DeSantis and friends want to pass on to our children that hatred they have in their hearts

Lyman High School students have not been able (or allowed) to pick up their yearbooks, that end of the year tradition that dates back to the 19th century. Heck, I still have mine more than 50 years later. Lyman is located in Longwood, Florida, less than a half-hour car ride from Disney World.

The reason? Pages 110 and 111 of this year’s book “show students holding LGBTQ pride flags and signs at an event held to protest the Parental Rights in Education law — commonly referred to as ‘Don’t Say Gay’ — which prohibits public elementary school teachers from instructing about sexual orientation and gender identity,” reports the Miami Herald. Officials with Seminole County Public Schools say the photos don’t comply with school board policy.

This is the result of the hatred and turn the clock back to what some MAGA types feel was a better time when Blacks, gays, and others were either kept in the closet in Florida or simply hanged from trees. And this is not hyperbole (that overused word Joe Biden loves to use): A report from the Equal Justice Initiative about lynching across the American South reported that the Sunshine State was among the most brutal in the country when it came to race-fueled executions of Black people. Per capita, Floridians lynched at a higher rate than any other state, it said.

The Lyman affair can be blamed on Gov. Ron DeSantis and his acolytes in the Florida Legislature, many in the closet themselves, or who just can’t stand the thought that, chances are, they have a family member who is gay. 

The response from the high school principal, as reported by the Herald, was an email to parents of the mostly pissed-off kids from the school that read: “Unfortunately, the pictures and descriptions that depicted this event did not meet school board policy and were not caught earlier in the review process. … Rather than reprinting the yearbook at substantial cost and delay, we have elected to cover the material that is out of compliance with board policy so that yearbooks can be distributed as soon as possible.”

One of the saddest parts of this story is that this is simply a snapshot, and a good one, of what too many in the U.S. Congress and across the United States want our kid’s future to look like. One where the pursuit of knowledge, especially when it centers on our faults and historical sins, is frowned upon. In other words, Ron DeSantis, for example, does not want white kids to know too much about the sin of slavery because it might create guilt among those same students. In the case of the LGBTQ+ community, it’s just not what red-blooded American boys and girls should stand for. So his solution, cover it up, like they will do to pages 110 and 111 in the Lyman High School yearbook.

What DeSantis and others like him don’t seem to understand is that he continues to send happy children to that dark closet they once had to hide in. And he has not noticed that the darkest and largest closet being rebuilt is the one he lives in.

But Florida seems to have this water that’s special. I’m not sure if you drink it, bathe in it, step on or in it… but it produces the likes of DeSantis, and then there’s the case of our own man from mars — a face from outer space, or those Top Ten Most Wanted posters. His name is Rick Scott and he’s one of our two U.S. senators. Take a close look at him (I’ve included a picture for your perusal). Seriously, if he’d been in my high school, I would have harangued the yearbook committee till they covered his face. He’s scary… and not just because of that face.

Scott has proposed a MAGA plan on steroids which among many other things has the lower and middle classes paying higher taxes because big business pays too much; Medicare and Social Security will be eliminated because we can’t afford it any longer (but we can afford to cut taxes on the rich). Anyway, Scott feels that if you can’t afford your golden years in the U.S. then you should not be here; as for the advances on issues affecting gender and family, here’s how Scary Ricky puts it in his plan: “Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies.” 

By the way, he never explains where he falls in that last description of men and women… Mars? Pluto?

The thing is, Scott is a shameless scoundrel. He’s rich. Yes. Very wealthy, in fact. And he made all that money by scamming Medicare. When asked of his ties to Medicare fraud, he answered:“I refuse to apologize for my success.”

I will quote Politico, considered a right of center publication, who explains Scott’s wealth in this way: “The legacy of Scott’s leadership of Columbia/HCA — once the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain before it ousted Scott and settled the largest health care fraud fine in history at the time — underpins his political identity. The company is the origin of his fabulous wealth, which has allowed him to pump $106.5 million of his own money into his campaigns…”

Like I said, it’s the water

Of the way too many that we have in Florida that are imbued by that strange water I speak of, there’s also the other senator from the Sunshine State, Marco Rubio. We’ve discussed Sen. Rubio plenty in Progreso Weekly. We’ve mentioned how he may be the laziest member of Congress — he rarely shows up to work. Remember when he ran for president and said, “We’re not going to fix America with senators and congressmen.” As a result, he rarely showed up for work in the Senate. But he did cash his paychecks. 

Rubio, as president of the Florida Senate, in 2005 and 2006 illegal used his Republican Party of Florida-issued American Express card to pay for trips, meals and gifts for him and his family. He quickly waved off those accusations (that were proven) by saying that he occasionally used the party’s card to pay for things that were not related to his job, but that he always paid American Express with his own money for those items. Not only is the man a thief, but also a bad liar.

As for his lies, we’ve seen it time and again. Or have we already forgotten that he, in 2013, co-wrote a comprehensive immigration bill. He received so much backlash from his Republican colleagues regarding the bill, and when he realized it would never pass, he decided he’d vote against his own bill. Folks, it had his name on it!

So not only is he ethically challenged and a chronic liar, but he’s also a coward.

I can go on and on about our Florida politicians — and they are in every sector, from the U.S. Senate to the Miami commission and school boards across the state.

In the end we must look inward, though. We keep reelecting these, what in any well written novel would be considered, villains. 

All the while these criminals are making the lives of our children and grandchildren miserable by depriving them of their yearbooks, for god’s sake, and returning them to a puritanical time of the Scarlet Letter as in the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. 

And at the same time, enriching themselves on the backs of American taxpayers.