Date: 2024-07-26 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00024802
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A LOT OF DYSFUNCTION
DailyKos: Florida Is Doomed And I Can't Stop Laughing
A LOT OF DYSFUNCTION
DailyKos: Florida Is Doomed And I Can't Stop Laughing
Rotting Crops In Florida
Original article: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/13/2175058/-Florida-Is-Doomed-And-I-Can-t-Stop-Laughing
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis makes me feel stupid ... which is really very clever of him. I am aware that this man is really very very clever with a very prestigious education that includes Yale Law School. I watched his addresss to the ???? Conference in Philadelphia aired on C-SPAN and understood very little of it beyond the idea that DeSantis does everything right and others in politics have everything wrong ... but the language he chooses to use is dominated by words that have come out of 'right field' and a vocabulary that seems more like the rantings in a secret society than anything I encounter in may real daily life. For me DeSantis is operating in an 'alternative reality' ... but that might be politically smart because understanding facts and real reality might be too hard for most of his cult-like followers. As I said, the man is clever, ambitious and I would also add very very dangerous.
Peter Burgess
Written by Phil In Denver
Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)
Tuesday, June 13, 2023 at 2:38:45p EDT
It’s true folks, it is SO MUCH worse down there than you may think. By signing his latest fascist legislation which criminalizes undocumented immigrants for...well... just being in Florida, De Santis has effectively chased out virtually the entire undocumented poplulation of the state, which means more than 80% of the construction workers, and nearly 100% of the agricultural workers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It cascades from there. I just spent half an hour on tiktok, for an old timer like me that’s a bit of a challenge, but it was worth it. In that short amount of time, I saw latin truckers blocking entire highways with their boycotting and refusing to deliver loads in Florida, or to take loads out. They aren’t even undocumented, that’s just the solidarity folks.
I saw video after video of empty construction sites and of fruits and vegetables rotting in the fields, fields that should be bustling with tough hard working folk picking the vines and trees, yet completely abandoned. But that, like I said is just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s starting to cascade from there, I saw videos of Walmart and Home Depot completely empty, totally devoid of customers. I saw videos of farms that hired American workers to try to do the jobs of the undocumented. It was both hilarious and heart breaking. The farmers complain the gringos are too fat and out of shape to do the job, most go home after lunch and many quit after a single day.
I saw an interesting comparison video, it’s in spanish, if you are not a spanish speaker fast forward to about 0:48. The fun starts there. It starts showing how latino roofers do the job, and then shows how their American replacements try to do the same job. Also similar examples of agri-workers, and many others.
Here we have an in depth (by Tiktok standards) look at a housing development under construction. It’s virtually abandoned. The narrator states that just in the room he is standing in there are normally at least 15 workers, it’s empty. He says that only 4 workers showed up to the whole site that day, and one was the foreman.
Or how about a look at a convory of Latinos leaving Florida:
Why Aren't Them Folks Going To Florida To Get Jobs That They Claimed Immigrants Took From Them?
Ooh, and here’s one of my favorites. How about a tour of the local totally empty Walmart as given by an astonished patron, I mean really, have you EVER seen a Walmart that wasn’t packed with customers? Well now you can.
Not to be outdone, Home Depot is also vying to be the winner of the retail wasteland sweepstakes, non-spanish speakers can fast forward to the one minute mark if you want to skip the spanish monologue.
Yes, looks like good ol’ Meatball Ron has really stepped in it this time. It won’t be easy to recover from this, even if the legislature repeals this fascist law, what immigrant is going to risk returning when there are plenty of worker starved farms and construction sites welcoming them with open arms in somewhat more comfortable climates like Georgia and Alabama. Hell, we’re even getting some of the overflow here in Colorado where farmers and construction sites are practically rolling out the welcome mats. As they say, once bitten twice shy. Nobody’s going to go back to Florida after this, at least not as long as right wing lunatics and Nazi sympathizers are running the show.
Oh, and here’s a bonus video, this African American Youtube star with over a million and a half subscribers is telling his mostly AA audience NOT to go to Florida and bail them out. Don’t miss the the guy who proposes sending Appalachian white welfare recipients to go pick fruit. Good luck getting them to put down their meth pipes to go roast in the Florida sun for minimum wage (or less). Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
So why am I laughing? Because I’m originally from Florida, a boni fide native of the Sunshine state, and I’m absolutely horrified to see what wannabe fascists have done to my once beautiful state. I’m retiring soon and will have to do so in a northern state as I will not set foot in the South as long as it remains under the current fascistic spell to which it has thus far succumbed. If I have to freeze my tuchas off up here in the North for the rest of my days, I can at least take comfort that the yahoos who took over Florida are getting their comeuppance. One might say it’s cold comfort with a capital ”C”, but somehow, it’s better than no comfort at all.