Florida: The Orwellian Transphobe State

Truth be told, I'm not 100% comfortable rooting for corporations. I think they are, and I say this not being an economist or anything, a big part of everything wrong with anything. That said, I am rooting for Penguin Random House.

"Hey there Milton Friedman fans, who loves capitalism!"

-Some corporate guy

A group of penguins in the water is known
as a raft, while on land they're called a waddle.
It's not relevant, I just felt you should know.

The gigantic publishing conglomerate is comprised of The Penguin Group and Random House which merged in 2013. Then, realizing that they didn't control the entire industry, they then tried to buy Simon & Schuster in 2020, but The Department of Justice sued on anti-trust grounds because occasionally the government remembers that that's a thing they should do to avoid the world spiraling into even more of megacorporation-run hellscape than it already has. Anyway, the DOJ won and the deal fell apart, and the aforementioned spiral was slowed. Slightly. I mean, we're still doomed.

But why in the world would anyone cheer on this stifling, monopolistic nightmare of end stage capitalism?  Because they're suing Florida, that's why. Well, one county specifically, and it's not just Penguin Random, but we'll get to that. Escambia county has banned a ludicrous number of books recently in response to a few ignorant, yet vocal people who find their worldview threatened by things they don't understand. Which is a lot.

Pictured: Ron DeSantis grinning like an idiot over all the anti-queer
and anti-trans legislationhe's just signed. Legislation which apparently 
fulfills article IIa of the Geneva Convention's definition of genocide. 

Sunshine, ok, but now they're more
known for book bans and racism so
maybe it's time to rethink the motto? 

The plaintiffs include the publisher, a free speech advocacy group, the authors of some of the banned books, as well as some parents of children in the district. Basically everyone with a stake in this. They argue that the county's bans "disproportionately target books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people, and have described an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments." But that's only because they disproportionately target books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people, and describe an orthodoxy of opinion that violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

"Look, if we can't erase queer people,
what are we supposed to campaign on?
Our ideas? We're Republicans..."

-Some Republican

Which they do. And of course they're targeting marginalized groups. Of course they are. It's what they have left and they're leaning into it. The GOP is running entirely on a platform of stoking baseless, hate-filled fears about trans people, pretending that slavery wasn't all that bad, and guns. Lots of guns. The political Right love--and I suspect are sexually excited by--the Second Amendment and its dubious--and imaginary--right to any and all weapons, no matter how lethal, in unlimited quantity no matter how untrained, insane, or on a watchlist someone is. 

Yet they're weirdly disinterested in the Fourteenth's protection of equal rights and they only care about the First's free speech protections when someone calls them out for saying something shitty. Because consequences are for other people. Anyway, that's why it's ok, in this once instance, to get behind a corporation. Well, ok, two corporations, Disney's also doing its best to screw over DeSantis. And we're here for it. 

Above: the things Republicans are more worried about
than tens of thousands of gun deaths per year.