Two Troubled Souls
Donald the Dumb has a meme in Gov. DeSantis of Florida. Interestingly, DeSantis wants to out-Trump Donald the Dumb. Look into the eyes of these two quasi-leaders. Looking at these troubled souls, I remember T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men.
I’m not sure that DeSantis knows the origins of the word meme. Surely, Trump didn’t explain the meme’s meaning to him since Donald the Dumb never knew. The word comes from an ancient Greek word, μίμημα, which means to imitate. Only a hollow person would want to mimic Donald the Dumb, aka Trump.
DeSantis fills his emptiness with some truly stupid and racist mindsets. DeSantis had the Florida Board of Education develop a set of new textbook criteria. According to the new educational standards, there was a value to slavery. One of the advantages of slavery is that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
The justification for enslaving people is that some smart enslaved people might learn something while in slavery, like learning to be a blacksmith. That assumes that enslaved people didn’t know anything in the first place and needed slave owners to teach them.
Granted, I’m white, but that mindset is ill-informed and racist. Whites enslaved humans starting in August 1619 when an English slave ship brought a couple of dozen enslaved Africans to Point Comfort in the Virginia colony. Point Comfort is a strange name for the birthplace of slavery in America.
Another part of the new educational mindset is based on assisting white students to avoid feeling the discomfort of things like slavery and the Civil War. This is the quote from the new guidelines. “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”
This is another addition to Florida’s educational standard. “An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”
Therefore, Florida’s new curriculum handled racism in high school to avoid having white students feeling “discomfort, guilt, (or) anguish.” Nevertheless, I assumed that there were black students in Florida schools. So, I googled Florida’s K-12 students based on race and found that 33% were Hispanic and 22% were black. Florida’s state attorney in Tallahassee has also victimized Hispanics this month with a racial slur by expressing racism toward Hispanics in an email. Do the math; over half the students aren’t white in Florida’s public schools.
Trump and his meme, DeSantis, are hollow men. To feel emboldened, they use racism to feel more macho than mere hollow men.
T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men
Visit the On Seeing the Light page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Connecting the Dots page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Darkest Before Dawn page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Best and Worst of Times page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Donald the Dumb page to read more about this topic.
Visit the Stupid is as Stupid Does page to read more about this topic.
08/18/23