We Floridians didn’t suddenly decide to hate each other in this way. We are being sacrificed to a pressure cooker of political ambitions.

How? It has to do with @GovRonDeSantis and the abuse of Florida.

Now at @thenation, co-written with @jeffvandermeer
www.thenation.com/article/politics/florida-ron-desantis-education-public-schools/

We expect to see him make a bid for the presidency. He is not "Trump-lite."

Again: He is not "Trump-lite."

His popularity rests on heaping abuse on anyone he considers a threat to his supremacy among educators, children, and parents—deflecting from real problems of state.

It has to do with making us afraid of each other and using children as symbolic pawns to sacrifice to that idea.

It has to do with dividing us and aiming abuse at how we describe ourselves.

His actions deflect, also, from how educators are exhausted. These are the same people who drove house to house during the pandemic, looking for students, delivering meals, checking on homework.

I wrote about this for @TDOnline when #COVID19 arrived.
www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2020/03/31/coronavirus-and-teachers-preparing-isolating-catching-stude...

Now, people congregate to yell at teachers, School Board members, and hurl abuse on the school system. Fomented by DeSantis' agenda & growing network of control.

As this is happening, children watch and learn and get caught in the middle.

"The Republican Party's beating heart is fear," a former Republican strategist told @cityandstatefl.

This article is not to weigh DeSantis' chance at the White House or seek to chronicle any of his perceived successes.

What he is doing is dangerous. It's dangerous for children. It's dangerous for #Florida. It's dangerous for the US as his playbook is modeled in other states.

“No one can tell DeSantis he’s wrong about anything without being punished,” #Florida professor Stephanie Williams said.

To avoid a presidency that would "Make America Florida" is the crudest and most harmful of ways, we must reject everything DeSantis stands for.

I am grateful to all who read this article.

We must remember it doesn't have to be this way.