DeSantis framed the barrage of negative press stories as the workings of a “corporate press” that does not want to see him “dismantle the administrative state.” He insisted the Republican debates would be another vector for highlighting his personality to voters.
The dude picked a fight with a mouse and lost… over the ‘don’t say gay’ bill.
He says a lot of good things, but that above tells me everything I need to know about him- that he’s petty and vindictive and will use the power of his office to punish anyone who dares oppose him. Even a company that’s one of his state’s biggest employers, who’s brought literally billions of dollars of trade and investment and tourism to the state. And that for me is a hard pass, even if he says a lot of other good sounding stuff. It says he won’t run the nation for the good of the nation, but for the good of his own agenda.
For the record, I am pro vaccine, I was very pro mask during COVID, and I strongly supported the various lockdown and masking policies. If anything I felt they often didn’t go far enough, prioritizing continuity of business over public health. For the most part I stand by those positions. The question here is not the validity of anti-maskers or anti-vaxxers, or the question that their visibility can do harm to society. I believe it is pretty obvious that such groups did some serious harm and cost a lot of lives.
The question here is whether the government should be coordinating with technology platforms to suppress speech it disagrees with or considers harmful. And I think the answer is hell no. Even if they requests in the COVID era were helpful, this is not a good thing for government to be doing.
Go back to the 9/11 era. It was a similar situation, just with the parties reversed. Then a Republican government was saying limits on civil liberties were essential for national security, and opposition to these policies help terrorists. Now a Democratic government was saying limits on civil liberties were necessary for public health and opposition to these policies spreads disease. The merits of these two positions are irrelevant. What matters is that a free American people should have the opportunity to make that judgment for themselves, not have the “wrong” answer suppressed before they even see it. Because if we suppress the ‘wrong’ anti-vax today, then we open the door to suppress the ‘right’ answer tomorrow.
If American people are such sheep that they must be protected from ‘wrong’ ideas, then the answer is not censorship, it is education. If we are that stupid, that we need to be treated like children, then we need to very quickly and with great urgency figure out why our educational system is failing to teach critical thinking and fix it immediately.
This is not a partisan issue and I am not taking a partisan position. I’m not endorsing or defending Republicans or anti-vaxxers. GOP does a lot of crappy stuff. That doesn’t automatically mean I should line up to support every single thing the Democrats do. We need better education. We need less censorship. These are two separate unrelated issues.
Once again, my position and my post were non-partisan.
I am 100% against book bans. I’m 100% against ‘suppression of ideas on social media’.
I also think the cure feeds the disease. The second someone in authority says ‘you musn’t say that’ or ‘you musn’t believe that’ or ‘that idea is dangerous’, you create the conditions for weaponized misinformation to flourish. Doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. The instant you classify a position as unacceptable, a whole host of people (many of them stupid) will adopt that position for no reason other than that they were told not to. They’ll say ‘the establishment told me not to do this, there must be something here that I want that they want for themselves’.
Look at coronavirus. Yes there was TONS of weaponized misinformation. But the way our culture made it unacceptable to even question the status quo helped spread that. Republicans (and idiots) accused the government of a power grab, treading on civil liberties, using a fancy flu as an excuse to grab power. I don’t personally agree with that take, but if you suddenly aren’t allowed to say or share it, that puts a LOT of legitimacy to the ‘trying to grab power’ argument. First they come for your freedom of movement or freedom to make your own medical decisions, next they come for your freedom of speech when you try to say otherwise!
I honestly believe the suppression efforts, if anything, only amplified the message they were trying to suppress.
And I’d point out- if the government has the authority to mute a loudspeaker, then what happens next time when the guy with the loudspeaker is correct? If we make suppression of speech a legitimate government power, who’s to say it will only be used for good?
If you are considering race as part of a college admissions, then you are NECESSARILY racist. You’re not picking the best applicants, you’re picking the best applications of a race mix you want.
Now, I’ll be the first to say that certain minorities are under-represented in colleges. But that’s not necessarily the fault of the admissions process. If the admissions process truly is race-blind, as it should be, then we should be asking why fewer people of whatever race are showing up as competitive candidates. And that brings us to the REAL problems- that a lot of minority applicants come from poor neighborhoods with bad primary education, crap high schools full of gangs and drugs, and few resources like books and computers and other opportunities to excel. And THAT is the problem we should be fixing.
Ron DeSantis: You Have to Meet Me to Like Me ( www.thedailybeast.com )
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