Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scared off millions of dollars worth of business from his state with his extremist, bigoted agenda.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has scared off millions of dollars worth of business from his state with his extremist, bigoted agenda.
Fortunately for Ron and unfortunately for everyone else, he doesn’t give a shit about Florida’s economy as long as he can be the boss.
The thing about dictators is that they want more. For themselves. If gutting 100m worth services or taxes gets them $10,000 that they themselves can personally use, they’ll do it.
Everyone should read the dictator’s handbook, or some other explanation of selectorate theory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selectorate_theory
Has he ever addressed these publications publicly? There’s been articles constantly written calling him out and how Florida is gonna hurt. But never see any follow up from him.
Unfortunately there’s no real mechanism to hold a politician’s feet to the fire except elections. He knows there’s no advantage in addressing any reality that reveals his ineptitude so he just wont.
I agree elections are important and the established mechanisms for influencing politics.
But ignoring the option for non-peaceful protest or targeted legal action/harassment (cough cough operation snow white and scientology getting tax exempt status ) at specific actors are how you control your politicians, especially when dealing with minority rule.
They’d love us to believe that a good 10 hour peaceful protest and some election 18 months away is the only way to directly influence democracy.
Real change happens when the wealthy are actually afraid of the consequences to their actions. Elections are simply a peaceful option to accomplish the same goal.
The question was why Ron wouldn’t publicly address the reality of his policy decisions. None of what you mentioned will force him to do that. Sorry you misunderstood that to be dismissive of political engagement.
I didn’t really take it as dismissive of political engagement, but I figured the statement “aside from elections there’s no way to hold a politicians feet to the fire” was fairly incomplete and ignoring the options available.
I don’t think an election, win or lose, would hold Ron’s feet to the fire enough to get a confession/publically address the reality of his policy decisions. My statement wasn’t a proposed strategy to acquire Ron’s confession, but a reminder of another mechanism available to every one of us that can be used to assert the dominance of the people over our elected officials, and can be implemented at any time, not just elections.
So I don’t really see how my inclusion of using “advanced negotiation techniques” against specific individuals has any less potential for success than an election (both in the case of Ron, and generally speaking).
I personally believe that now more than ever people need to be aware that the option of coming together with a common goal and implementing collective, non voting/election action is both available and an effective option - especially for younger people who rarely vote.