The Big Empty Tent Party

Although they actually filmed in 
California, the correct state.

I don't hate Florida. I mean, I kind of hate Florida, but Florida's a place. It's neutral. It's muggy, the mosquitos are famously unbearable, and it's prone to hurricanes, but parts of it are ok, right? And The Golden Girls lived there, and I realize that a lot of good and decent people call it home, even if a fair number of them make terrible, ill-informed decisions when it comes to choosing elected officials. Decisions that may someday soon lead to the end of democracy in America. But I don't hate Florida. 

Sure, I may have suggested on more than one occasion that we simply sell it back to Spain and use the proceeds to make the morning after bill free. And the knowledge that Ron DeSantis's fascist little fiefdom will someday soon be underwater gives me no small amount of schadenfreude. 

Actually a lot of the country will soon be underwater and
that's terrible. The fact the Florida Governor's mansion will
be is just a silver lining of an otherwise grim future.

"We're just trying to protect kids from the real
threats: drag shows and learning about slavery."

-DeSantis, Republisplaing

And I know we throw that word fascist around a lot now and that often times it's not warranted and can even be insulting to people who've survived actual fascists, but Governor DeSantis and Republicans in Florida do seem to be, you know, wallowing in this gross authoritarianism. And if they're not full-on fascist by the political sciences' definition, they're at the very least playing all the fascist hits: trying to control what's taught in schools, trying to restrict criticism against them, and most unsettlingly, the scapegoating of vulnerable communities.

Above: some rubes.

The Republican Party, evidently out of ideas when it comes to governing, has instead built their entire platform on identity politics. Specifically straight, cis-gender, white, Christian, male, conservative, gun-owners identities. And everyone who doesn't fit that is woke or are groomers, or are whatever other scare words Fox News is using as a wedge to convince shall we say, low-information voters? No, rubes. To convince rubes that their way of life is under attack. 

What? When they stop banning Drag shows
and abortion, I'll stop calling them flyover states.

And it's making places where the GOP is in charge, like Florida, Texas, or Tennessee feel less like America and more like bleak dystopian hellholes. I'm not saying I was planning to move or even visit these places. Thanks to the miracle of modern air travel, I can glide majestically over the former Confederate States without having to gas up at a Kum & Go. But it shouldn't, you know, be this way, and the only hope I can cling to is the idea that this kind of identity politics can only go so far for so long. Eventually something's going to give, right? 

Like, increasingly fewer people tick all the boxes and eventually the GOP is just going to whittle down its definition of who counts as an American and who doesn't to such a narrow point that all they'll be left is a big, mostly empty tent with Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Marjorie Taylor Greene competing in a rap battle to prove who can have the shittiest towards trans people. And yes, I realize the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

"The winner and still champion, Marjorie Taylor Greene!"

-Matt Gaetz, Republican 

Thunder Dome Referee