Republished with permission from Florida Phoenix, by Diane Roberts

Welcome to the Science-Free State of Florida, where facts are dismissed, obvious truths denied, and thinking discouraged.

Failed presidential candidate and professional pouter Ronbo DeSantis recently had references to climate change removed from state statutes.

Now his Department of (Mis)Education wants the phrase “climate change” excised from Florida school textbooks on the ground that it’s “ideology” or “indoctrination.”

Indoctrination? We’ve got your indoctrination: Last year, Ronbo and his DO(Mis)E goons approved the use of inaccurate, indeed dangerous, (but cute and cartoony) videos from Prager University (which is not a university) in Florida classrooms.

These little gems parrot oil and gas industry talking points, claiming green energy is a lie, and comparing climate change activists to Nazis.

Florida’s current regime (motto: “Ignorance is Strength”) operates on the theory that if you refuse to utter certain words—”racism,” for example, “COVID,” or “climate crisis”—and pretend with all your might that what you see in front of you isn’t real, then the problem disappears.

There’s two feet of water in your living room, it’s over 100 degrees outside, the beaches are festooned with dead fish, and the coral reefs are dying, but hey, that’s just summer in the Sunshine State!

Ronbo, who isn’t even good at gaslighting, wants you to believe this is all perfectly normal.

Christina Pushaw, longtime DeSantis aide, blows it all off: “Welcome to the rainy season.”

Pushaw, who must be a great disappointment to her former teachers, says, “Do not fall for the propaganda that it’s a new danger or we can stop hurricanes by eating bugs, banning cars, mandating lab grown meat etc.” Bless her heart.

Taking it Out on Florida

Ronbo’s still hopping mad about how non-Florida America took one look at him last year and went, “Oh, HELL no!”

So he’s taking it out on Florida, vetoing stormwater mitigation programs and a bill, passed unanimously in the Legislature, requiring the Department of Health to close dangerously polluted beaches—what’s a little fecal coliform between friends?

He’s also chosen to torture agricultural and construction workers, signing a law forbidding cities and counties to institute protections for the 2 million Floridians who build the condos and pick the tomatoes in the increasingly monstrous heat.

No required water breaks. No required shade breaks.

Planetary warming is fake, right?

Skin cancer? Heat stroke? Whatever.

It’s more important to keep the campaign donors from Big Ag and Big Development happy.

And while we’re in banning mode, let’s take a sharpie to any book in any school library and black out the words “gender,” “gay,” “race,” “slavery,” “Big Bang,” “evolution,” “ocean acidification,” and “Gaza.”

Speaking of children, the state has also rejected woke federal money to help feed poor kids over the summer.

Food only encourages them.

Anyway, if the kids survive the heat and the hunger and make it back to school in the fall, their souls will be nourished by those PragerU videos, not only the climate denial epics, but the ones in which an animated Christopher Columbus tells two white kids slavery was better than being killed and Frederick Douglass says slavery was “a compromise to achieve something great: the making of the United States.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to suspect Ronbo and those chuckleheads at DO(Mis)E don’t really believe in learning.

Not the reality-based kind.

Less Pride, More Prejudice

I mean, (Mis)Ed Commissioner Manny Díaz Jr. put out a reading list for American Pride Month (not the rainbow kind, the USA! USA! kind) which includes Jane Austen’s great novel “Pride and Prejudice.”

Poor bugger. Did no one tell him 1. Jane Austen was not American; 2. The novel has nothing to do with America; and 3. The novel satirizes rich, self-righteous, ignorant conservatives?

Ronbo should read it. Maybe Casey can find him an abridged edition.

But he’s too busy bragging about how U.S. News and World Report ranks Florida “number one” in education.

Thing is, the ranking is based on factors like cheap college tuition and low rates of student debt.

Not actual education as in critical thinking, exposure to ideas your parents hate, learning the actual history of this country, the inspiring as well as the hideous parts, and understanding that science is evidence-based and employs what those elite expert types like to call “data.”

Universities—the decent ones—don’t want to admit students from schools forced to lie about what’s happening to the earth.

See, science doesn’t care what you believe.

You can believe the sun revolves around the earth, the Bible is the literal Word of God, and gravity is merely a theory, but that doesn’t make it accurate.

Try this experiment: Take a step off a second-story balcony. See what happens.

Or maybe refuse to get your child vaccinated against measles and stick her in a classroom with a measles-infected child.

See what happens.

Who Cares?

You might remember earlier this year we had a rather scary measles outbreak here in the science-free state of Florida.

Our chief health officer, Quack General Joseph Ladapo, leapt into action with a shrug, telling parents to go ahead and expose unvaccinated kids to the disease.

The tough ones will probably survive.

Doctors in the reality-based community have responded to Ladapo with a mix of horror, embarrassment, and ridicule pointing out the Quack relies on studies that haven’t been peer-reviewed or vetted, with results that can’t be replicated.

He seems to think the COVID vaccine can get into your DNA and do something sinister to you.

That ain’t how it works. As one immunologist said, “You have better chance of becoming Spider-Man than being harmed by DNA from the COVID vaccines.”

As of June, 2024, 2,740 Floridians had died of COVID [this year].

Dying of COVID is preventable.

Climate change cannot be halted in its humid tracks, but we can tackle the emissions that cause it.

Ronbo simply doesn’t want to. He’s a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Energy.

Who knows how many Floridians will die of heat-related illnesses?

Who knows how many houses will be destroyed and lives ruined in a hurricane super-sized by the increasingly warm waters of the Gulf and the Atlantic?

Who knows how many towns will wash away in Florida’s unprecedented rainfall.

Ronbo’s answer: Who cares?