Reposting this from June of 2022. Inspired by A.R. Moxon.

A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat writes the independent publication The Reframe. He's a wonderful, sharp writer and you should check out his work if you're not already familiar with it. His latest, "Lying to Fascists," discusses the trend of American fascists publicly rejecting democracy and law and declaring their vision for the future of the country. 

Using examples from Harrison Butker's Handmaid's Tale medley of nostalgic misogyny and racism, to Texas governor Greg Abbott's big heart for the right kind of murderers, to Supreme Court Justice(?!) Sam Alito finally coming out of the MAGA closet, Moxon makes the case that, with the threat level hovering somewhere between SEVERE and CRITICAL, now might be a good time to stop giving "[t]hese Americans who want to kill Americans" all this quaint credit for good faith and the benefit of the doubt.

Instead, he warns (emphasis mine):

Either they get their way, and society is no longer accessible to most of us, or they don't, and everyone including them gets to access society. Therefore, I think they shouldn't get their way or be treated as if they should. These are people who intend to destroy whatever they need to in order to rule over our lives to secure their own personal enrichment and comfort, and are so confident in their success that they announce their intent. They do not care about you, and they certainly do not care about your good faith efforts beyond the extent to which they make it easier for them to seize control. They will never give you credit for working to find their rationales reasonable. They will never return the benefit of the doubt you extend. Our mission is not finding ways to work with them. Our mission is finding ways to sabotage their efforts and to keep their targets as safe from them as we can.

It should be clear by now that the fascists will do anything to achieve their aim of power and control. There is no limit. And they will not stop. They can only be stopped, but only if we have the awareness and the willingness to do what needs to be done.

Moxon's piece is a good one and offers some principles and specific strategies for how we might go about saving the Republic. I encourage you to read it.

When I did, it inspired me and reminded me of this one of mine from June of '22. 

"This time, it's political."

This is going to be part rant, part call for help, and it's going to be long. If you want, you can tune back in next week for a regularly scheduled post on charter schools.  But if we don't deal with this it won't even matter.

I try not to write explicitly about politics in this blog. It's probably a holdover from my teaching days when I avoided sharing my politics with students. I was trying to teach them to think for themselves, after all.

So when a student would ask who I supported or voted for, I would often just give them what I stood for and let them figure it out.

"I'm for high taxes on the rich, assistance for the poor, less funding for the police and military and more funding for schools and libraries and parks and transit. I support DREAM, DACA, amnesty, and a path to citizenship for anybody who wants it. I'm against putting kids in cages. I'm for clean energy and at least trying to save our lives on this planet."

That usually did the trick. They got the picture. 

I don't have students to worry about anymore, and I've changed my mind about this blog--at least for now. I need to talk to you about politics.

The school battles we're fighting today, over "CRT," LGBTQ+ rights, identity inclusiveness and trans kids, "parent rights" and banned books and school "choice" and school funding and teachers unions and whether to do anything about what-the-fuck actual murders of school children are, of course, fundamentally political. And, fundamentally, they are part of the same big war we're fighting over voting rights and police reform and climate change. It's a war that has only two sides.

The Republican Party, one of the two major political parties operating in the United States is despicable, and the people who love them and work for them are despicable, too. Some of my friends say they're crazy but they are not crazy. Their fans may be nuts, but the Republican Party and the apparatchiks who do damage on a national-now-global scale are perfectly rational. 

Their actions serve a strategic purpose: holding on to power. In their drive for political power, Republicans and their media cheerleaders have cultivated a constituency addicted to conspiracy and grievance and the taste of blood. The party is now completely devoted to supplying their acolytes with enough rage to keep them coming back for more. 

On the other hand, the Democratic Party is in love with its own virtue. It's dedicated to preserving a romantic narrative of democracy and bipartisanship, and the fiction that if only we make the best argument in a nice way we will persuade our adversaries (don't say enemies) and win the day. Or maybe there's nothing we can do because the Senate. Or maybe the Constitution. 

This will not last forever. We will either become all one thing, or all the other.

In order to survive, we have to act, and our first act has to be telling the truth about Republicans. Every time we or our elected leaders (Senator Schumer? Mr. President?) make believe that Republicans are like us, that they care about the country or *regular folks* or anything in the universe except power, we lose a battle and they win one. 

They weaponize our credulousness as proof of our impotence and they are not wrong. And when they do, their numbers grow and a few more of us give up and stay home, convinced our leaders don't see what we see or know what we know. 

The president, the vice, from the White House podium, on national tv, they need to say it, out loud and every time. Every member of Congress, every governor, state legislator, city council and school board member at every rally, in every interview, needs to tell the truth: 

As long as Republicans believe that people who disagree with them are illegitimate, that guns > children's lives, that elections they lose are fraudulent, that crimes they commit are not crimes, that climate change is a hoax, or that history ought to be a soft pillow for racists and the truth is a matter of opinion, there are no good Republicans. 

For those of you thinking, "Bullshit. I'm a Republican and I don't believe those things," you are deluding yourselves and you should stop. Tell the truth: Either you do believe those things, in which case you're a terrible person and fuck you, or you are no longer a Republican. Congratulations.

Telling the truth is not easy and getting people to listen is ten times harder in this  putrid media backwash where corporations whose mission should be to inform us have defaulted to predetermined narratives; faulty assumptions; and timid, shrugging commentary when they aren't snickering and rolling their eyes.

The media--both Big and Social--take for granted that Republicans will obstruct. What did you expect? The reporters bat their eyes and swoon over the big, strong Rs who never give an inch while shaking their heads and snickering at the "we wanted to" Ds for even trying. Silly geese. More on this to come. 

So what can we do? We need the news. Democrats need networks to interview us and invite us on shows and ask us questions and cover campaigns and spotlight our issues. We know we can't depend on the media to be fair or shrewd, and we can't count on them to rise above their both-sides horse race "journalism." Still, facts do not speak for themselves. Facts have to be spoken by someone. 

So when the media fails and falls back on their assumptions and tired tropes, we need to push back. For most of us, that might look like the simple civic engagement that almost nobody does. For example, every time we see a ridiculous, mis-framed article in The New York Times or a vapid false equivalency on MSNBC or CNN, you and I can write letters (does anyone still?) and send emails and call our media faves to hold them to account. We can call out our local papers and radio stations. We can complain louder and louder until they hear us or hang up. We can cancel subscriptions. 

Every time one of our representatives in government does an interview where the news personality starts with "Why can't Democrats..." they need to confront that reporter and challenge the premise of the question. Everybody on the planet should understand the formula by now. We need to push back on the notion that it's our job to make the Republicans better people. We just need to beat them.

Every time Democrats tell the truth about Republicans instead of pretending they are like us, we win. We need to support candidates who will tell the truth in the White House and in Congress, but also for city council and school board where we need to show up to meetings and tell the truth ourselves. All of us can tell the truth in posts online and we can follow other people who do. We can tell our friends and our families (ouch!) the truth about Republicans especially if they are Republicans. Remember when your racist buddy used to send you racist shit about Obama? We can make our friends crazy with the actual truth. 

Honesty is an act of war. Each moment of truth is an attack on the life of the liars. Words alone won't stop the Republicans, but the truth is a prerequisite for victory. 

Now some really bad news. It's not just politics anymore. Republicans today are not only bent on the elimination of all opposition political-cultural-historical-pastoral, they and their party are armed and aimed at the entire tragically incomplete American project. All of their power-- cultural, economical, policial/judicial, as well as political-- is threatened by the prospect of an equitable, multi-racial democracy, and they mean to kill it. 

The Republican Party is a black hole at the center of our democracy. Built out of paranoia and anger, it depends for its survival on its ability to block light from getting through. Gun safety? Blocked. Voting rights? Blocked. Environmental protection? Renewable energy? Blocked. Police reform? Racial equity? Blocked. Economic justice, reproductive rights, workers rights, civil rights, business regulation, consumer protection, free and fair elections, the fucking post office? Forget about it. 

Obstruction works. It's how Medicare for All, Merrick Garland, and two impeachments were blocked. It's how George W. Bush became president, for fuck's sake. It's how eighteen-year-olds are able to buy weapons of war. Obstruction, blocking the aspirations of their foes is fundamental. It's the very core of minority power. 

Republican ideas, such as they are, are racist and hateful and generally unpopular, so the party only exists today as a nullifying force, material only to the extent it can stop progress and "own the libs." Which it does. Brilliantly. 

Under these circumstances, Republicans' refusal to compromise becomes existential. When Democrats pursue it we look weak and when we inevitably settle for a deal on their terms, we are the ones compromised. Look at the gun proposal that Senator Murphy and others had to beg for. I'm smart enough and old enough to know that something is better than nothing. But everyone knows that even if it ever gets written and if it ever gets passed, it won't be nearly adequate. 

That's why Democrats have to come out right now and say loudly and unambiguously that this is just a first step, that we are going to keep working for expanded background checks and a ban on the sale of war weapons. And I don't mean just the tens of thousands of us who marched yesterday, I mean Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden--the people who actually have a say in what we settle for. 

Otherwise, even before the game plays out where McConnell waits for things to cool off and for another story to dominate the news squirrel! and for Democratic leaders to give up, Rank-and-file Democrats are already disappointed and discouraged, largely because we don't have confidence that our reps will continue to fight for what we actually need.

Meanwhile, Republicans are gleeful that we have given them the opportunity to appear reasonable to The New York Times, while at the same time they are winking reassurances to the gun fetishists that nothing is going to change. Which gives them the chance to say they tried but We told you gun regulation wouldn't work.

There will never be genuine compromise from the Republicans because if the Republican Party were to allow actual, real progress, if even a little bit of light pierced the umbra, its structural integrity would fail and it would collapse. 

And don't even kid yourself: It's foolish to look for individual members to break free and "vote their consciences" or "do the right thing." Even setting aside the twin deviants Cheney and Kinsinger (Update: *Kinzinger), who in spite of their atrocious voting records have stood against their party (and been bounced as a result), the occasional unicorn won't overcome the filibuster, and where are we? No, their unity is essential to their power, and power is the only reason they exist. 

The Democratic Party is all that stands between the Republicans and the ending of American Democracy. And no matter how damaged and defective we are, what comes next is worse. We can't afford to waste our time taking each other apart. I know there's a fight among Democrats over whether our leaders are doing enough to earn the votes of would-be supporters. I get it. I've been in that fight, too. But, at least for now, it's the wrong fight. 

I voted for Al Gore. People who voted for Ralph Nader were wrong. I voted for Hillary Clinton. People who voted for Jill Stein and that Johnson guy were idiots. I voted for Biden. I wanted Warren. Others wanted Bernie--twice. People who didn't vote because they wanted somebody else don't understand how elections work. 

We shouldn't be accused of treason every time we criticize the party,  but there are only two sides in this fight. If the people we elected to fight for us are not prepared to do that, we'll get new ones. But we can't afford to sit it out.

Our only hope, and the only hope for the country, is to defeat all Republicans, and I don't just mean elect more Democrats. Obviously we need to do that; anyone who thinks the gun bill wouldn't be better if we had ten more Democrats in the Senate is deluded or trolling. But simply electing more Democrats is not enough if the ones we elect fail to act, even with the future of the country hanging in the balance. 

When I say Democrats need to defeat Republicans, I mean we need to destroy them. We have to smash them and their loathsome ideology. They are fascists. They are powerful and intensely committed. They will not quit. They will not be defeated by good intentions. 

Democrats need to do things. Being right, being the good guys, is not enough. People want wins. The Democratic Party needs to deliver. Every action we complete is a battle won. Every time we actually do something Republicans want to stop, or stop something they want to do, they lose a battle and a piece of their power.

Democrats don't need our elected leaders to deliver everything right now. We need our leaders to fight for everything, all the time. We need better gun safety measures. Fight for them. We need voter protections. You need to fight for them. We need legislation to save our lives on this planet. Fight! Sometimes it feels like you don't even think these things are important.

And don't hand us the bullshit "can't do it alone" and "we need more dems" excuses. We know that. We're voting for that. If you want people to keep fighting for you, if you want us to make calls, knock on doors, "chip in$10," if you want us to join, stand up together, resist, and March For Our Lives, you have to fight for us.

Every bill passed, debated or even introduced (Schumer!), every executive order signed (Biden! Defense Production Act! State of Emergency over firearms!), every postmaster general replaced (Mr. President, how in the hell can we not get this done?), every court case won, every seat flipped, every time we Run for Something and every time we win -- every righteous thing we DO, is a tiny little Gettysburg or Yorktown. Every time we "wanted to" or "wish we could have," or piss our "what if they do it back to us / they'll just undo it anyway" pants, the opposite is true. Right now we are losing the war.

The way the political world in the United States is now constituted, power is a zero sum game. There is no compromise. One side will act and exist, the other will fail to act and disappear. We must act or we don't exist. 

And all the fights over schools and libraries will be over. All the other fights, too.

Until we do the good things the Republicans want to stop and stop the bad things Republicans want to do, the existence of the Democratic Party is purely theoretical. If we don't do them soon, that existence will be merely allegorical.

So what do the Big Standardized Tests (h/t Peter Greene) actually measure?

Once again by way of Peter Greene, 

this time in Forbes:

(You get a few free ones. After that, one word: Firefox.)

In his excellent Research Shows What State Standardized Tests Actually Measure, Peter Greene (@palan57 on Xitter) writes about a new study, “The Pernicious Predictability of State-Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States,”from Jamil Maroun and Christopher Tienken. 

To no thinking person's surprise, the researchers found what teachers have been saying forever, all the while pounding the table and our heads against the wall: Big Standardized Tests do not measure what the testing cartels say that they measure. These tests don't measure what students have learned in school, or how effective teachers are. So what do they measure?

Here's Greene quoting Maroun and Tienken:

Students utilize their background knowledge to establish connections, infer meanings, and aid their overall comprehension of the text.

"The key concept is background knowledge," writes Greene. "We’ve long known that background knowledge is directly related to reading comprehension." Yes. Yes we have.

When it comes to test scores, we can literally follow the money. 

Greene quotes Professor Tienken:

“The tests are not measuring how much students learned or can learn,” says Tienken. “They are predominately measuring the family and community capital of the student.”

It's a splendid read with several links to supporting studies and additional material. Greene highlights the impact that access to resources and social capital has on test scores and notes the widespread misuse of test data. He finishes with this:

Education centered around high-stakes testing has been pushing schools down the wrong road for twenty-some years. This study is a reminder that by generating data that does actually says far more about a school’s demographics than its effectiveness.

Yes. Yes it does. 

 

For the bazillionth time: Teachers, you are not crazy. Data is Bullshit.

Terrific stuff--as always--from Peter Greene. This from 2022. 

Study: Test Data Does Not Help Students Raise Test Scores

If you care about this stuff, you really should be reading 

Mr. Greene's blog: Curmudgucation. 

And consider subscribing. It's great and it's free!

This is worth your time.

Excellent level-headed low-heat conversation. Policy Dialogue: The Meaning and Purpose of Public Education | History of Education Quarterly | Cambridge Core - https://t.co/Fljs0E72AN

— Peter Greene (@palan57) January 28, 2024

 

We're not the bad guys. They are the bad guys: The Teacher and the Fascist (I don't post much anymore, or at all. Still, here's one more from a year ago -- just for Ron.

Finishing off DeSantis (for now): 

Things can always get worse.

Well, now I feel as if I know Florida Governor Ron DeSantis a lot better. If you're still here, I hope you feel that way, too. That last one was really long, but I didn't even get to the College Board bullying, or stacking the school boards, or thumbing his nose at Biden's attempt to protect vulnerable schoolkids from harassment and discrimination, or the "grooming" shit, or vouchers and even more vouchers, or 86ing Common Core--which would have been okay if he hadn't replaced it with even dumber dumbness. 

And that's just schools. This is much bigger than schools.

There's also DeSantis's trolling and flexing and bullying over a private army, kidnapping migrants, removing insufficiently servile elected officials, troublesome media (so he went out and got his own), and drag. The list is growing.

For those of you thinking Florida used to be a nice place but now it's a swamp full of Republicans and deserves what it gets, you're absolutely right. For those of you thinking DeSantis is going to stop there... 

DeSantis is not going to stop in Florida. 

Business Insider reports: "Florida is hoping its strict law regulating how race, gender, and sexuality are taught in school will soon be applied to students nationwide as the College Board revamps its African American studies class that the state vocally rejected."

"The Florida of Today is the America of Tomorrow" Kathryn Joyce writes in Vanity Fair. She's writing about the takeover of New College, the cancer that is Hillsdale College, and Christopher Fucking Rufo, but DeSantis has no intention of stopping, not with Florida and not with schools. 

DeSantis aspires to be president--at least--and that would be really, really bad. 

If you support Ron DeSantis because he's a willing protector of your tax tricks and you think "How bad can this be?" or the word "guardrails" springs to mind, take a breath. Then get counseling. If you support him because he's mean to the people you don't like, you should be ashamed of yourself. Either way, if you guys win, DeSantis wins, and if he becomes president, the United States as a pluralistic, multicultural democracy will cease to exist.

That very well may be the plan. 

The fabulous Jennifer Berkshire tweeted out a paragraph from The Big Myth, and it was for me one of those rare moments of clarity, where everything suddenly made sense and cohered in a Unified Theory of Inequality. Here's the tweet:

I'll pretty much just be tweeting about Oreskes & Conway's new book The Big Myth till I finish it (because it's that good). But this on the early free marketeers' deep belief in inequality as *natural* feels so key to understanding the assault on public education today pic.twitter.com/esnnpRSeUm

— Jennifer Berkshire (@BisforBerkshire) February 24, 2023

I immediately ordered the book, but even before I start reading, a few things have become all too clear to me.

Something clicked and school choice and parental rights and book banning joined up with taxes and policing and reproductive rights and the railroad tragedy in Ohio. 

"They believed that men were inherently unequal." Not to mention everyone else. 

They believed it then and they believe it now. The cruelty and the raw exercise of power to discriminate and dominate isn't just a utilitarian strategy. It's the inevitable result of their view of "human nature" and the way the world should naturally be ordered. Is ordered.

Teachers are in the way. We are purveyors of truth and compassion, promoters of equity. We encourage individual agency. We are dangerous to traditional power hierarchies. That hasn't always been the case, but it is right now. 

We are dangerous to DeSantis and his dream of unchecked power. We are dangerous to fascists and because we are dangerous, DeSantis and the rest of the fascists need to drive us out or break us. They do it with shitty pay and poor working conditions and public humiliation. They do it by accusing us of the very things they themselves are doing. 

They break teachers by making us do things we know are bad for our students, sometimes by passing bad laws.

We have this nostalgia for some imaginary old days when teachers were revered professionals who were acknowledged as experts, but that was never really true and it was very much not true in many places and times. The fact that we are experts only makes it more important to eliminate us. The vilifying and scapegoating--we've seen it before and we know where it ends up. 

If you think this sounds overheated, remember that with fascists every accusation is a confession. From indoctrination to discrimination, this "accusation in a mirror" is a calculated strategy, and the objective is precisely what they pretend to be fighting against. We have to recognize the accusations as admissions, declarations of deadly serious intentions. 

Resisting the authoritarian attack on teachers and schooling can not be simply "No we're not" and "That's ridiculous" or  “I do want to stress that no union dues are used for political activities.” This defensive posture limits the discourse and legitimizes the attacks. 

It's crucial that we avoid regarding our enemies as foolish or unhinged, and we have to push pack against those of us who describe them that way. To think of them as merely clowns doing anything they can to hold on to their circus jobs, to fail to take them seriously, would be a big mistake. Huge.

You might say most people aren't paying attention and don't give a shit. You might say most people don't support what DeSantis is doing. You might say it's a small, loud minority, and you may be right. 

It might not be a majority voting for monsters who hate the "right" people and want to hurt them. Maybe lots of people aren't for racists and fascists just because of their racism and fascism. Maybe lots of people vote for the bad guys because of taxes or regulations, or just because the bad guys act tough. 

But it doesn't take a majority. All it takes is enough true believers and enough people who don't give a shit.

Next time we'll take a look at the wizards behind the curtain and where this all ends unless we give a shit. 

Update: It's getting worse. 

Source: https://t.co/rlgIPIEKaf

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 2, 2023

Do not imagine that their proposals are too evil or foolish or absurd to become real. This is not a drill. It can happen here. It already is.

Next up: What's next?    

 

Florida Man (One year after I first posted this, it seems like the perfect day to re-up.)

 Florida Man. 

Every teacher I've known has been the enemy at one time or another. It may have been remote and impersonal, like a newspaper article, denigration in Big Media, or disinformation on the socials -- Groomers! Pedophiles! Indoctrinators! Communists! 

It might have been very personal, with a principal who resented being challenged with difficult questions, with a parent at a meeting with a struggling student, at Thanksgiving with your crazy uncle -- Groomer! Pedophile! Indoctrinator! Communist!

Some of that stuff is ignorance, some is probably fear, some of it is just bullies being bullies. The hardcore loony shit can be dangerous if, for example, you happen to be wearing a mask, or some lunatics decide they don't like you and want other lunatics to know where you work, where you live.

This bunch is unhinged and cruel, but they can be arrested, and sued. It's not a perfect answer, but at least the harassment is illegal.

I'd argue that the extralegal threats and intimidation are not sufficient for the reactionaries and fascists to achieve the outcomes they desire. Their activities must be buttressed by a legal framework. That's why the lasting damage, the real danger to teachers and schools and to students, the stuff that turns teachers into officially certified villains, is what's being done legally, through bills being passed to codify the intimidation and authorize the harassment. Which brings us to Florida, and Ron DeSantis.

I'm really angry, so I'm going to go on for a while. For a more concise, less DeSantis-is-a-fascist-y take, PEN America has this really good breakdown from last year. It reviews the Florida laws I discuss in this post, plus one that chills speech on college campuses. 

Here goes...

Is Florida ground zero for the war on teachers? Or just an aggressive overachiever who refuses to lose? 

If you've been paying any attention at all, you know that Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, is building his MAGA bona fides on the backs of teachers and a paranoid delusion called WOKE (They can't define it--SEL! DEI!-- but they know it when they see it and it's baaaad.). How bad is DeSantis? Let's just say he made Florida so repressive and disgusting even mini-despot and world class suit-wearer LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said "I'm out of here." Maybe the town just wasn't big enough for the both of them.

Side note: What, exactly, would be the opposite of "WOKE"?

I'd heard a lot about DeSantis's campaign versus teachers and schools, among other things, but I didn't really know anything beyond the smug nastiness oozing from news clips on the teevee machine (h/t Charles Pierce). Who is this tiny troll? As with so much addressed in the Answer Key corner of the world, I needed to educate myself in order to write about it. 

Note: I have no first-hand information about the number of centimeters in one DeSantis (sources say 5' 9", 154 lbs. He looks bloated, right?), but he's certainly tiny on the inside.

Stipulate that the culture wars did not start in Florida, nor did they start three years ago with The Great COVID Conspiracy and a bunch of MAGA nuts and privileged white elites yelling "you're not the boss of me... er... my child!" while  burning their masks in a ceremonial freedom bonfire while blaming teachers and their union! for school closures (instead of, you know, a deadly virus).

Stipulate further that Florida has spent years dumping brain cells into the Gulf of Mexico and is now seeing vastly increased return on that investment.

Ripeness is all, as the only Shake-scene in a country might say, and so we have the fusion reaction of stupidity, racism, ambition, and homophobia in one great supercollider and out pops Ron DeSantis on Crusade.

And the boy has been busy. Ron of Santis came out swinging, wielding the sword of self-righteousness as he vanquished the enemies of the realm one by one and two by two. 

Start with COVID. Florida's response is instructive in a couple of ways.

I know this post is focused on laws, but I just have to say that if I'd seen DeSantis treat one of my students the way he bullied those kids at his photo-op for simply wearing masks, I'd have kicked his lawyer-not-a-real-SEAL ass right up between his ears. If you haven't seen this asshole working hard to be the biggest asshole, here he is:

In early 2020, DeSantis declared a public health emergency followed by a comprehensive state of emergency for the entire state of Florida. Within a couple of weeks DeSantis had issued "self-isolation" orders for travelers entering Florida (an action he blamed on other states and especially on New York City. In a nice touch, there was also a gratuitous shot at Florida's "southeastern counties and other urban cores"). 

In an additional "safer at home" executive order (signed April 1, ha ha), DeSantis continues to blame everybody else for making him order Floridians "to limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities." 

The notion of respecting the guidance and expertise of anyone not named DeSantis clearly grinds his gears. Thus, by the end of April 2020, DeSantis had "convened the Task Force to Re-Open Florida" and begun to do so. 

On July 6, the Florida Department of Education ordered that "Upon reopening in August, all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students..." When the Florida teachers union sued DeSantis and Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran over safety concerns, DeSantis did what DeSantis does: He blamed somebody else. From Politico:

DeSantis on Monday put the order squarely at Corcoran’s feet and said it was meant to give parents the option of sending their children back to school.

“I didn’t give any executive order, that was the Department of Education,” DeSantis told reporters.

On September 25, the governor essentially lifted remaining restrictions. Cases immediately began to rise, with new cases peaking at over 15,000 per day in early January 2021 (up from about 2500 when DeSantis signed the order). 

Even that wasn't good enough for the governor. Seeing which way the crazy wind was blowing and eager to ride the MAGA wave--and subsequent waves of COVID--DeSantis signed an order in May 2021 prohibiting local jurisdictions from implementing local restrictions and mandates. Three months later the state topped 50,000 new cases a day.

On a roll and giddy with power, with sights trained directly on the White House and President Biden, the governor called the Florida legislature into special session to finish the job and pass four anti-mandate laws into existence as part of his "freedom agenda." In true fratboy style, DeSantis signed the bills in November of 2021--in Brandon, Florida. In early January 2022, new cases spiked over 70,000 a day, reaching over 100,000 at one point before receding to previous levels. 

DeSantis had ridden the waves without wiping out and that was it. Or was it? Reluctant to abandon a winning strategy and apparently wanting to get the most mileage out of being a dick, we got this in January 2023: "Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Initiative to Make Protections from COVID Mandates Permanent, Enact New Protections for Free Speech for Medical Practitioners." I'm not sure what "permanent" means in a democracy, but the November laws were scheduled to end in June and DeSantis was not about to let go of a good thing. 

In fact, he has upped the ante, now requesting a grand jury to investigate complaints about the vaccines, complaints that DeSantis amplifies and that are based on misinformation and junk science. Complaints that would be surprising to an earlier version of DeSantis who was at the time trying to keep his state alive and hadn't yet taken the temperature of the rubes and reprogrammable meat bags (h/t Rude Pundit). Here's a little video amuse-bouche of DeSantis's evolution.

I put you through all this for two reasons. One, DeSantis is an expert at finding what works. He has no principles except "I'm the boss!" and he will root around like a truffle hog until he finds that perfect blend of cruelty and sanctimony. He always has an audience because he's mean to the "right" people and there's nothing too big or too small for him be a dick about. He'll find the bright lights and run the perfect play. Over and over. For as long as it works. 

Works at what? Two, DeSantis is entirely a creature of power. It is his only reason for being on the planet. With COVID, as with all things DeSantis, there is no number of dead people that will stand in the way of his ambition. Being the biggest dick in the room is existential for him. Sound familiar? Except DeSantis thinks strategically. 

In June of 2021, while all the COVID hubbub was bubbling, DeSantis was expanding the battlefield in the culture wars. On June 1, 2021, the first day of Pride Month, DeSantis approved a bill that restricted athletes in public schools and colleges to sports teams based on their "biological sex at birth." Then on June 29, DeSantis approved the "Parents' Bill of Rights" establishing, among other things, the right of a parent "to direct the education and care of his or her minor child." 

The sports bill, CS for CS for SB 1028, started out as "An act relating to charter schools" and had zero to do with sex, gender, or sports.  After months of legislative chicanery it ended up as "An act relating to education," with an inserted section (Section 12. Section 1006.205, for those of you playing along at home). 

Designed to address a problem that doesn't exist except in the Fox-addled minds of the MAGA base, the so-called "Fairness in Women’s Sports Act" amended Florida law to require "Interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by a public secondary school or public postsecondary institution must be expressly designated as [male, female, or coed/mixed] based on the biological sex at birth of team members."

DeSantis got the librul tears he was looking for as the law prompted objections from Human Rights Campaign, the LGBTQ+ community, and of course Democrats. NPR reported on the bill signing: 

"In Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports," Gov. Ron DeSantis said as he signed the bill into law at a private Christian academy in Jacksonville that would not be subject to the law.

COVID was kind of played and the governor had found a new passion. He was now all tingly over school kids and their naughty bits. 

I'll put this here to draw the connection between the COVID DeSantis and the school DeSantis. (spoiler alert: it's the same asshole) This flyer concerns the November 2021 laws and comes from the governor's website.

So, again, November 2021, and you can see the school/family half of the menu starts with "nobody tells us what to do" bs about COVID and masks and quarantine, and it ends up with lawsuits and parents' rights and radical school boards. DeSantis runs a potent con and he doesn't hesitate to run it again and again. 

By December, DeSantis adds race to his mission and goes to war with "woke," whatever the fuck that means. On 12/15 DeSantis announces his "Legislative Proposal to Stop W.O.K.E. Activism and Critical Race Theory in Schools and Corporations," described as "a legislative proposal that will give businesses, employees, children and families tools to fight back against woke indoctrination."

Side note: Teachers are aware of their limitations. I know if I'd had any power to indoctrinate I'd have washed their brains full of empathy, curiosity, and joy, not to mention a love for hard work and a passion for Shakespeare. Turned out I was just not that important or powerful. 

Anyway, "Stop W.O.K.E." (with W.O.K.E. an acronym for the dopey "Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees") is such a hit as a follow-up to the great COVID rebellion that it played on all the stations right through the winter. By spring they were ready to roll.

In March we get the news on instructional materials with CS/HB 1467 which, among other things, outlines the clearance requirements for materials. There's also a requirement that each district school board create a process for parents to object to a specific material on any of several grounds. Pay extra attention to Florida statute s. 847.012! That's the "Harmful materials; sale or distribution to minors" portion of this freakshow, and you'll discover that any educator who provokes a parent objection takes a risk. It reads, in part, "Any person violating any provision of this section [which includes 'nudity' and 'narrative accounts of sexual excitement, or sexual conduct...that is harmful to minors'] commits a felony of the third degree." So long, Romeo & Juliet. Bye bye David. You guys had a good run.

After taking the weekend off, DeSantis was back at it again on Monday, March 28, as he signed CS/CS/HB 1557 , known as the "don't say gay" bill among those with a heartbeat and as the "Parental Rights" bill among Republicans. It builds on the "Parents' Bill of Rights" bill You can read it and make up your own mind, but for my money it does two things: prohibits discussion of " sexual orientation or gender identity" in grades kinder through 3 and to infinity and beyond if not "appropriate," and it forces educators to out their students to parents regardless of consequences for the kids. 

Finally (if only), we get the right-wing orgasm they've been edging for since last year aka forever. DeSantis signs the Stop W.O.K.E./Individual Freedom Act CS/HB 7 on April 22, 2022. 

It's true the college parts of the stopwoke circus were enjoined last November by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker who called the law "positively dystopian." DeSantis then got called out for not working that hard to obey the injunction against stopwokeness in college. However, in January a new judge said the governor was doing just fine.

Seems the younger schoolkids are still being shielded from the WOKE, and the bill reveals a pattern of verbal trickery common to the Laws of DeSantis. At least. Let's have a look.

Part of the Act is a caution on teaching about race. See if you can find the traps. Okay, I'll help:

(3)     The Legislature acknowledges the fundamental truth that all persons are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. [The bait. We're all friends here.] Accordingly, instruction and supporting materials on the topics enumerated in this section must be consistent with the following principles of individual freedom: 

(a) No person is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by virtue of his or her race or sex. [Strawman.] 

(b) No race is inherently superior to another race. [Convinced? Agree?] 

(c) No person should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sex. [Wait...What? Can you define that?] 

(d) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are not racist but fundamental to the right to pursue happiness and be rewarded for industry. [What are we talking about again? Dog whistle. Also, There's a fundamental right to be rewarded for industry?] 

(e) A person, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. [What if the person continues to benefit from those actions? Or do we want students to think racism is just... over? And responsibility to do what?] 

(f) A person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. [The switch. Strawman, sure, but mostly gobbledygook cobbled together to get them where they always wanted to go: Shut up about race.]

                                (all emphasis and commentary mine)

It's a con, a bait and switch, a rhetorical flimflam. They use vague wiggle words so the boss can decide what they mean. Who adjudicates the words "adverse treatment"? Who decides when "may" becomes "must"? This allows the perps to deny the real meaning, purpose, and predictable effect of the law while satisfying the crazies.

Whether it's Orwellian or Lewis Carrollian, DeSantis and the De-Lites use language to deflect and enrage. Hence we get this doozy from the governor:

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

In keeping with tradition, they run this con over and over--and by "they" I mean DeSantis (the royal "They"). Regarding Don't say gay Parental Rights CS/CS/HB 1557, the Tampa Bay Times reported:

The text of the seven-page bill never mentions the word “gay.” Its vague provisions offer few details for how the ban on teacher-led instruction of gender and sexuality will be implemented in Florida’s public schools and yet both sides say they understand precisely what the intent is.

Then the paper went on to frame it as an "opponents say"  to describe a bill that, indeed, "both sides" precisely understand:

Opponents warned it is a solution in search of a problem because the primary provisions of the bill — banning teacher-led discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade — is a subject currently not taught in public schools. They say the law is intentionally vague, intended to suppress talk of gender inclusiveness in schools, intimidate teachers into avoiding the topic and target LGBTQ students. (emphasis mine)

Yes. Yes it is.

The sponsors of this perversion repeatedly say "nuh uh!" when confronted with the obvious intent of their fuckery. They are lying.

Doublespeak--descended from the marriage of Orwellian binary stars Newspeak and doublethink--is deliberately ambiguous language and allows a reader to think words mean one thing while the writer can claim they meant something different. 

But they (DeSantis) are not actually that interested in hiding their intentions. For example, in the stopwoke bill, almost every reference to "gender" is replaced with the word "sex," and every time the term is used with regard to protection against discrimination. In "don't say gay," "gender" appears twice, both times followed by "identity" and both times to tell everybody what not to talk about. "Gender" doesn't come up at all in the materials bill which is, I suppose, meant to warn teachers and librarians off everything to do with gendersex.

Even though everyone understands what the laws mean (and who they're meant for), I guess I was still surprised that the laws didn't say exactly what I expected from what I had heard. Turns out, the vagueness is the villainy and also the point. In trainings, out of the TV lights and away from the podium, the rules are being... clarified.

Librarians are being trained to "err on the side of caution" when considering materials. Here's the slideshow, from the Florida DOE. And here's the slide:

Here's a reminder about the law:

s. 847.012 is the pornography statute. How do you know if it's pornography? Glad you asked:

Need more? Here's part of what's illegal:

Harmful to minors? Who decides that? Guess:

Still not sure if Romeo and Juliet is okay? Before you decide, have a look at the penalty:

Like they said, err on the side of caution.

If you're thinking, "Well at least they're trying to protect librarians and media specialists," ask yourself if you trust any of them to decide or even know what "predominantly," "offensive," or "serious" "value" mean. Educators are being threatened and told they will be subject to severe penalties if they don't interpret the statutes correctly. Words can mean just what they want them to mean, and everybody knows what that means.

If you're thinking, "Well, that's for librarians. I'm a teacher," just stop. 

You should be thinking, "First they came for the librarians..." Or maybe, "Nice career. Be a shame if something happened to it." 

Anyway, the law applies to everybody and everything instructional.  "instructional material." 

You don't need a crystal ball. It's happening right now as Manatee County errs on the side of caution. Florida is leaving no doubt about what is expected. Here's a video! courtesy of Duvall County.

Who wouldn't be silenced cautious when you risk losing your job for getting too close to a very fuzzy and sinister line.

And just like the COVID con, DeSantis knows a good thing when he sees it and he is going to ride that train all the way. You will not be surprised to see that he has re-upped his war on teachers for another season. On January 23 he announced something called--I shit you not--a "Teacher’s Bill of Rights" that would, in his words, "increase teacher pay, support teacher empowerment and protect teachers’ paychecks by ensuring they have control over their hard-earned salary.” 

He called it a "huge package," but he may have been just boasting.

The "agenda" is essentially a recipe for breaking the union with cash prizes and permission to beat up kids as incentives. I'm not kidding. This, from the governor's website:

This proposal will establish teacher empowerment provisions in law and will include these main provisions:

• Establish a new process for individuals to notify the state of a violation of teachers’ rights and ensure that the Department of Education can investigate those claims.
• Empower teachers to maintain safe classroom environments by creating a “stand your ground” classroom safety policy to protect teachers who are often judged unfairly for maintaining order and safety in their classrooms.
• Clarify that teachers have the choice to join their local teachers union and will not face any repercussions if they opt not to join.
• Providing civil remedies for teachers who are asked to violate Florida law and punished by their employers for standing up for what is right.

It's a bribe for teachers to demolish their own union. And DeSantis is not stopping at high school. Those college perfessers are a thorn in his side, too:

The Governor’s proposal will create more accountability and transparency for public sector unions, including K-12 teacher unions and higher education unions.

Public sector unions. Hmm... That covers a lot of ground. However, it is not at all clear that the "accountability" includes unions that support the governor such as as firefighters and police. Sounding a little like a kid scared of getting the only spanking, union leader Terrie Brady wondered. This, from WJXT television in Jacksonville:

Terrie Brady, President of Duval Teachers United, questioned why DeSantis is targeting teachers unions and not other unions like those used by police and firefighters.

“In Duval County, we have four or five other unions here that represent members in the exact same way. They do collective bargaining, they have dues deduction, they are a stand-alone, they represent grievances due process, all sorts of things. Maybe it’s because we are the largest, you know, that could that could be it, maybe it’s because we are politically active,” Brady said. “I do want to stress that no union dues are used for political activities.”

Yes, do stress that. And I'm pretty sure "politically active" doesn't tell the whole story of why you're getting shit on. I'm sure that if you just gave up the idea that history happened and all kids should be protected and have equal rights, you might get out of the doghouse. But maybe not. DeSantis needs somebody in there that he can be tougher than.

All must bow before the fratboy king.

Next: The Teacher and the Fascist