There's a great quote from Maya Angelou "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
BTW, just curious, did you ever attend any of those many Blazer get-togethers, and meet & greets I organized and hosted. I'm not certain if I've met you, or not.
To be honest, I didn't even open my laptop while out there. Sorry. Actually, most of my time there was spent in The Dalles and Seattle, other than last Saturday's wedding in Eagle Creek.
Florida teachers are being instructed in the new curriculum prepared by right wing white evangelicals under DeSantis dictat. They are required to say, against all evidence including their own words, that the founders opposed slavery. A discerning student might ask why then did it take a century and a bloody civil war to end slavery. Sorry, can't discuss that. They were told to teach enslaved people immigrated to North America, not that they were kidnapped and brought in chains. They also must teach, against all evidence including their own words, that founders opposed separation of church and state and instead wanted Christian country. The can say civil war happened but are prohibited from teaching about Reconstruction, its defeat and Jim Crow segregation. Between civil war and a very sanitized Martin Luther King, who didn't oppose racism, nothing happened to Black people. At least, nothing that can be taught in Free State of Florida. And teachers can lose their license if they violate don't say gay. Wording is so vague some teachers are removing all books from classrooms to avoid being accused of having an inappropriate book.
Smart and normal kids/teens/young adults are not going to stick their heads in the sand forever and not learn everything that the stupid piece of shit DeSantis hopes. Young people are so much smarter than that. If anything it’s going to piss them off and they’ll fight back. That’s how it’s been forever. Another guy who needs a bullet.
If I’m confident that someone’s actions or words are going to cost an innocent person their life, fuck em. What they are doing in FL (don’t say gay) is going to eventually create an environment where some kid/teen (or anyone) takes their life. I think it’s reasonable that’ll happen. Clearly I’m not gonna do it. But if DeSantis got hit by a bus I’d be thrilled.
I absolutely agree with @calvin natt's assessment. But while I would not cry if he was hit by a bus, I still must oppose political assassination.
This is basically my stance as well. The opposition to political assassination though ends when someone starts genocidal behavior. That is a no zone.
Anyone read The Dead Zone? Protagonist is considering assassinating a Congressman who he knows will become president and start nuclear war. He asks his acquaintances, if you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler? Off topic but reminded of that.
Would I? Of course. I don’t get it when people take a hard stance like “two wrongs don’t make a right” in a hypothetical situation where clearly the greater good benefits by taking out a bad guy. Truly bad people - animals/monsters need to be taken out. People are afraid to say it. I don’t understand that. Oh you rape a child? I will GLADLY pull the trigger. So yeah. I would want to kill Hitler.
Florida citizens with felony conviction lost their right to vote forever. No appeal. No exceptions. Florida voters overwhelmingly passed an initiative allowing citizens to regain voting rights after release from prison. It passed the same year DeSantis barely won the governorship. He immediately set out to overturn it by attaching requirements that all fines, fees, court costs, restitution be paid. With interest and penalties, a small fine can mushroom into tens of thousands of dollars. There was no data base where a person could find out what they owe or if they were eligible to register to vote. Civil liberties groups filed suit, claiming it was in effect a poll tax, but lost. Due to racial disparities in criminal justice, the law fell especially hard on Black citizens; 20% of Florida's Black population is ineligible to vote due to past convictions. DeSantis demanded money for a special election police force accountable only to him personally but no money for people to learn how they can become eligible to vote again. So people relied on state voter registrars. DeSantis, in front of his hand picked election cops, announced with great fanfare the arrest of 20 people who had "illegally" registered to vote. They face five years in prison. The wife of one of them talked about how proud her husband had been to vote for the first time in his life. He genuinely thought he was eligible to register. Republican Jesus. Afflict the afflicted, trample on the downtrodden. And the Republicans will praise you. And as long as you hate gays, you can talk about what a fine Christian you are. This is what he wants for the country. Just another fascist bully with better grammar than Trump.
