Fla.’s Authoritarian Rule Is Rife With Censorship

How about this for a new state slogan?

“Florida: Where Brain Cells Go to Die.” Or “The Confederacy’s Best Beaches!” Or maybe “Florida: Come for the Sunshine, Stay for the Measles.”

We are spoiled for choice.

About the measles: There’s an outbreak – nine cases in Broward County and one in Polk County, as of this writing. And given how our anti-vax, demon sperm, quack-of-a-surgeon-general says sick kids don’t need to quarantine, and that kids who haven’t had the measles-mumps-rubella jab can carry on coming to school, it could spread.

The measles virus is one of the world’s most contagious and can lead to pneumonia, hearing loss and, in a few cases, brain damage or death.

This country once had measles beat: The MMR vaccine is so effective (97%) that, by 2000, the disease was effectively eliminated.

Not anymore. Too many dunderheads are buying what dangerous anti-vaxxers like Ron DeSantis and his pet quack, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, are selling.

Ladapo is so science-challenged he thinks COVID-19 vaccines break into your DNA like a burglar busting down your door and throwing your stuff around.

As for your DNA getting messed up by a vaccine, a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory council sighs: “You have a better chance of becoming Spider-Man.”

Remember, Ladapo has tenure in the medical school at the state’s flagship institution of higher education. Or what used to be the state’s flagship institution.

The University of Florida, now a wholly owned subsidiary of DeSantis and his education-hating hoodlums, has just shut down its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and terminated all the staff.

Other institutions are meekly following suit: The University of South Florida did not replace its DEI director when the position became vacant and the University of North Florida has shut down offices supporting minority faiths and LGBTQ+ students.

The racists are thrilled to bits. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Gehenna, said that UF’s invertebrate president Ben Sasse does “all the right things.” And Christopher Rufo, always the drama queen, twixxted, “The conservative counter-revolution has begun.”

Gator Nation, on the other hand, is not so thrilled.

UF’s newly elected student government officers released a statement declaring themselves “unwaveringly in support of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Emmitt Smith, the great Gator running back and NFL all-time rushing record holder, registered his disgust, accusing the university and the state of failing to show “courage and leadership” and warning minority students – especially student-athletes – to speak up. Otherwise, they’ll be “complicit” in systemic racism.

The university says it’s just following orders: DEI programs are now illegal here in DeSantistan. It also says the $5 million it used to spend on helping under-represented students will be reallocated to “faculty recruitment.”

Good luck with that, y’all: With attacks on tenure and academic freedom, censoring established areas of scholarship including sociology and gender studies, and the imposition of “centers” pushing highly selective versions of American history to inculcate “patriotism” on campus, is it any wonder Florida universities are losing faculty and struggling to attract good replacements?

The authoritarian right ruling this state is convinced that if white Christian men were in charge, everything would be just peachy.

DeSantis and his legislative lackeys are, in the words of Florida’s official state song (third verse), “still a-longin’ for the old plantation.”

Back then, the overseer didn’t have to give workers water breaks or five minutes in the shade when it’s 100 degrees and 98% humidity.

And none of those frills like a living wage.

The Florida Legislature has voted to preempt local regulations, making sure “wokey” cities (Miami, Gainesville, etc.) can’t require businesses to treat their employees like human beings.

Everyone knows heatstroke builds character.

Still, suppressing human rights and destroying the Constitution haven’t been entirely smooth sailing of late: the ‘“Stop-Hurting-White-Folks’-Feelings” movement has run into some legal trouble.

While the prohibition on state money for DEI stands, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has slapped down DeSantis’s Stop Woke statute, ruling that universities can teach what they like, how they like, and that private employers may indeed train workers to recognize and address the sexism, racism, ableism, transphobia and homophobia spreading through this state like STDs during spring break.

This hasn’t stopped the Legislature from plumbing new depths of pettiness. It has passed a bill to forbid teacher training in our history of racial brutality which, they claim, “indoctrinates” future educators in “identity politics and woke ideology.”

Meanwhile, your Florida Legislature’s way of dealing with issues like the lack of affordable housing, runaway insurance rates, bad nursing home care, homelessness and the climate crisis is to ignore them, push them out of sight or censor any mention of them.

Don’t say “gay” and it goes away; don’t say “global warming” and it doesn’t exist; don’t point to racism and it’s not a problem.

Just shut your eyes and whistle “Dixie:” everything in Florida is fine, just fine.

Diane Roberts is an eighth-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Guardian and The Washington Post, among others.