Today in “neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party”
@mcopelov
Well true in a perverse way - Floridians have every right to burn their state to the ground and undo every bit of progress since the 1400's. It is their state, and they have a democratic right to destroy it if they like.
Doesn't mean that everyone else should stand by idly and crack jokes about it or shrug. We all have a duty to at least point out the destruction, and help those Floridians who like modernity to save it.
Unpopular opinion, but true. We live in Florida and have made the decision to move, but, that doesn't negate the fact that DeSantis didn't foment a coup and he's not an illegal dictator. He barely won his first election, but he gained 600,000 more votes over that in his second election.
I've lived in 5 different states in my adult lifetime and he's by far the most popular politician I've ever seen. The people of Florida, mostly, love him. I do not. Therefore, it's probably not the place for me.
I tell people from outside of the state to point at Florida and make the decision not to become like it, but demanding DeSantis' overthrow from afar(as I often hear) isn't really democratic.
@BE @mloxton No one's demanding his overthrow. And yes, of course, literally Nichols is correct. But this is a waste of space in a supposedly reputable publication to make that banal point. The moral imperative is still to write about far right authoritarian policies and individuals as dangerous threats to democracy. And there are millions of people in Florida who do not want this and are seeing their rights as citizens stripped away.
There are, actually, plenty of people hoping for his overthrow, talking about it and wondering why Florida hasn't risen up against him. Sorry, but he just overwhelmingly won an election. He has to be dealt with within the law.
In no way saying that *you* said that, but I see it every day. I was making a broader point.
I'm not defending the article. There's a growing authoritarian movement that the nation's not dealing with effectively.
Yes, millions of people voted against it, and DeSantis, but more voted for it. By a lot.
My point isn't that it's right. It's clearly not. My point is that it's what the people who voted for him want, and it's what they want for the nation as a whole.
@BE @mcopelov
It takes a bit of mental gymnastics to understand that there are people who want an authoritarian who will take away their rights, cause them harm, and divert their future over a cliff.
Do we in other, safer, states have a duty to try talking them out of it, or do we get ready to take refugees?
It absolutely does take some mental gymnastics. I can't go to my mailbox or the grocery store without hearing about what "great thing" DeSantis did, though. This is life down here.
How to handle it? I don't know. I clearly haven't made any inroads with people I've met in the south. A lot of them still believe in "the war or northern aggression" so I guess I'd be wary of "proving" that by intervening.
Here's one of my most unpopular opinions that I've settled on over the last few years. There's probably no way to keep the United States united.
@BE @mcopelov
Yah, that is the one topic that nobody is allowed to voice in strategy discussions or when sketching alternate futures.
I see very little chance that the union survives the stresses of these shifts once climate change, demographic shift, and Industry 4.0 really begin to bite.
I would love to help FL, for one, because climate change is going to fuck them up, and they have very little time left to prepare for what is coming, but they REALLY don't want to hear.
The people of FL don't want to hear *and* people are still moving here.
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-move-to-florida-regret-fastest-growing-state-2022-12
Florida has plenty of issues, but there's apparently still plenty of people who want to be here and be a part of it.
Or they have the same beliefs as the vast majority here. Namely that climate change isn't real. They see water rising in Miami, for example, and most still say it doesn't exist and it's natural cycles. They see more storms and more powerful storms and say it's just natural cycles and it'll reverse eventually.
New people who move here are largely MAGA, in my experience, and they almost feel like it's some holy land that they must be in. It's weird.
@BE @mcopelov
I saw that migration report, and the only qualifier I can think of is people who don't care if the place they are going to becomes uninhabitable in 10 years, because they don't plan to live that long anyway.
However, a fair number of people are migrating there, whose expected lifespan exceeds the point at which FL is going to be in real trouble.
One potential flash point in the future is when FL starts asking for federal help, and the states that planned tell them to get stuffed