Gov. Ron DeSantis' war on 'woke' appears to be losing steam in Florida

vegeta@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 225 points –
npr.org
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I think that even the most brainwashed Republicans are starting to realize that basic duties of their state's government are being neglected in favor of attacking people that they frankly don't even see

Yea, some of my childhood friends have staunchly conservative parents... one of those friends is gay. Conservatives are fine (apparently) with attacking "the other" but when your antiwoke campaign broadens to include family members then your voters suddenly remember what empathy is.

It's fucking ridiculous that if DeSantis had stuck purely to antitrans rhetoric he'd probably be quite popular still because, sadly, most Trans people are invisible to their conservative family members... but when the net gets too wide suddenly DeSantis starts attacking people conservatives like and that causes higher attrition.

Is the deliberate governmental attack on mutual respect causing a societal breakdown?

I've wondered for a while if the breakdown is caused by living on our phones, Covid separation, government and mass media divisiveness, or some brain empathy destroying component in our water we haven't discovered yet. Or a combination of all, because holy shit.

Benjamin, I have one word for you . . . microplastics

None of those are bad answers, but since societal breakdown has been continuously occurring since humans started societies, with people pointing to technology, government, media or toxins as they culprit, I doubt it has much more to do with external factors then it does with internal factors.

I would say the biggest factor is the emboldening of the people who were already toxic, because this has been progressing for decades now in the US, if not the rest of the world.

Once the racists could hide their hatred in plain view by simply saying "it's just a joke", it became that much easier for them to say the quiet part out loud. And once they got bold enough with that, all bets were off. The divisiveness of media (both traditional and social) is profit-motive driven and probably comes as a direct result of the former developments. Clicks bring in the ad revenue, and nobody clicks faster or more often than an angry crowd.

There's plenty of other factors too, I'm sure, like lead poisoning from all the lead being spewed out by cars with leaded gasoline back in the day (one of the side effects of lead poisoning is increased aggression), and the removal of third places that had once allowed people from all walks of life and social classes have a common area where they'd meet and interact. But letting the racists get away with it is definitely a big one.

Can ronnie even define what woke is?

His lawyer, Ryan Newman, defined it in court as such:

The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.

So yeah, they know exactly what it means (beyond the mouthbreathers definition of "everything I don't like"). What makes them evil twats was the next thing he said to the judge:

[DeSantis] doesn't believe there are systemic injustices in the country.

Which means that either a) he's lying about that (which he is) or b) he's burning all his political capital trying to stop a thing that isn't even happening.

The sooner this plastic-faced, white-jack-booted, can't-smile chode and his power-hungry, Stepford-smiling, Temu Jackie O. disappear, the better.

They say the opposite (about systemic injustice) when arguing against corporate DEI, affirmative action, police and voting reforms etc...

It's crazy they try to make the point that white, middle-class America is the most persecuted segment of the poulation.

You could put a clever spin on this to say that it means DeSantis doesn't think there's any bias against conservatives. Which, there isn't, but Republicans won't like hearing that.

It’s George Soros’ plot to use space lasers to turn your kids gay and keep prayer out of schools, duh.

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s about not bullying people who are different and letting them live their lives with dignity. Nah, it’s the laser thing.

“Appears to be losing steam” is such a pathetic maybe-there’s-hope headline.

"Just understand, when you hear equity used, that is just an ability for people to smuggle in their ideology."

Someone has been smuggling ideology, I just can't figure out who. Oh, wait. It's Ronnie James Dio DeSAintGonnaBePresident.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


A court settlement this week blunted his Parental Rights in Education Act, a law that critics call Don't Say Gay.

It marked the beginning of DeSantis' efforts to reshape how Floridians view and teach issues involving race and gender identity.

The Stop WOKE Act banned instruction in schools or mandatory training in workplaces that suggest a person is privileged or oppressed because of their race, sex or national origin.

"The court resoundingly rejected the STOP Woke Act as applied to employers and said it was in plain violation of the First Amendment," says attorney Shalini Goel Agarwal of Protect Democracy, who represented the businesses that filed the lawsuit.

Gay rights groups say this week's settlement with the state will make sure the law won't be used to discriminate against LGBTQ families.

Union President Meera Sitharam, who is also a professor of computer science, says DeSantis has signed laws weakening faculty tenure and has put pressure on schools to promote conservative viewpoints.


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