The Truth Will Set You Free

 I suppose the good news is that there are a great many of us who A) completed a rudimentary course in the history of the United States and B) do not live in Florida. Because those nutjobs in the Sunshine State have really stepped in it this time. 

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the powers that be in America's most atrophied appendage have decided that not only will Critical Race Theory and all of its attendant woke ideologies be taught in Florida's schools, they would like everyone to appreciate just how bad a rap this whole slavery thing has gotten over the years. 

And then there's this: “Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.” From the tiny minds of people like Ron "Ald" DeSantis, this isn't even a version of the truth. This is wholesale revision, using every effort to eliminate the reality of the enslavement of another people and their subsequent dehumanization for generations in order to Make America Great. The momentum gained by African Americans to regain that humanity over the past four hundred years seems to have hit a brick wall, in the form of Governor Ron's thick skull. 

Florida is, according to the folks they put in charge down there, "Where Woke goes to die." A quick check of the facts suggest that Florida is where reality goes to die, which may be good news to people running a fantasy theme park, but not so good for trying to teach kids history. After hundreds of years coming to grips with our part in the formation of this "more perfect union," why is it exactly that the governor of Florida feels the need not to sand off any possible sharp edges, but to replace it with a version of the past that can't even come to grips with the basic principles of slavery. 

Oh. That's right. He's running for president, and the only way he imagines that he can beat the former game-show host and twice impeached bloated sack of orange protoplasm with multiple state and federal indictments is to come in below that bar. I shudder to think what the Florida State Board of Education will have to say about the Holocaust.