Cultural conditions of Florida

[ngant17]

From my friend, Dr. Jason Smith, PhD., Anthropology:

"There is a universal basal imprinting of all people, regardless of class, in a given sociocultural "epoch" in the ideological template of that Epoch or Period."

"People are not born with a blank slate for long. Imprinting begins with birth and proceeds rapidly apace so that by the time a child is a few years old it is well set in."

"This mental template or imprinting 'colors' the way people behave in the most profound underlying causal way."

"The mode of production (the relationship between technology and social organization) of any society will determine the type of ideology that can occur (the kind of idea system that is possible.) Within Servitude Epoch societies, the primary mental template will always have two poles as opposite sides on a broad-spectrum in sociocultural evolution, we have a primary mental template also existing as a spectrum with two opposite poles: one (left) side is simple selfishness/self-centeredness, and on the other (right side, outright sadism."

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Racism can appear within the mental template of selfishness. Racism or bigotry is a small part of the bigger picture.

I am concentrating on these theories as it might apply to the social or cultural conditions in the state of Florida. Here, in Florida, I believe the strong template of selfishness and sadism and also racism has been entrenched since at least the days Confederacy and the Civil War. It was perhaps attenuated or amplified from the slavery days of the South. I say this because, before the Civil War, the territory of Florida was the scene of a serious of violent and bloody conflicts known as the Seminole Wars. Where sadism and racism was the norm of the day rather than the exception. Note that the Seminole Wars were also conducted against escaped slaves. Because slaves who could reach Spanish Florida were essentially free. Some intermarried with the Indians and formed tribes of Black Seminoles.

The First Seminole War was from 1817 to 1818; the Second Seminole War from 1835 to 1842; and the Third Seminole War from 1855 to 1858. The Second Seminole War was the most expensive Indian war fought by the United States, and lasted longer than any war involving the United States between the American Revolution and the Vietnam War. The Seminole Wars lasted a cumulative of 11 years, which is comparable with the Viet Nam conflict (1964-1975). Also, the word “search and destroy” was applied here in these wars long before it became a popular military slogan in Viet Nam.

The whole point is that I can note a culture of racism, sadism and violence becoming ingrained into the Southern state of Florida. Many years before the Civil War and the KKK terror became rooted here! And this "mental template" is largely still in existence today. In the redneck police, in the small-town, good old boy ‘cracker mafia’ networks, the corrupted local governments. This is the historical Florida that the tourist brochures never advertise. It hides behind the signs of Disney World!

I don't believe that in this context one should classify racism as a 'mental sickness' per se. I believe the best way to understand it is thru anthropology and studying the evolution of human societies, which BTW Karl Marx and Fredrerick Engels did very well over a century ago.

"...but how stupid are the people, the indigenous race, called crackers! Pale, sharp-visaged, sandy-haired people, ignorant beyond all reason; little can be expected from them -- or nothing, but to vegetate."

from 'Along the Florida Reef(1871)', Harpers New Monthly Magazine


"This has always been a very corrupt state; Florida has been a corrupt state from the beginning, from the days of the confederacy. The addition of a bunch of angry Batista lovers did not help the political situation down there, and a lot of these people
had a lot of money or they made a lot of money and could be counted
upon to support anybody who hated Castro and hated what is being done in the modern Cuba and they'd vote for him. Florida is a big state, it's a key State. We have something called an electoral college which often decides elections and it has so many voters which are based on how many representatives get elected to Congress and so on. Well Florida is beautifully situated for any demagogue who appeals to the Batistaites, or just anybody who still wants to fight communism. They're still marching, and they're going to arrive on the beaches in no time at all. They are very slow to understand, obviously, partly because they've been misinformed, misinformed. By their government, by the media, which worked with the government. And so we have a misinformed population and Florida is still one of the first places candidates go to and try and get votes. But it's much less now, so, count on that, it's a bit of luck."

"It's a very complex 18th century machinery to keep us from having
democracy. Our founders didn't like democracy, I find I often have to repeat that a few times, but they didn't like it. And now of course we're bringing democracy to Iraq and all these other countries who are longing for it."

Interview, Gore Vidal, Havana, Cuba. Jan., 2007
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Cracker began to be associated with opinionated, ignorant whites who could easily be incited to violence. In many urban areas throughout the state, "Cracker " still means "bigot."
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The Seminole Wars, also known as the Florida Wars, were three wars or conflicts in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States. The First Seminole War was from 1817 to 1818; the Second Seminole War from 1835 to 1842; and the Third Seminole War from 1855 to 1858. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, was the most expensive Indian war fought by the United States, and lasted longer than any war involving the United States between the American Revolution and the Vietnam War.

The Spanish in St. Augustine began calling the Alachua Creeks Cimarrones, which roughly meant "wild ones" or "runaways", and which is the probable origin of "Seminole".

In 1818 General Andrew Jackson was sent to patrol the border with 800 regular troops and an additional 900 Georgia volunteers. Jackson wasted no time in asserting his authority. Seminole villages were burned to the ground. The Seminoles were chased all the way to West Florida, territory under Spanish control. Jackson took control of Seminole Forts as he went, inflicting punishment upon British and Spanish traders who had aided the Seminoles.

In 1819 Spain sold East Florida to the United States for five million dollars

General Andrew Jackson was appointed military governor of Florida in March 1821.
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This time it was seasoned campaigner, Zachary Taylor who was pit at the helm of the operation. Taylor decided to beat the Seminole at their own game – hit and run forest fighting. The entire peninsula was plotted into 20 mile grids and posts were garrisoned to constantly patrol them.

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Also moving into Florida in the 18th century were escaped slaves. Slaves who could reach Spanish Florida were essentially free. The Spanish authorities soon welcomed the escaped slaves, allowing them to settle in their own town, called Fort Mose, in close proximity to St. Augustine, and using them in a militia to help defend the city.

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Late in 1836 Major General Thomas Jesup was placed in command of the war. Jesup brought a new approach to the war. Instead of sending large columns out to try to force the Seminoles into a set-piece battle, he concentrated on wearing the Seminoles down. This required a large military presence in Florida, and Jesup eventually had a force of more than 9.000 men under his command. About half of the force were volunteers and militia. It also included a brigade of marines, and Navy and Revenue-Marine personnel patrolling the coast and inland rivers and streams.
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The Second Seminole War may have cost as much as $40,000,000. More than 40,000 regular U.S. military, militiamen and volunteers served in the war. More than 300 regular U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps personnel were killed in action, along with 55 volunteers. Many more died of disease or accident. There is no record of the number of Seminole warriors killed in action. A great many Seminoles died of disease or starvation in Florida, on the journey west, and even after they reached Indian Territory. An unknown but apparently substantial nunber of white civilians were killed by Seminoles during the war.
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All of the forts built for the Seminole wars were decommissioned, and soon stripped by settlers of any usable material.

Zachary Taylor during the Seminole Wars plotted out the entire peninsula of Florida into 20 mile grids and posts were garrisoned to constantly patrol them.

Names of Florida-based military camps or forts:

Fort Andrews, on Fenholloway Creek in Taylor County, north Florida
Fort Apalachicola, Gadsden County ,northwest Florida
Fort Armstrong, Bushnell, Florida
Fort Atkinson, Lafayette County, near Day, north Florida
Fort Barbour, Gadsden County ,northwest Florida
Fort Barker, near modern Cooks Hammock, Lafayette County, north Florida
Fort Barrancas, Pensacola Bay ,northwest Florida
Fort Basinger, Fort Basinger, Florida
Fort Blount, Bartow, Florida
Fort Braden, Leon County, northwest Florida
Fort Brooke, Tampa, Florida
Fort Frank Brooke, Steinhatchee Dixie County, north Florida
Fort Buckeye, at Steinhatchee Springs, Lafayette County, north Florida
Fort Caroline, Jacksonville, Florida
Fort Chipola, on the river of the same name, northwest Florida
Fort Christmas, Orlando, FL
Fort Clinch, Frostproof, Florida
Fort Cooper, south of Inverness, Florida
Fort Dabney, Old Town, Dixie County, north Florida
Fort Davenport, Davenport, Florida
Fort Downing, Suwannee County, north Florida
Fort Downing, Lafayette County, north Florida
Fort Drane, northwest of present-day Ocala, Florida
Fort Fannin, Fanning Springs, Florida
Fort Fraser, Polk County, FL
Fort Gatlin, Orlando, FL
Fort Griffin, Dixie County, north Florida
Fort Harriet, Leon County, northwest Florida
Fort Harrison, Clearwater, Florida
Fort Jackson, Madison County, north Florida
Fort Jefferson, Key West, FL
Fort King, near present-day Ocala in the northcentral part of Florida
Fort Lauderdale, FL (est. 1838)
Fort Macom, Wakulla County, northwest Florida
Fort Macomb, Lafayette County, near Day, north Florida
Fort Many, Wakulla County, northwest Florida
Fort Marion, in St.Augustine, Florida
Fort Matanzas, St. Augustine, Florida
Fort McCoy
Fort McCrabb, near Old Town; Dixie County, north Florida
Fort McRee, at the entrance to Pensacola Bay, northwest Florida
Fort Meade, Fort Meade, Florida (thanks to Jim Buck)
Fort Micanopy, in Micanopy, south of Gainesville,Florida
Fort Monroe, modern Sanford, Florida
Fort Myers, FL
The “Negro Fort” (later Fort Gadsden) east of Panama City, Florida
Fort Nicholls (also spelled Nicolls and later Fort Gadsden) east of Panama City, Florida.
Fort 9, near Mayo, Lafayette County, north Florida
Fort Noel, Madison County, north Florida
Fort Number 21, Hamilton County, north Florida
Fort Ogden, Fort Ogden, Florida
Fort Pickens, Santa Rosa Island, Pensacola Bay, northwest Florida
Fort Pierce, FL
Fort Place, later became the town of Wewahitchka., Gulf County, northwest Florida
Fort Preston, near modern Bristol and Blountstown ,northwest Florida
Fort San Marcos De Apalache, St. Marks, Florida
Fort Santa Lucia, Jensen Beach, Florida
Fort Stansbury, Wakulla County, northwest Florida
Fort Union, Suwannee County, north Florida
Fort Walton, Fort Walton beach, Florida
Fort White, FL
Fort Wool, Dixie County, north Florida
Fort Worth, FL est. 1842

64 count
check

Fort Hooker
Fort Carroll
Fort Cummings
Fort Gardner
Camp McCall
Fort Foster aka Fort Alabama

[ngant17]

1. Modern cities you might recognize

from the long list of Army forts I submitted in previous message.

Ft. Lauderdale (ever wonder where its main road, " S. Military Trail", might have came from? It connected Ft. Lauderdale to Fort Dallas (forgive me for not including the latter one on the list, there are lots of them I probably missed!). In that process of building that main road, of course the Indians and their settlements were razed to the ground in typical 'search and destoy' operations.

Ft. Myers, Ft. Pierce, Fort Walton Beach. Those all are vibrant cities in Florida today. But they all carry a dark and ugly and largely forgotten past, largely unrecorded in Florida history books, unlike the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, the Germans liked to keep records of everything they did with minute precision.

[Edweird]

2. Not to nitpick, but Military Trail isn't a main road in Fort Lauderdale.

It is however very prominent from northern Palm Beach County down to Northern Broward County. South of there it gets smaller and less significant.

[El Fuego]

3. Newsflash: Almost everyone in Florida is from the Northeast.

Most of Florida's population are relatively recent transplants. Trying to analyze the Florida cultural zeitgeist by going back to the Civil War is absurd.

And, I am one of few who grew up in Florida, and I can tell that I never saw any real racism until the northerners came down en masse in the 80s. They're the most openly racist people I have ever encountered. I remember at my first job how shocked and horrified I was at the ugly things they said.

Sure there was racism here before, but people were quiet about it. (I never knew my own father was something of a racist until I was an adult.) And the racism then wasn't the racism of the mean, nasty, contemptuous northern variety.

[ngant17]

4. cultural development of Florida

Well, I think racism is one part of it, the cultural development here. I realize that there is a complex series of factors besides racism.

Florida grew and developed its society, starting from the necessity and the proliferation of US Army bases which were used during the 3 Florida Seminole Wars. Practically every major city, including Orlando, Tampa, Miami all sprang to life after that fact, the building of military forts and bases in an on-going war against the Seminoles. And I think this had an effect on how cultural conditions developed here.

My father was proud of the fact that his ancestors in Florida had to fight the Indians in order to stake out the land to live here in Florida. However, he didn't harbor any hate toward the Seminoles, in fact, he was friends with a few of them in his lifetime. Billy Bowlegs, Joe Jumper, and some other names I can't recall. He also had an admiration of Chief Osceola. But as a teenager, I could never understand how someone could be proud of having fought the Indians in order to grab a piece of land to live on. It seemed to me that there must have been a better way of co-existing. And we never tried to find that approach. We chose war instead of peace. Is that the American way?

Really, I'm trying to look at a bigger picture here, in hopes of understanding how society and culture developed. IMHO Florida was a militarized society from the very beginnings of its statehood. I think that fact has produced negative and adverse effects which we have inherited since then. I think Florida had a much larger share of military bases to fight the 'Indian threat' than the other states in the union.

I cannot relate anti-unionism, "right to work" laws, KKK terrorism, and other such negative effects directly from the establishment of those large numbers of military encampments and 'mini-bases' here, during the Seminole Wars, these things surfaced later in history, and certainly other factors did come into play, especially the rise of the Confederacy and the Civil War. However, that historical fact certainly would have complemented the other, it would not have tended to contradict each other.

If any lesson is to be learned, it would be the dangers and drawbacks of allowing our society to become militarized. It will bear bitter fruit for the citizenry. It will distort our culture and our long-term development. For example, the Dept. of Homeland Security is a living embodiment of this concept. Instead of the Indian threat, we now have a 'terrorist threat'. Our society is slowly becoming militarized, excessively so. Just like Florida became a fertile ground for all those Army bases and Army forts. In one sense, it is worse now because there is also a new culture of secrecy in government, something that didn't exist before.

It would seem to me to be a wise idea to totally abolish DHS and institute a Department of Peace in its place, per Dennis Kuchinich's original idea.

[ngant17]

5. re: your newsflash

I do not think Florida's cultural development can be so quickly changed by a steady influx of immigrants from the north. Or from south of the border. Whether the language is in English or in Spanish. New Yorkers might not be able to easily lose their accent here, but can they actually change the history of Florida in their lifetime, changing it for the better or for the worse? I'm not sure that they can change history that much.

However, I should point out that the Cubans have contributed negatively, in a great way, to the reactionary culture of Florida, soley because of federal assistance. I maintain that the typical Florida cracker never would have gave a damn if the typical Cuban emigre ended up as shark bait crossing the Florida Straights, or against the paredon in Havana. Why play favorites? Again, it was a federal policy not a state policy that favored their position. For example, Gen. Batista should never have retired to Daytona. He should have been treated the same way as a war criminal and deported back to where he came from. So much for state's rights.

We do have a Republican governor who appears to be progressive and open to change. Perhaps in some ways more progressive than any previous Democrat in that office. Will he become a true revolutionary for Florida? Florida needs a revolution in thinking. But will there be any fundamental changes here from Gov. Crist's policies? I suspect not, in any case that remains to be seen. A case in point. Will Florida suddenly strike up business deals with its neighbor, the socialist Republic of Cuba? There was something happening like that under a Pres. Clinton, from a federal initiative but that of course was altered later by you know who, and besides, no Democratic governor in Florida has ever ventured so far in this regard on his/her own initiative. In a word, I think Crist will be powerless to change the Florida status quo,as much as he would like to. It would take a unique series of events for that to happen.

The problem is that the cultural conditions of Florida have been historically rooted in reactionary and militarized ways of thinking, and this, IMHO, stems all the way back to its Seminole Wars and the Army bases that infested the state from top to bottom.

We will need a revolution in the way we all think before we can proceed to live in a better society here in Florida. I don't think bringing in some immigrant Yankee blood will change things a whole lot. Perhaps only a little, as you suggest, it might have tended to make things worse. Not unlike the problems we've had with the Cuban emigre population. I agree though, the last thing we need is more reactionary thinking in Florida.