I’m curious about how accurate this article is, in the opinions of Dopers, about the state of Florida.
Let me summarize this. It’s not a good summary, the article covers a lot of ground.
From above link:
…under the memes and jokes, the state is also making an argument to the rest of the world about what freedom looks like, how life should be organized, and how politics should be done. This is clear even from Britain, a place characterized by drizzle and self-deprecation, the anti-Florida.
What was once the narrowest swing state has come to embody an emotional new strain of conservatism. “The general Republican mindset now is about grievances against condescending elites,” Michael Grunwald, the Miami-based author of The Swamp, told me, “and it fits with the sense that ‘we’re Florida Man; everyone makes fun of us.’ ” But criticism doesn’t faze Florida men; it emboldens them.
[it is no coincidence the two main Republican candidates] both have their base in Florida. In one corner, you have Donald Trump, who retired, sulking, from the presidency to his “Winter White House” at Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach….
In the other corner stands the state’s current governor, Ron DeSantis, raised in the Gulf Coast town of Dunedin, a man desperately trying to conceal his attendance at the elite institutions of Harvard and Yale under lashings of bronzer and highly choreographed outrages. In his speeches, the governor likes to boast that “Florida is [where ‘woke’ goes to die].” In his 2022 campaign videos, he styled himself as a Top Gun pilot and possibly even Jesus himself. You couldn’t get away with that in Massachusetts.
DeSantis is a politician who preaches freedom while suspending elected officials who offend him, banning classroom discussions he doesn’t like, carrying out hostile takeovers of state universities, and obstructing the release of public records whenever he can. And somehow Florida, a state that bills itself as the home of the ornery and the resistant, the obstinate and the can’t-be-trodden-on, the libertarian and the government-skeptic, has fallen for the most keenly authoritarian governor in the United States.
In Florida, no one wants to hear about the costs or the consequences. Why else would people keep rebuilding fragile beachfront homes in a hurricane zone—and expect the government to offer them insurance? Of course everyone wants the Man to butt out of their life, but at the same time, the state-backed insurer of last resort hit 1 million policies in August.
… Disney’s success only underlines how the state is one giant theme park. “This is not a place that makes anything, and it’s not really a place that does anything, other than bring in more people… Having brought in those people, what Florida never tells them is no , nor does the state ask them to play nicely with the other children: “We’re not going to make you wear a mask or take a vaccine or pay your taxes or care about the schools,”
Braided through these experiences was the sensation of Florida as a refuge from reality, something that has encapsulated both its promise and its peril since before it was part of America. In the early 1800s, enslaved people escaped from southern plantations and sheltered in Seminole lands, prompting Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, to launch the first in a series of devastating wars. Florida was soon offloaded by the Spanish, and loosely attached to the U.S. for two decades before becoming a state in 1845. It was roundly ignored for a long time after that. In 1940, it was the least populated southern state.
The reasons for its transformation after World War II are well known: air-conditioning and bug spray; generations of northeastern and midwestern seniors tempted by year-round sunshine; the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who fled Fidel Castro in the 1960s. Then came the rodent infestation: Disney, with all its money and lobbyists and special tax arrangements, and eventually its own town, called Celebration. Now the state draws crypto hustlers, digital nomads, and people who just plain hate paying state income tax. All of these migrants fueled decades of explosive growth and a landscape of construction, condos, and golf courses. In 2014, Florida’s population overtook New York’s, and in 2022, it was the nation’s fastest-growing state.
But those bare facts conceal a more fundamental change. As Florida has become America, America has become more like Florida: older, more racially diverse but not necessarily more liberal, and more at risk from climate change. “The state that looks most like what we’d expect the United States to look like in 2060?” Philip Bump writes in his new book, The Aftermath. “Florida.”
Wow, that’s the saddest sentence I’ve read this week. I’ve never been to Florida, so I have nothing else to add.
“The elites”.
These mopes are a hairsbreadth away from being able to grasp the concept of “class warfare”.
And the GOP is scared to death of that.
Nah, they’ve convinced them that the problem isn’t people with more money, it’s people with more education.
The summary/recap of the article sure looks one-sided to me. There are millions of people in Florida, living happily. The Governor is well-liked in his home state and the residents are content. Are they afraid a Northener will move in? I don’t think so, no indication of it I have seen. Are Floridians afraid someone who graduated from college might move in? I don’t think so, many have done so and no rebellion has evidenced itself so far.
This just looks like an anti-R piece, not to be taken seriously. I am happy in Illinois, lived here all my life. We were once a state with people who had different views, and happily did so. I fondly recall Sen. Dirksen, who famously thought that “a billion here…” was a lot of money. Interestingly, a look at his obit didn’t even say what party he was in, a leader of.
Florida is a nice place, happy people, apparently satisfied with their political leaders. Why should the educated elites in New York feel they have to deride them?
Being satisfied with the likes of DeSantis is plenty of justification for deriding them.
"Germany is a nice place, happy people, apparently satisfied with Mr. Hitler. Why should the educated elites in New York feel they have to deride them?’
FWIW, lots of us are not satisfied with them. Granted, I live in Broward County, which is heavily Democratic.
I live in Pasco when I’m there, which is the land of endless mobile home communities filled with retirees whose sole news source is FoxNews.
The description is accurate, within the limits of the broad generalizations it uses.