General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWith an apology to any DUers who call it home, Florida has become
a shithole state. I sincerely regret that it will likely never again be a vacation option in my lifetime.
IngridsLittleAngel
(1,962 posts)The love of my life passed away there.
But thanks to what has unfolded in recent months, my hatred for that state goes beyond words.
Blue Owl
(49,739 posts)I have no desire to ever set foot in that state again...
Coventina
(26,808 posts)It was one day too many.
I have been to MANY places around this country and the globe. Miami is the ONLY place I have been where I have been homesick for Phoenix.
I will only return EVER for two reasons: My husband really wants to see the "Space Coast" and I wouldn't mind seeing the Everglades, before they disappear.
Other than that, no thanks!!!!
BlackSkimmer
(51,308 posts)I had a blast living there and wouldn't change it for the world.
Either on the water, in the water, or under the water, it was a fantastic place to be young (and not so young).
Key West is a very blue part of Florida, and it's not the only blue part either.
Very cool that you're using tfg's phraseology to refer to a state though.
Ferrets are Cool
(21,040 posts)Atticus
(15,124 posts)nolabear
(41,902 posts)Ive said it many timesloud is not large. Having grown up on the gulf coast and spent much time in those states I know the independence, love for the astounding nature, unique artistic flavor, laissez faire pov, much ignored and enormous minority population.
, and many other remarkable features there.
Democrats need to reach out more and turn our noses up less. Trumpers gonna trump, but there is so, so much more that enriches this country and is ignored.
snowybirdie
(5,174 posts)Can't live in the cold winters up north. Taxes are so much lower. No tax on food like in Illinois. Decent doctors who we can see quickly. Don't have kids in the poor schools here. I ignore the crazies and vote blue.
EX500rider
(10,448 posts)Ferrets are Cool
(21,040 posts)they are starving to death.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)EX500rider
(10,448 posts)Haven't seen a lot of Storm Troopers goose stepping around, must have missed it.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)EX500rider
(10,448 posts)DeSantis was elected, has not violently suppressed opposition, does not control all industry or commerce, haven't really noticed him promoting nationalism and racism to any great degree. You can be a conservative jerk who panders to the religious and ignorant without it being fascism.
Fascism is a system of government led by a dictator who typically rules by forcefully and often violently suppressing opposition and criticism, controlling all industry and commerce, and promoting nationalism and often racism.
Tommymac
(7,263 posts)Have to go there for a wedding this summer...will be spending as little as possible there.
And DeSantis not promoting racism and hate?
EX500rider
(10,448 posts)Tommymac
(7,263 posts)THAT is what I am referring to in my post above. I just have no words to give to that one.
Fascism is what it is, a xenophobic system based on fear, inequality, hatred, racism and corporate profits, and I recognize it no matter what it is called...and the Republican Party is the Party of Fascism in the USofA today.
2+2=4
DeSantis + ReThuglican Party = Fascism
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)so you haven't been paying attention, or you're just too white for that sort of thing to either register or bother you much. Got it.
https://www.newsweek.com/ron-desantis-criticized-editorial-board-stoking-racial-fears-1681162
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/01/ron-desantis-neo-nazi-protests
EX500rider
(10,448 posts)If he was elected and we have free enterprise Fla is not a fascist state.
Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Why do you think regurgitating a dictionary definition contributes anything to the discussion? Again, here's Umberto Eco. DeSantis ticks every one of those boxes (so did Trump):
1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.
This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.
As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.
Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.
Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun" to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.
4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.
In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.
Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.
6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.
That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.
This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.
8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.
9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.
Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.
Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.
11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.
In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!" . In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.
This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.
13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.
In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.
Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
Atticus
(15,124 posts)EX500rider
(10,448 posts)I mean I did call him a hateful racist and a conservative jerk who panders to the religious and ignorant...That does sound like a fanboy!
Still does not change the fact that Florida is no more a fascist state then California is a communist state.
Both are democratic states with free enterprise, pretty much the opposite of fascism.
Enter stage left
(3,386 posts)But Florida, Texas & many other southern states will never see another dollar of mine until the vote out the vile repuqs that control their states.
The three southeastern Counties, where the majority of the population lives, are solidly blue, and with the exception of a couple of other blue Counties, I agree that the rest is very trumpian.
appalachiablue
(40,994 posts)Talitha
(6,450 posts)But I live in Wisconsin, so who am I to throw stones? WI was truly a paradise before the repugs took over.
Poiuyt
(18,073 posts)It's no longer God's Country!
samplegirl
(11,359 posts)Me either! Ohio is the same way . If Im going to vacation I want as far away as I can get from Trumpers.
dwayneb
(766 posts)Out here in rural Ohio there are Trump shrines everywhere. Lots of them winter over in Florida.
Reality is that the US will never be the country it once was. I don't think we will ever recover from the damage that the Fascist Right has done to our democracy.
appalachiablue
(40,994 posts)FakeNoose
(32,202 posts)However I don't believe it will happen in my lifetime. I'm 71 and I still have a few good years left in me.
As for the rest of it, I agree that I'll never visit Florida again. I used to go occasionally for work reasons, but now I'm retired. No reason and no desire to go there ever again.
Dial H For Hero
(2,971 posts)EX500rider
(10,448 posts)Dial H For Hero
(2,971 posts)of their legislature.
Willto
(292 posts)[link:
|JI7
(89,151 posts)onethatcares
(16,119 posts)hits nail.
been a transplant for 50 years. Lawton Chiles was the gov. It was a laid back place but now I hardly recognize it.
St Petersburg area
Nay
(12,051 posts)was, and how good the schools were. (I'm 70.) It was basically a paradise that has now been ruined by too many people, destruction of the environment, fascist assholes running the place, I could go on. But I will visit once a year to see an 80-yr-old friend who has only a few years left to live.
onethatcares
(16,119 posts)the place went to hell. Now condos/apartments seem to be the cash crop.
Nay
(12,051 posts)onethatcares
(16,119 posts)along with the road that came out of Maderia Beach had a 3 way stop sign at the apex. When you stopped, you could smell the orange blossoms in season.
This place can never go back to that.
There used to be rain storms on the morning and evening seabreeze. Since the zoning changed to permit condo towers those storms
go up and over into eastern Hillsborough/Polk county anymore. In every small way Pinellas county is dying a slow, sad death.
Nay
(12,051 posts)housing, park-like areas, orange groves/small farms, open vacant lots, and total open access to the beaches. In Seminole, the smell of orange blossoms was just heavenly. I also loved orange blossom honey from those groves.
When I was growing up, we used to go out to Clearwater Beach (Sand Key) in the evening and start a little fire to roast our hot dogs. The area was covered with pines, not highrises, and local wildlife like raccoons, etc., lived there. When the local fishing boats out of John's Pass came by, they sometimes pulled a few nets of fish up onto the beaches so we locals could come pick up fresh fish. Now there is no fishing fleet, except perhaps a 'tourist' fishing fleet. Same for Tarpon Springs and their sponges. It's all tourist-driven rather than reality-driven. I can't emphasize enough that reality is preferable to fakery, but . . . who listens to me? I can't even get people to take their faces out of their phones.
tavernier
(12,299 posts)here you all are, all winter long. And now a days, most of the rest of the year too. Fifty foot long trailers pulling fifty foot long speedboats, bumper to bumper cars and roaring motorcycles.
It was so sweet the first six months of covid when the highway was blocked and only locals were allowed in the Keys. No car, plane or boat traffic. The sky and the ocean came alive again
flocks of pelicans, fish jumping in the canals, the sounds of a cardinal whistling in the bushes, woodpeckers tat tatting on the side of a palm tree trunk.
Yup, Florida makes me sad in many ways these days, but the fear of no more visitors from the north isnt one of them.
yardwork
(61,331 posts)I know people who were born and raised there who never want to visit ever again. All states have their issues, but Florida went too far.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)I went to visit once but avoid it like the plague. Not only because its Florida, but because when you are an adult and your parents still treat you like a teenager, it's not very relaxing or fun. But also, it's Florida.
Zorro
(15,690 posts)Let's just give up and surrender Florida. And Ohio. And Wisconsin. We'll never ever win any of those states again.
Florida is being overdeveloped along the interstate corridors close to the metro areas, and state politics is dominated by a particularly rabid brand of Republicans (which seems to attract like-minded RWNJs from across the country), but there are solid Democratic areas represented by several relatively high-profile politicians (Val Demings and former Republican now Democrat Charlie Crist, for example).
I personally like living in Florida. I've had a house there for over 30 years, and really enjoy the great natural beauty and truly awesome sunsets, which are a couple of reasons why so many people are attracted to the state. There are some downsides, of course; the heat and humidity does get pretty extreme, traffic is getting awful, and the size of the cockroaches is truly incredible. That being said, I'm only a part-time resident these days; although I like living in Florida, I prefer the greater diversity of SoCal living a little more -- although I'm in Darrell Issa's district, so I have my fair share of RWNJs in the community here, too.
Tommymac
(7,263 posts)Climate Change is apolitical.
Greybnk48
(10,144 posts)Emile
(21,548 posts)the Redneck Rivera!
Tommy Carcetti
(43,053 posts)It just has shithole leaders.
Ron Green
(9,819 posts)outside a motor vehicle.
CrackityJones75
(2,403 posts)It is an absolute hellscape straight out of idiocracy.
Marius25
(3,213 posts)Just an absolute cesspool of stupid and hate.
Emile
(21,548 posts)and love bugs what's not to like?