very dangerous to have the public square in the hands of a single individual whose accumulation of wealth and inflated self-regard do not suggest NPR levels of honesty and responsibility. Twitter under Elon Musk’s control might not be as bullshitty and bigoted as Fox, but who knows? It very well might.

  

The prospect of our news sources falling more and more into the hands of self-serving billionaires is frightening. I very much believe in the First Amendment, but I also believe in the public’s right to protection against oligarchs who profit by posturing as unbiased news sources while admitting in court that they blatantly and routinely peddle bullshit. So I continue to hope that the Musk-Twitter deal does not give birth to another Fox.

 

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*Bullshit factory phrase is stolen from CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Bullies - I'm Against Them

This week all the talk is about Will Smith bounding up to the Oscar stage and slapping Chris Rock. Chris had joked about Will’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers hair loss due to alopecia areata. The joke was in very poor taste, and I confess I didn’t get it since it was based on Demi Moore’s shaved head in G I Jane which I have long forgotten about.

But, just food for thought, I wonder if Will Smith would have delivered the slap if the joke teller had been a different Rock, like, say Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.

 

 

If you figure he wouldn’t have, which is the way I figure it, the whole thing comes down to bullying.

 

Bullies create most of humanity’s problems. These days, two of the world’s creepiest bullies – Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump –  are behind two of the world’s worst current problems. Number one is the war in Ukraine which has its roots in Vladimir Putin’s neurotic self-loathing. Putin is such a loser that, upon hearing Angela Merkel had a fear of dogs, he made it a point to have a large, black dog in the room with them when they met. He’s a pathetic case, but, with Russia’s military power at his disposal, his twisted nature is making life harrowing and painful for thousands of Ukrainians. Also, for thousands of Russians, apparently, as front-line Russian soldiers are beginning to show reluctance to attack the determined Ukrainian defenders.

 

Even more neurotic than Putin is Trump, a man [sic] who can’t even accept that 81 million Americans voted him out of office two years ago. As he thrashes recklessly around, throwing out preposterous accusations of a rigged election, he undermines Americans’ confidence in our democracy and so he undermines America itself.

 

I have always had a thing about bullies, and that thing is contempt. Ever since I was a child, I have despised people who belittle, steal from, or crush others just because they feel they have the power to do so. Which brings me back to the Will Smith question. He seemed to think he had the power to smack Chris Rock, but what about that other Rock?

 

Well, I’ll let this go for now. Smith had the decency to apologize for his actions, eventually even to Chris. So, he’s clearly a better person than either Putin or Trump. But then, so is almost everybody else.