Reflections on the short yet deep book of Timothy Snyder.

Beware one-party states. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office. (Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, Chapter 3)

I suppose I could write this post in one word: FLORIDA.

Florida, a state now suffering under super-majority Republican rule, which means the Democrats still in office cannot use the few privileges of a minority party to stop bad laws.

Combine that with a governor who pushed the power and reach of his office to unprecedented levels, who cowed the super-majority into supporting his policies and ambitions, and you have a state beyond the control of the people because the radical Republicans have hopelessly gerrymandered the state into an enduring network of fiefdoms. This despite the fact that Florida has Fair Districts Amendments in its constitution. See here for an explanation of how the amendments work and the shenanigans that followed.

I am disappointed in the impotence, ineffectiveness, and incompetence in the current Democratic leadership to form an effective opposition to Republican steamrolling both nationally and statewide. I have been ready to switch my registration back to NPA, but then I thought, if I live in a one-party state, maybe I should grit my teeth and register Republican because the real choice to be made is in the primary.

But I cannot stomach that thought or take that action. In the afterlife, I don’t want to have to explain why I got into bed with devils.

What has been the effect of this one-party state, one with the most extreme of radical educational reformers destroyers?

• Unlimited vouchers most of which now go to people who already were paying for the children to attend private or parochial schools.
• Book-banning in which the school library is restricted to only those books that contain the correct thinking.
• Abstinence-only sex education for adolescents, which has been shown to impair health and increase unwanted pregnancy.
• A testing regime that goes on and on even when it has lost its purpose.
• The casting aside of elected officials on the flimsiest of excuses, a phenomenon that cannot have escaped the notice of elected school board members.
• A state school board made up of sycophants and toadies, whose only purpose is to serve coffee and donuts and receive marching orders written on napkins.
• A take-over of universities, all for the purpose of purging academic freedom that goes back 1000 years to the first centers of education and for pillaging the finances and rewarding presidents, whose only qualification consists in shouting, “Hear, here,” to the governor.
• A state mired in mediocre or worse academic achievement in its schools no matter how loudly it blasts the success of the Florida model.

Beware one-party states, America. Don’t be Florida.