Republicans have been fighting to overturn American principles and rights since the nineties.
Something happened in the nineties. That's when Republicans stopped being a party of integrity and gave the crazies in their parties the right to play dirty to win. And now it's all out of control. It's just chaos and dystopia.
From my observations, I have to add that they started small. With property rights. The process and strategy was so clear to see in Florida, but it worked for them. And from there, they used the same process on the National level. We saw it with Roe. But that isn't the final objective. That would be a mistake to think that way.
It's no surprise that De Santis is leading the way at a very rapid pace, denying freedoms to people in order to reach his utopian dystopia, because in Florida, nobody stopped them when they went after Growth Management and the same backwater methods they used back then, still apply today. This is Florida. Laws are laws until they get in their way. Then they use a process of misinformation and chaos to do whatever they want to do and when you realize they did it crookedly, they demand respect for their toughness.
The Florida legislature is clearly doing that now by stifling the First Amendment Rights for reporters, giving public figures the right to sue them for whatever criticism they don't like in the paper. I don't expect this will beat a challenge in the courts, but damn, those counter lawsuits are slow!
Let me tell you about the nineties so you can see how the process works. Here in my community there was a huge development where the original developer went bankrupt. So there was this plan for high density developments AND large swaths of open space to accommodate the population. I mean, there was everything you could think of including stables and bridle paths. The City made the first error by ignoring the vested rights in those plats. They took way too long to acknowledge that the original plats had rights. In fact, the City Attorney admitted something about the City being run without a Constitution. No blue prints. No Constitution. Sound familiar?
So, the City lost the original developer and the new developer sued them to develop property based on the original plat. Instead of proper hearings, that would have allowed people to get informed properly, what happened next was dystopian. In reality, there was lots of room for fair negotiations. Those open spaces were a bargaining chip for the community, that didn't want to see high density housing.
But the City kept those negotiations in house. They bent the rules for public notices and pubic speaking when land changes occurred. I personally can attest that they didn't use the proper large size notices in a paper that was widely used by the City population. This was a State law. I did my own private investigation, going into the City and discovered that they were using a small Sanford paper that didn't even have a distribution center inside the boundaries of the City. And when they posted in the Orlando Sentinel, it was the smaller advertisements, and not the large 2x8 or 10 inch advertisements required by the State. The secretary told me that they were saving the City money. Always deflection.
So, land plans were hatched out of court settlements and the local population were enraged. Without those public hearings they were left to accept whatever the City and a new developer came up with in court. And what the active population did made it much worse, which gave the developer reason for more lawsuits, including business interference conspiracy.
As a side note, if reasonable minds had been allowed to witness the negotiations that resulted in the settlement agreements, they wouldn't have been as angry. That is my opinion. Some of the things they came up with in the courtroom, were pretty reasonable, swapping the open space for lower density communities. When you look at it that way, it makes what happened next a tragi-comedy. Tragic for us who live here, and a comedy to everyone else.
What finally broke the minds of the people that fomented the charge into City Hall, was the loss of tennis courts. TENNIS fucking Courts, people. Tennis courts which are composed of fenced in poured concrete with painted lines. They could have built them anywhere else. But, that's when it happened. That's when you could plainly see how useful idiots are created. The population was so charged with misinformation that was intentionally meant to direct their ire at the new developer, that they couldn't see how they were being used. It turned out there was opportunity in a huge 3500 acre plat that was being dismantled, but for small groups that had connections to take advantage of the chaos. My smaller community was one of those prizes, which is why this is a lesson I will never forget.
And, DUers, I have seen that pattern repeated over and over again, watching it spread on a National level. They stir people up to attack whatever gets in their way, and while the population is being used as cannon fodder (i.e. January 6th), they are getting away with the real steal. Today, we know what that is. De Santis is showing us with brute force. They are slowly dismantling American rights that they don't like, just like they dismantled the plat. They are taking over this country in this manner, and their side is so blinded by rage that they can't see how they're being used for a purpose that they wouldn't agree to, if more reasonable minds prevailed.
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