If anybody is still looking for a way “to save our democracy,” this is it:
It’s official —Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill ending Disney World’s special status in the Sunshine State. DeSantis went after the House of Mouse after it announced public opposition to his Parental Rights in Education bill.
The constitution was written when there was the state and the citizen. Now, we have an oligarchy, a weak shadow of the state, and something only vaguely resembling a citizen. The oligarchy has methodically shredded our constitutional rights and turned the state into its servant. And as I explained in my first video, no nation-state means no democracy.
In a nation-state (which is the statehood model that gave us our constitution to begin with), public education is a crucial tool used by the state to create the cohesive culture of “we, the people.” Unless the state reclaims its exclusive prerogative to define the public school curriculum and completely ejects the oligarchy from that process, we won’t have a nation-state. That people don’t get this and even argue about “Disney’s right” to have input into public education shows how far we have traveled down the road of destroying the nation-state to please a tiny group of extraterritorial, supranational oligarchs. “Where are your conservative principles?” they moan. My conservative principle is preserving the nation-state, not sticking my head in the sand and pretending that the constitution isn’t being reduced to a Bounty paper roll.
I’m in awe of DeSantis. I’m stunned that he gets all this. Nobody else seems to. Trump never did anything half this gutsy or pro-nation. (If he did, please give examples. I’m eager to be proven wrong). We need more politicians like DeSantis. We need to support DeSantis in what he’s doing.
This is a hopeful moment, folks. With what’s going on in Ukraine,* with the UK’s flourishing after leaving the EU yoke, the solidarity in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, and now a major US politician, a governor of a crucial state making a series of bold moves as if the nation were still real. I don’t know if it’s all going to work but there’s reason to hope.
Have a happy Holy Saturday!
* I’m referring to the Ukrainian search for a nation-state model that will avoid the pitfalls of the digital totalitarianism, corporate wokeness, and Western self-effacement.
Clarissa's Blog 
“* I’m referring to the Ukrainian search for a nation-state model that will avoid the pitfalls of the digital totalitarianism, corporate wokeness, and Western self-effacement.”
Unfortunately, I think this is the destination for almost any Western nation. There is a saying: Hard times create hard people. Hard people create good times. Good times create soft people. Soft people create hard times.”
I would modify it to, “Good times create soft, spoiled brat, entitled people who don’t understand the good life they have.” There’s more, but that is probably the core of what leads to all the other nuttiness. It started in America and probably Europe as well in the 1950s after WWII. Because of the horrors of the Great Depression and the war, the parents spoiled their kids rotten as they wanted them to have the good life they never did. Many of said kids became young adults very hateful of their own country. Many then moved into public education and the universities, where further brainwashing of follow-on generations began.
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All true, unfortunately. It is now completely beyond the pale to say that the Western Civilization is amazing, that it created the modern science, the modern medicine, and most of the cultural and intellectual achievements of humanity. But no, we are supposed to be ashamed of all of this and constantly apologize for it.
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“completely beyond the pale to say that the Western Civilization is amazing”
Instead, there’s this….
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Yes, precisely the people who created the most comfortable and successful civilization in human history. Sure. Makes total sense.
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I love what he is doing!
I haven’t heard much about UK status post Brexit – is there an article you can direct me to? Good news it is thriving.
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What DeSantis is doing is so much bigger than one piece of legislation and standing up to one corporate bully. Unfortunately, I’m not seeing anywhere an analysis of why his policies are crucial in the big picture sense. There’s so much to talk about here. Gen X is turning away from globalizing postmodernism and embraces nation-building! This is huge. A bunch of younger politicians around the world are opposing the post-nation state. And DeSantis is the most consistent and the strongest of them in the US. This is what we should be talking about instead of palpating this elephant blindly and noticing only small parts of the process.
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Tangentially: stripping Disney of its special legal privilege also affects The Villages. I’m curious to see how that plays out.
I don’t see any reason for a corporation to have legal privileges that real people don’t have, so completely apart from the education connection (I homeschool, no dog in that fight…), hooray! If they want to argue now that those special powers to grant themselves building permits, etc. were good then it should be arguably good for anybody, not just gigantic corporations. A lot more people could afford to build homes in the current way-too-tight market, if they could grant their own building permits…
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DeSantis is amazing! I have been following how he handled covid, and I never been so excited at the prospect of voting for any politician. I really hope he becomes president in 2024!
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I would so hate to lose him as governor of Florida! A big part of me does not want him to run for president… I feel like he’s doing such a great job for our state, and I have zero confidence he could accomplish anything similar at a national level– institutional capture is too great an obstacle there.
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We need many more DeSantises. If he figured it out, other people can. This should be a movement, a wave. This is the first time in 40 years that anybody has dared push back against neoliberalism. It’s amazing that it happened and it needs to become a frequent occurrence.
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Yes! We should get to keep our DeSantis, and find another one to run for president, and forty-nine more to be governors of all the other states, plus several thousand for county boards of education, mayor, state legislatures, etc.
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