Professors from across the country have long been lured to Florida’s public colleges and universities, with the educators attracted to the research opportunities, student bodies, and the warm weather.
But for a swath of liberal-leaning professors, many of them holding highly coveted tenured positions, they’ve felt increasingly out of place in the Sunshine State. And some of them are pointing to the conservative administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as the reason for their departures, according to The New York Times.
DeSantis, who was elected to the governorship in 2018 and was easily reelected last fall, has over the course of his tenure worked to put a conservative imprint on a state where moderation was once a driving force in state politics. In recent years, DeSantis has railed against the current process by which tenure is awarded, and with a largely compliant GOP-controlled legislature, he’s imposed conservative education reforms across the state.
You go live in a Christo-fascist shit hole. I’d rather take my family and go live somewhere safe, sane and better educated.
I’m in one of these shit holes, and what’s frustrating about your attitude is the privilege behind it assuming all of us can leave.
I never said everyone can leave, I never even implied it.
For as many good and decent people there were in Weimar Germany trying to change things, for as many people voted and participated in civic life, for as many people who genuinely loved their country more than a funny little man screeching about how they’d all been wronged (and who tried desperately to warn others of the encroaching danger), for as many people who had grown up there in a long unbroken line of forebears who had done the same, once the Reichstag Fire took place it was a done deal.
I think that in 1945, if you asked any German who had chosen to stay in 1933 if it was worth it, they’d have laughed at you or spat on you. I’m reading a book right now called Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself, about the waves and waves and waves of suicides – thousands – by any means possible in late April and early May, 1945 as the war was drawing to a close: even many of the survivors didn’t want to live in the world they had insisted upon creating just a handful of years earlier.
Similarly, today, when all the votes in your area have been neutralized by extreme gerrymandering, and you’re in a state that seems set in its right-wing lawless trajectory, there’s not a lot you can do. I’m in a similar situation as you, and I’m personally viewing the upcoming elections and whatever happens leading up to them as the period of time when we either take real steps toward fixing our shit OR our very own Reichstag Fire takes place. Like you, I can’t get out today, not even in 2023. But we’re making plans and going to do our very best. We can’t stay for this. And honestly, I don’t want to be around people who think any part of this is good, or even live well for a while in their idea of a good time, much less reap the eventual whirlwind they’re sowing right now.
It’s not just the right wing; it’s that EVERYTHING here is going to shit, it’s becoming a police state, and while it used to be a beautiful place to live, I don’t want to be here when they start the ovens or do whatever heinous shit they do to the outgroups to solidify their power. We’re getting out. I don’t have the ability to change anyone but myself, but that much I will do: not my conscience, not my convictions, but absolutely my location. Given my online life and vocal opinions regarding the oncoming fascist wave, I will certainly be on their list: I am the absolute definition of low-hanging fruit in that regard, lol. So to take the metaphor a step further, I literally have to move the tree or I will die trying.
Authoritarian governments only ever go in one direction. And they very rarely end whole. Get out while you can.
Exactly the wrong way to look at it. The way to overcome gerrymandering is to push higher turnout.
Short version is that in order to do that kind of extreme gerrymandering successfully, they have to make assumptions about what the vote will look like. One of those assumptions is that Dem turnout is lower than GOP turnout, because it is - GOP treat voting like a civic duty, Dems generally don’t. This is why putting even mild roadblocks in front of voting (like having ID, or waiting in line, or w/e) favor the GOP - GOP voters will jump through whatever hoops are necessary to do their civic duty, Dems get dissuaded from voting with much less effort.
What this means is that if Dems turnout in force, they win. In most places they outnumber GOP, even in gerrymandered maps - they just have to actually vote en masse.
No. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Two years ago, the purple part of my congressional district did just that, turned out to vote in force on an already gerrymandered map. Thus the R candidate had to fight like hell, and only won by a slender margin.
The Rs won. You might well assume it stopped there, and apparently have, going by what you wrote.
But because the margin was by less than 2%, and this is a red state, within a year the state legislature MOVED the purple and blue part of this congressional district slightly northwest to the solidly Dem “black” district, where our votes will simply go to the very cool and very secure Dem representative who already has all the votes he needs (and is worth every one of them).
The actual urban center, where my vote used to matter, will now remain R in perpetuity.
TL;DR: We voted en masse on a gerrymandered map. The Rs won, but it scared them. So they changed the map again.
Tell someone else how Dems voting en masse on a gerrymandered map does anything but get a corrupt red state legislature to move the lines again.
It’s literally impossible to draw districts in such a way that a minority party is the majority of voters in every district. You have to either pack the opposition into seats you are basically giving them to secure yours or you are doing some math on expected turnout and thinking how to promote turnout for your party and depress it for the opposition and aiming to win by a smallish but predictable margin.
It sounds an awful lot like you are in a very red state, and there isn’t a blue majority that can hypothetically vote.
Or they’ve packed enough Dem voters into a single district (depending on the state not doing this can be considered illegal racial gerrymandering, depending on how majority-minority districts fit in - in some cases not having them is racist, in others packing minorities into them is racist). But that requires a small number of total districts, or surrendering more than one to the opposition (the more districts you have, the less impact surrendering one district gives you).
Really, we just need to switch to some fixed, abstract mathematical process that cares not about how people will vote and use that to draw district lines. Something like least split line. But that’s a hard sell, because the people who would need to pass it are the people who benefit from it not existing.
What’s this “every” district business? Congressional elections, urban area, two primary districts with others on the fringe. The state legislature redrew the line between one of the primary districts and a fringe district. Lo and behold, a new perma-R city that was solidly purple and occasionally blue.
I won’t say which congressional district I’m talking about but honestly it’s not even hard to figure out: it’s not like they failed to announce it after the fact, or no one noticed when it was done.
There was, until two years ago. But hey, keep explaining. Maybe if you throw enough good-sounding words at the problem that will change the reality of it.
Enjoy it while it lasts, which will not be long if nobody is willing to resist.
The best time to resist is before it is overrun with regressive extremists.
I don’t blame anyone for getting out now that it’s a total shit hole.
So you’re saying we lost and should retreat? To where? If we all give up and move, by the time we’re settled in fascism will have followed us.
It’s like this, I’m not going to fault anyone who decided to get out of Germany in the 1930’s. Similarly, I can’t blame people who prefer to leave for greener pastures rather than deal with Christian White Nationalist a-holes everyday.
What a lot of people here don’t realize is a fascist USA will still affect them even if they move abroad.