The African-American neighborhood of Fort Myers in an undated photo.
May 24, 2024 by David Silverberg
This is a revised and updated version of an article first posted on May 22, 2019.
This Saturday, May 25th, marks 100 years since two African-American teenagers were seized by a white mob and lynched in Fort Myers, Fla.
The anniversary comes amidst a rise in hatred and racism in the United States and serves as a stark reminder of where bigotry ultimately leads. It’s also a demonstration of what happens when the rule of law breaks down.
It can happen here—and it has.
It’s also worth remembering; history does not have to repeat.
What happened
This account draws from two sources: One is an article in The Fort Myers News-Press on the event’s 90th anniversary. That article, “Lynching history spurs call for closure, 90 years later” by reporter Janine Zeitlin, was published on May 21, 2014. The account drew on people’s recollections and the work of Nina Denson-Rogers, historian of the Lee County Black History Society, who pieced together fragmentary information on the incident.
The other is the original, unbylined article that appeared in the Fort Myers Press on May 26, 1924, headlined, “Negroes pay penalty for horrible crime committed yesterday.” (Referred in this article as the “1924 account.” The article is posted in full below.)
According to Zeitlin, on Sunday, May 25, 1924 two black teenagers, R.J. Johnson, 14, and Milton Wilson, 15, (his name also given as “Bubbers” Wilson and the other victim is named as Milton Williams in the 1924 account) were spotted by a passerby swimming with two white girls on the outskirts of Fort Myers, then a segregated city of about 3,600 people. Lee County was home to about 15,000 people.
“The lynchings happened after R.J. and Milton went swimming at a pond with two white girls on the outskirts of town,” according to the Zeitlin article. “They were said to friends with the girls, maybe more. Perhaps they were skinny-dipping. There were rumors of rape, though one girl and her brother denied it.
“The two boys and girls lived near each other, were long familiar and played with each other as children, states Zeitlin. The swimming was reported by someone as a rape. The 1924 account simply states that the boys “attacked two young Fort Myers school girls.”
The black community first learned that something was amiss when evening church services were canceled. Just before sunset the rape report resulted in white residents on foot, horseback and in cars gathering at a white girl’s residence. From there they began invading black homes and yards in a search for the two boys. During the evening, chaos spread through the city as the search continued. At one point a gas truck was driven into the black community with the intention of burning it down if the boys weren’t found.
Lee County Sheriff J. “Ed” Albritton in an undated photo. (LCSO)
At some point R.J. Johnson was found. According to the 1924 account, he was arrested by Sheriff J.E. Albritton and put in the county jail.
“Hearing of this the armed citizens went to the jail and demanded the prisoner. The request being lawfully refused by the sheriff, he was overpowered, the jail unlocked and the negro led out,” states the 1924 article.
According to that article, once seized, Johnson was “taken before one of the girls” where he was identified and confessed. According to Zeitlin, however, one of the girls and her brother denied that there had been any rape.
In the Zeitlin account, Johnson was taken to a tree along Edison Avenue, hanged and shot. According to the 1924 account “his body was riddled with bullets and dragged through the streets to the Safety Hill section.
“The search then continued for Wilson, who was found at 4:46 am the next morning by a railroad foreman, hiding in a railroad box car on a northbound train. He was taken from the box car, hanged, castrated and shot multiple times. His body was then dragged down Cranford Avenue by a Model T.”
“It was like a parade, some evil parade in Hell,” according to Mary Ware, a resident who was quoted in a 1976 article in the News-Press. The crowd broke up when the sheriff and a judge appeared.
The headline in the Fort Myers Press.
On Monday the afternoon edition of the Fort Myers Press was headlined “Negroes Pay Penalty for Horrible Crime Committed Yesterday.”
On the same day a jury convened and absolved the sheriff, attributing the lynchings to “parties unknown.”
“That the rape had taken place, the black community definitely felt never occurred, that it was prefabricated by this white man who came across them swimming,” said resident Jacob Johnson in a late 1990s interview with the Lee County Black History Society, quoted by Zeitlin. “Everyone felt … these boys had just been killed for no reason, other than they were there with these white girls.”
In the United States, however, it evokes a particular idea: a racially-based, mob-conducted, illegal, unpunished hanging driven by hatred, prejudice and rage, usually based on unfounded accusations.
The era of American lynching is considered to have lasted from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, often known as the Jim Crow era. If one wishes to put specific dates on it, it arguably lasted from the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896 that enshrined segregation of the races as “separate but equal” to 1954’s Brown vs. Board of Education when the Supreme Court ended segregation in education.
But these are debatable dates. There were lynchings before these dates and after. They didn’t all involve hanging.
What’s more, not all lynchings were racially motivated. In the western United States, cattle rustlers and other accused criminals were strung up by posses on the spot regardless of their race.
Whatever the dates or history, it’s clear that lynching is where racism, blind fury and bigotry lead, the Fort Myers lynching no less than any other.
But the Fort Myers lynching is also a lesson on the rule of law. In 1924 the two accused teenagers had no rights, no protections, and no defense. They were never able to assert or prove their innocence. They were presumed guilty from the outset, never tried and were punished according to the whims of the mob.
As the rule of law is eroded in this country, every American loses the protections that law provides. The result can be something like a lynching—and can lead to the deaths of innocent people.
A century may seem like a long time ago, in a different age and this kind of behavior may seem ancient and unthinkable today. But the fury and hatred that led to lynchings is still very much with us.
Very recently, in our own time, on Jan. 6, 2021 an incited horde of insurrectionists invaded the United States Capitol. Outside was a crude gallows. Inside those imposing halls the screaming rioters demanded to hang the Vice President of the United States.
That was a lynch mob just as surely as the one that demanded the deaths of Bubbers Wilson and RJ Johnson.
In 1924, the mob succeeded. In 2021 it failed.
Even now, the only thing standing between mob mayhem and civilization is the rule of law and the willingness to apply, assert and enforce that law. It’s a precious gift that’s under enormous threat.
And if there’s any lesson that the Fort Myers lynching can teach, it’s that the rule of law needs to be defended as much today as it did then, 100 years ago—and it is just as threatened.
The gallows erected outside the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Tyler Merbler)
The full front page of the Fort Myers Press on May 26, 1924.
Below is the full text, with original capitalization and usage, of the article on the Fort Myers lynchings as published on the front page of The Fort Myers Press, on May 26, 1924:
NEGROES PAY PENALTY FOR HORRIBLE CRIME COMMITTED YESTERDAY
Two negro youths, “Bubbers” Wilson and Milton Williams, met death at the hands of “unknown persons” early this morning following their positive identification as the two negroes who yesterday afternoon had attacked two young Fort Myers school girls.
Within a few hours after word of the happening had reached town a systematic search was started independent of the efforts of Sheriff J.E. Albritton who with his force was on the job immediately upon hearing of the crime.
A general round up of suspicious characters by the sheriff’s office netted Wilson, who was lodged in the county jail.
Hearing of this the armed citizens went to the jail and demanded the prisoner. The request being lawfully refused by the sheriff, he was overpowered, the jail unlocked and the negro led out.
Taken before one of the girls he was identified by her and then taken away where he confessed to his captors, following which his body was riddled with bullets and dragged through the streets to the Safety Hill section.
The search for his accomplice was then carried out with increased vigor, all outlets from the city being carefully guarded. The hunted man was located about 4:46 a.m., on a north-bound train pulling out of the railroad yards. Following his positive identification, he met the same fate as the first negro.
The following jurors were sworn in by County Judge N.G. Stout, coroner ex-officio, this morning: C. J. Stubbs, C.C. Pursley, Vernon Wilderquist, Alvin Gorton, W.W. White and Thomas J. Evans.
Charged with ascertaining by what means the two negroes met their deaths, the jurors reported as follows: “the said “Bubbers” Wilson and Wilton Williams came to their death in the following manner, to-wit:
By the hands of parties unknown, and we herewith wish to commend the Sheriff and his entire force for the earnest efforts made by them, in their attempt to carry out the duties of their office.”
Still, Collier County has ‘a superb system’ for elections
Collier County Commissioner Chris Hall at the moment he discussed 9/11. (Image: CCBC)
April 24, 2024 by David Silverberg
During discussion of his election-disrupting resolution during the Collier County Board of Commissioners meeting yesterday, April 23, Commissioner Chris Hall (R-District 2) said that the election of President Joe Biden in 2020 hit him harder than the terrorist-piloted planes that smashed into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I’ll never forget how I felt the night of the 2020 election,” said Hall. “It was worse than I felt on 9/11.”
He continued: “There was something just deeply wrong with that and I know several in here in the room was ecstatic about that. But there was nothing that was fair about that election, when the results didn’t even show up and had been manipulated.”
He then declined to continue on the subject or offer evidence. “You know, I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole but there’s a rabbit hole to go down,” he said.
Hall’s comparison of the 2020 election results to 9/11 brought a rare rebuke from fellow Commissioner Rick LoCastro (R-District 1) when it was his turn to speak. LoCastro is a retired US Air Force colonel and Air Force Academy graduate.
“First I want to say something to you, Chairman Hall, and I mean this with no disrespect,” he said, somberly. “I was unhappy in 2020 but I got to tell you, as a veteran, I could never say it was worse than 9/11. I lost so many people on 9/11 and afterwards and so…. I understand how you package the meaning you were trying to say and so I realize you’re not being disrespectful, you’re a huge supporter of veterans but I just want to go on the record to all the veterans that are here: 9/11 was horrific, OK?
“Nobody died in 2020. I lost hundreds of friends, I held dead people in my arms, I put American flags over caskets, I put them on airplanes after 9/11 and after, so I don’t ask you to rescind those comments and I say this with all due respect so I’m not…I hope you’re hearing this in a positive [way].”
Referring to Commissioner Burt Saunders (R-District 3), LoCastro continued: “So I think, as Commissioner Saunders said, sometimes words matter and we speak up here very quickly about domestic animal services and other things and Conservation Collier, but I just wanted to go on the record and say 9/11 was horrific and I don’t think there’s many things that I hope will [ever] top that.”
A number of public speakers at yesterday’s meeting, including Supervisor of Elections Melissa Blazier, pointed out that invalidating the 2022 election would have invalidated Hall’s own election, since that was when he won office.
But Hall was at pains to argue that his resolution did not target Collier County and he praised Blazier and the work of her office.
“One of the hardest things I’ve ever done is sit here for 45 minutes and hear this applied to things it doesn’t even apply to,” he said impatiently when the public comment period was over. “We are not talking about our local supervisor of elections. We’re not talking about Collier County, in no way. If I was ever illegally elected I would resign in three seconds.”
In Collier County, he said, “We have a superb system and I have utmost confidence that we were all elected fairly.”
The resolution was aimed at being part of a national movement to alter voting procedures, he said. “…I just want to make it very, very clear this resolution has nothing to do with our local supervisor of elections, our local integrity. It has to do with the people that’s—it’s a grassroots effort, it’s a movement to begin here and go with every county in Florida to send to our state legislators and our state Senate to let them know how important, fair, accurate and accountable elections are. That’s all it is.”
As he put it: “We want the fire to begin here.”
Commentary: finale
Given the public opposition and lack of support of the Board of Commissioners for the resolution that would have significantly altered voting procedures and made them more cumbersome, restrictive and possibly illegal, the United Sovereign Americans effort to light that fire certainly did not ignite yesterday in Collier County. Fla.
The Collier County Board of Commissioners during yesterday’s meeting. (Image: CCBC)
A demonstration in favor of women’s reproductive rights at the Collier County, Fla., Courthouse on Oct. 2, 2021. (Photo: Author)
April 10, 2024 by David Silverberg
Imagine, if you will, that it is a few minutes to midnight on Tuesday, April 30, 2024.
In Florida’s towns and cities crowds gather in the darkness on courthouse steps and town squares to mark the imminent implementation of the “Heartbeat Protection Act,” the state’s six-week abortion ban.
At each gathering, speakers address the crowds, many of the women in Handmaid costumes. As the clock nears midnight, the speaker raises a copy of the pamphlet containing the Roe versus Wade decision.
Then, at midnight, the speaker sparks a flame and sets the Supreme Court decision alight, marking the end of a woman’s right to choose in Florida.
A burning copy of the Roe v. Wade decision. (Photo illustration: Slate)
The pamphlet burns quickly. An assistant strikes a bell that mournfully tolls 12 times. The fire dies into darkness. The bell’s sound fades into a solemn moment of silence. It is one minute past midnight, May 1, 2024.
Then spotlights come up and focus on the unscrolling of large banner that has on it the words of Amendment 4:
“No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion.”
The crowd cheers and waves small flags bearing the words of the amendment that were earlier distributed. They chant: “My body, my choice, my vote, my voice.” And then they march.
The media visuals are spectacular and spread across the state, the nation and the world.
And the battle to pass Amendment 4 is formally joined.
Or perhaps that’s too dramatic and impractical. Maybe anti-choice towns and cities in Florida won’t provide a permit for a midnight gathering or it’s too much to organize on short notice.
Maybe a less complex form of observance is also an option.
Perhaps at midnight on April 30-May 1 supporters of Amendment 4 can open their windows or go outside on their porches, and decks and lanais and simply bang a pot or pan for five minutes to register their protest and alert the world that they are mobilized and ready to work to change Florida’s Constitution.
It’s a common form of protest in countries where people fear retaliation and punishment for their views. There’s even a name for it: “cacerolazo,” a Spanish word derived from “stew pot” (similar to the word “casserole”) and it’s a time honored type of dissent. In recent years it was mostly used in South America to demonstrate against everything from government repression to economic austerity.
Imagine a cacophony of banging pots rising from Florida’s midnight darkness; a protest—and a warning.
Whatever form it takes, the coming into force of Florida’s abortion ban should not go unmarked.
But this year the abortion fight has an interesting wrinkle and it’s one that pro-choice activists should use to the max.
A wrinkle of timing
When the Florida Supreme Court issued its abortion rulings on April 1 it set up an interesting political dynamic.
In one ruling it declared that the six-week abortion ban could go into effect in 30 days. That is scheduled to occur at midnight, May 1.
In another ruling it declared that Amendment 4 legalizing abortion could go on the ballot and be decided on Election Day, Nov. 5.
It is 188 days (6 months and 4 days) between those dates.
During that time Florida women will be stripped of a right to choose that they enjoyed for the previous 50 years under Roe v. Wade. They will feel what it is like to lose a fundamental right, to have a heavy hand descend on their lives and have no recourse or appeal. The media will carry stories like those in the past from Ohio and Indiana or Texas about Florida women who suffer because Florida has outlawed safe, legal abortion.
But that period also provides a powerful incentive for pro-choice advocates to make their case for passing Amendment 4 with the 60 percent majority they need to add it to the Florida Constitution.
It should not be allowed to slip away.
Reactions and implications
There has now been sufficient time to react to the Florida Supreme Court’s rulings and across the board, political analysts and pundits view it as a disaster for Florida Republicans both in the state and quite possibly nationally. A tsunami of commentary is already breaking and will gather force and volume as Election Day draws nearer. (Of note: Early voting begins Oct. 26.)
Still, some voices stand out.
President Joe Biden’s campaign is arguing that the abortion decisions make Florida winnable for Democrats.
“We definitely see Florida in play, and unlike Donald Trump, we have multiple pathways to 270 [Electoral College votes] that we’ve been able to keep open,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign manager for the Biden-Harris reelection team, told reporters after the Supreme Court rulings.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the Florida Democratic candidate for Senate, called the rulings “a game-changer.”
“I think that millions of Floridians regardless of party, we know that this is not a partisan issue, are going to come out to the ballot box and make sure they protect their right to choose and their freedom,” she stated. She has used the rulings to hammer her opponent, Sen. Rick Scott, who supports a national abortion ban.
Florida pundit and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, who had a long career as a down and dirty Republican political operative, called the rulings “consequential” in a post titled, “Welcome To Ground Zero: Florida Puts Abortion On The Ballot.”
The amendments, he wrote, “will reshape the race in Florida — particularly down-ballot,” overturning Republican calculations. “This was the last thing they wanted,” he noted.
“Pissed-off women are dangerous women, and the six-week bans on abortion are having a massive political ripple effect in the country,” he wrote. “The Florida Democrats should focus on tightening the GOP’s current 800,000 registration advantage and ramping turnout with women voters.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who pushed for the six-week ban when he was running for president and signed it into law, struck back—feebly.
At a press conference in Davie, Fla., on April 4, DeSantis said that Florida voters would reject Amendment 4 and an amendment to legalize recreational marijuana as too radical and “very, very extreme.”
He also expressed a belief that many Florida voters are too ignorant to understand or vote for the amendments.
“I think Florida voters over the past four or five cycles have developed a skepticism on these amendments generally because they’re always written in ways that are confusing,” he said. “You don’t necessarily know what the intent’s going to be. So I think there’s a certain segment of voters, they default. Just vote ‘no’ on these things. Because they know that these things cost tens of millions of dollars to get on.”
Alleged vagueness in the wording was also the argument used by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and her allies when they argued against including Amendment 4 on the ballot before the Supreme Court.
But the Supreme Court rejected their arguments. “Here, there is no lack of candor or accuracy,” stated the Court’s opinion. “…the ballot language plainly informs voters that the material legal effects of the proposed amendment will be that the government will be unable to enact laws that ‘prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict’ previability abortions or abortions necessary to protect the mother’s health. It is undeniable that those are the main and material legal effects of the proposed amendment.”
(The entire ruling is available for download at the end of this article.)
The rulings also had the effect of forcing Donald Trump, Florida resident and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, to issue a statement to clarify his position on abortion, which he did in a video on April 8. In it he took credit for appointing the US Supreme Court judges who overthrew Roe v. Wade, said that abortion should be left to the states and then declined to either endorse a national ban, as anti-choice activists had hoped, or set a time limit when abortions should be legal.
One view of Trump’s abortion position. (Illustration: M. Wuerker/Politico)
His operative paragraph was: “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint. The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state. Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks or some will have more conservative than others, and that’s what they will be.”
Another cartoonist’s view of Trump’s abortion statement. (Illustration: Andy Marlette)
It was a statement that attempted to have it all ways and it satisfied no one. Today, Wednesday, April 10, while questioned on a tarmac in Atlanta, Ga., Trump said he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected president.
Analysis: A rare moment in time
The timing of both the ban and the amendment present Floridians with an extremely rare political opportunity. Like a slingshot propelling a stone, the ban will give force, momentum and impact to the amendment effort. With the experience of repression, people will know and understand what they’re trying to achieve by passing the amendment.
The momentum is not all on one side, of course. Opponents will know that they have to preserve a ban that’s already in place. But at the moment, there is little evidence of the enthusiasm and determination to match the pro-choice side. However, opponents can be expected to mobilize so the conflict will be intense.
Another positive indicator for amendment advocates is the success of pro-choice measures in previous elections, even in very conservative states.
Wilson noted this in his analysis.
“The Democrats should take lessons from the abortion ballot questions in Kansas, Kentucky, and Ohio,” he wrote, referring to recent victories for abortion rights.
“This isn’t simply about abortion qua abortion.
“It’s about the heavy hand of government overreach. It’s about Ron DeSantis deciding when you should know if you’re pregnant. It’s about monitoring women. It’s about turning doctors into criminals.
“The winning formula is out there on this issue. Democrats would be wise to use it. The ads, messages, and strategies in successful models of this issue are more libertarian than you might expect…and draw a percentage of women Republicans and conservative-leaning independents across the line.”
In all, Florida—and other states, like Arizona—are poised for an epic battle over women’s abortion rights, one that will ripple down the ballot and shape the nation.
It’s a rare moment in history, as rare as a solar eclipse.
But unlike an eclipse, its outcome is in the hands of the people on the ground. And in this case, those people can ensure that the sun comes out to once again shine on the Sunshine State.
The solar eclipse of April 8, 2024. (Image: NASA)
Click on the button to download a copy of the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling onAmendment 4.
The crowd gathered at the “Reduce the Rancor” event at the Naples United Church of Christ. (Photo: Author)
Feb. 19, 2024 by David Silverberg
On Feb. 7 over 700 people gathered for a “Reduce the Rancor” forum at the Naples United church of Christ, to calmly, rationally discuss handling political differences and bridge them in respectful, civil ways.
A week later, on Feb. 13, the Collier County Board of Commissioners, following three hours of public comment, chose to take a step backward in time, ignore scientific evidence, and end fluoridation of Collier County’s water. Fluoride had been added to Collier County’s drinking water since 1985 in an effort to reduce teeth cavities and improve overall dental health, in keeping with recommendations from a wide variety of organizations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to the American Dental Association and the American Medical Association among many others.
The two events may seem unrelated; one a polite conversation by the county’s leading citizens, the other a formal, governmental function considering a chemical process. However, each displayed the differences playing out in this county and in the country as a whole between rationality and emotion, expertise and suspicion.
There was another difference: the forum provided a common ground for a theoretical discussion of behavior; the Board made a decision that will actually affect people’s health.
The forum
Panelists at the “Reduce the Rancor” event. From left to right: Andy Solis, Francis Rooney, Mike Love, Nick Penniman, Dick Gephardt and Sharon Harris-Ewin. (Photo: June Fletcher)
While political partisans have rallies to fire up crowds and mobilize the faithful, the “Reduce the Rancor” forum was a kind of rally for people who want to restore some sort of calm and civility to public dialogue.
It featured six speakers, all accomplished local residents, from all political sides. Andrew “Andy” Solis, a Republican, was a former Collier County commissioner from District 2. Francis Rooney, also a Republican, represented the 19th Congressional District from 2017 to 2021, after a term as US ambassador to the Holy See. Richard “Dick” Gephardt, a Naples resident, was twice a Democratic candidate for president and served 28 years in the House of Representatives. A media perspective was provided by Nick Penniman, retired publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and lead director of NewsGuard, a company that evaluates accuracy in media, and Tim Love, a veteran advertising executive and author of Discovering Truth, a book on media accuracy. Rev. Sharon Harris-Ewing, a leader of the Interfaith Alliance of Southwest Florida, rounded out the presentations by focusing on values beyond just politics.
“Civil discourse requires some specific shared values,” she noted, observing that some of the values and skills that enable that discourse comes from faith and “an open mind and an open heart,” as well as humility and respect for others, a sentiment that was echoed by other panelists.
The forum was moderated by Mike Kiniry, the producer of the “Gulf Coast Life” program from WGCU-FM. But it was introduced by its organizer, Gunther Winkler, president of Greater Naples Leadership and a native of Austria.
In introducing the program Winkler recalled growing up in a war-shattered Austria, where people wondered how their misfortune had come about. “It was divisiveness,” he said, recounting the violent Nazi takeover of the country. Today, he said, he is seeing the same demand for picking sides and calls for violence that occurred then. However, today “we have the power to reverse this”—hence, his work in creating the forum.
The speakers attempted to get at the causes of the political rancor being experienced in Collier County and in the country generally. It was blamed on the political climate, social media, a mainstream media playing up the extremes and on the personalization of politics.
Only one panelist, Rooney, took aim squarely at an individual as the cause of rancor in the public square. Asked who was chiefly responsible for the current discord and told that he did not need to mention names, he said: “You know who, and it starts with a T”—a striking statement given that Rooney in his first term was an adamant and outspoken defender of Trump.
“There are individuals who fire this thing up and the biggest one of all, I think, is Donald Trump,” he said. “He exerts a magnetic influence over an awful lot of Republicans—not the ones like me who are financing Nikki Haley, by the way.”
Solis, who served District 2 from 2016 to 2023, during the worst of the COVID pandemic, faced sometimes bitter and vituperative attacks for trying to protect Collier County residents from the worst of the disease.
He blamed personalization of issues and the use of threats and insults against elected officials as a prime cause of the national mood of rancor and distrust.
During his time in office, he said, “at least once a week I’d have to say, ‘You know, insulting someone that you’re trying to get to see things your way is an interesting strategy because it’s not working.’ As soon as something becomes personal it takes it out of a discussion about the issues and makes it a personal thing and that gets in the way of having a good discussion about what the issues really are.”
Beth Sherman at the Collier County Board of Commissioners meeting on Feb. 13. (Image: CCBC)
One of the people who has done that accusing in the past was Collier County anti-vaccine activist Beth Sherman. In 2021, during discussion of an anti-federal ordinance, she angrily accused Solis of supporting mandatory vaccinations, a charge he vehemently denied. At the time she also denounced COVID vaccinations in general, the Naples Community Hospital for denying patients hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and called the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection a false-flag operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She then demanded commissioners pass the ordinance or resign.
That was a bitter and contentious discussion, full of passion and accusations, the very thing that the people at the “Reduce the Rancor” forum were trying to mitigate.
But this time, when Sherman stood before the Board of Commissioners again on Feb. 13 as they considered removing fluoride from Collier County’s water, she didn’t have to make threats or accusations. The Board was firmly in anti-fluoride hands and everyone knew it.
She just read her argument that fluoride deleteriously affected people’s brains, thyroid and bones and infringed on a citizen’s right to opt out of treatments. Fluoridization, she said, also violated a Collier County ordinance passed in April that, among other measures, prohibits implementing directives from the World Health Organization, which favors fluoridization. Among other charges, she alleged that the US Department of Defense was censoring information on the deleterious effects of fluoride.
At the meeting civility and order were sternly enforced by Commissioner Chris Hall (R-District 2), the chair, who warned participants against displays of emotion or outbursts, in stark contrast to previous proceedings. Commissioner Rick LoCastro (R-District 1) was absent following a warrant for his arrest on battery charges against his girlfriend, a medical emergency and a subsequent arrest, incarceration and bonding. He joined the proceedings remotely.
But while the demeanor of the commissioners and the speakers was restrained and polite and there was no vitriol or personal attacks, the substance of the testimony reflected the same passions, fear and even paranoia that governed the opposition to COVID vaccinations.
This was given most dramatic expression by Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III, the farmer, grocer and political activist who fought vaccine mandates during the pandemic. He and his Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee endorsed and funded two of the commissioners, Hall and Dan Kowal (R-District 4).
(The full, verbatim, text of Oakes’ speech follows this article.)
It was Kowal who introduced the motion to end fluoridation, arguing that it was a health treatment being administered without recipients’ consent. It violated the April 2023 ordinance, he said, there was no legal requirement that it be maintained and the county would save about $200,000 per year by ending it.
While there were some defenders of fluoridation, the vast majority of speakers, already alerted and mobilized for the discussion, opposed it. Commissioner Burt Saunders (R-District 3) expressed skepticism but ultimately chose to support it and in the end the Board voted unanimously to end fluoridation.
The “Reduce the Rancor” forum with its surprisingly high turnout demonstrated that there is a large constituency in Collier County for the rule of reason. It was a kind of rally for people who want to restore some sort of calm and civility to public dialogue.
The fluoridation vote, though, demonstrated that these are not the people in charge of the county’s government right now. While the discussion before the Board was civil, the logic underlying the opposition showed evidence of the kind of anti-science, anti-expertise, anti-government, suspicious conspiracy theorizing that characterized the anti-vaccine movement during the COVID pandemic.
Once the anti-fluoridation motion passed, dentists and oral hygienists in the county began expressing their opposition, mostly in letters to the editor of the Naples Daily News but by then, of course, it was too late.
Collier County has now taken two votes against mainstream public health measures. This comes at a time when COVID is resurging. According to data from the Florida Department of Health, there have been more than 98,000 cases of COVID-19 in the state since the start of the year. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a JN.1 variant causing 92 percent of cases across the country.
While this is not the deadly and novel COVID virus that struck the world in 2020 it nonetheless shows that public health risks remain. Whether they will be met with a measured, rational, scientific response in Collier County remains to be seen in light of votes taken by the Board of Commissioners to weaken public health measures.
So perhaps the common lesson of the “Reduce the Rancor” forum and the Board of Commissioners vote is this: It is fine to support civil dialogue and reasoned, logical disagreement but unless there’s a willingness to act on behalf of reason, unreason will triumph—and then no amount of openness, or dialogue and respect, will make any difference at all.
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Alfie Oakes addresses the Collier County Board of Commissioners on Feb. 13. (Image: CCBC)
The speech by farmer and political activist Alfie Oakes to the Collier County Board of Commissioners merits quotation in full.
This is a verbatim transcript of his remarks. Additions for clarity are marked in brackets [ ] and incomplete thoughts are marked with ellipses (…). Otherwise, it is unedited.
“So, thank you for hearing me today. As you know this is somewhat personal to me, my father that passed away back in 2013, a couple years before his passing was up here fighting with the commission to get the fluoride out of the water. It was something he was very passionate about. I had the privilege of my father, while he never made a lot of money, he drove a 300-dollar car, when I was at the age of 11 and he spent 900 dollars for a reverse osmosis system for our house because that was more important to him than the car that he drove but he didn’t want to damage mostly us kids but the whole family with the fluoride when he found out that the only way to get fluoride out of the water was with reverse osmosis. So, he was way ahead of the curve on a lot of things and I have, except for one time, when I was in like third or fourth grade there was a fluoride supplement that they made us take it and my father found out about it and lost his mind. That’s the only time that these teeth have ever seen fluoride. They don’t look like they have too many cavities, do they?
“So, I’d also like to talk about…we find out a lot about who is on the right side of things by…who, what I call our enemies are and when I see something that’s reported or that’s encouraged by the World Health Organization or by [Adm.] Rachel Levine [US Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services] and even the World Economic Forum and promotes this fluoride and you have to ask yourself ‘Why?’
“I was lucky enough to attend an event over in Mexico this past summer and it was the first time that I’d ever heard – and I heard this gentleman say it again today – the first time I ever heard that fluoride actually calcifies the pineal gland, it’s that element that calcifies your pineal gland.
“So, I’ve been lucky in that my pineal gland hasn’t been calcified. Maybe it’s why I have eternal energy. I get up at four o’clock in the morning and go until 10 o’clock at night. I have…the pineal gland is represented in ancient history as the third eye, our connection into our spirituality. It’s also what I consider a driving force. When I hear that the IQ has been lowered of all these reports of these kids that are taking tested, their IQs are directly proportional to how much fluoride that’s in the water, it’s stunning but when I think about that in a logical sense it makes sense because I don’t believe that, like some of these doctors here, who, their vessel is filled with knowledge from the university, I think that real learning comes from the lighting of a fire and the lighting of the fire is that pineal gland. That’s our fire that connects us to our spirituality, it gives us drive.
“I got a high school education. I’ve done pretty well because I got the fire burning. And, and this is intentional – if you don’t think this is intentional, to dumb us down, to keep control of the people in this country, then I don’t think that you’re paying attention.
“The fluoride…unfortunately, I’m going to take a few minutes – because there’s a hundred different things said that I was going to bring up today but the fluoride is not the only problem. So, as we know, that the fluoride that they’re putting in the water is not naturally occurring fluoride. It’s man-made substance, it’s toxic to us. When they found out how well that worked to poison us and dumb us down back in the ‘40s and ‘50s, in 1977 they just decided they were going to put folic acid in the bread. Folic acid in all the bread, 99.9 percent of all the bread in this country has folic acid in it. It’s, again, another man-made substance. It’s poisoning us. And, you know, I don’t think…thank God we’re not putting the folic acid in the water or we’re getting that out but I might be back here asking everyone to put poison labels on all bread in Collier County that has folic acid in it because it’s just another sham from the same people that are trying to bring us down.
“And, you know, the difference between right now and when my Dad was here 13, 14 years ago whenever it was, fighting against the fluoride is, we don’t trust the white coats any more. They got up here and put on the same show. I just listened to them, they – you say not to say the same things over again? – almost every one of their talking points from the university are exactly the same talking points and they’ve been using it over and over again, it’s the same thing when I sat here with my father 14 years ago that they used. As a matter of fact, the gentleman got up, Johnny Johnson [President of the American Fluoridation Society and a former pediatric dentist], he goes around the whole state doing this, I don’t know whether he’s paid or not. It doesn’t matter to me but you have to wonder what is driving it. What’s the driving force? Why are they trying to do this? Why are they trying to put a neuro-toxin in our water that’s poisoning us?
“You know, I never had to take a shower where my skin was absorbing, a hot shower where it opens up your pores and have a neuro-toxin pour into your skin. Thank God I wasn’t! But everybody else in this county has been subjected to it and it’s certainly time that we, like Mark Twain said, it’s hard sometimes to realize when you’ve been duped, it’s hard to admit it but I think we need to, you know, time for us to be responsible. We have a great group of commissioners up here so that I think is going to make the right decision. I’ve never felt more blessed to live in this great county, Collier County. Thank you.”
An examination of the nature of dictatorships, democracy and possible futures, nationally and locally
Soldiers line the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during protests in June 2020. (Photo: Martha Raddatz via Twitter)
Feb. 4, 2024 by David Silverberg
As he has so many times in the past, Donald Trump is facing utter ruin.
This week is expected to be especially brutal. He’s facing a potentially devastating fine in his New York fraud case. He could be denied immunity from prosecution in another case. The US Supreme Court could agree with the Colorado Supreme Court and keep him off the ballot for violating the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment and make him ineligible for election. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for this coming Thursday, Feb. 8.
But Trump has faced seeming doom before. In August 2016 Time magazine declared his campaign in a complete meltdown. His Access Hollywood remarks seemed to put him outside the realm of redemption. His defeat seemed almost inevitable—and then he came back and won.
Time magazine covers from Aug. 22 and Oct. 24, 2016. (Image: Time)
So as dark as the moment may seem for Donald Trump—both in the public view and likely by his own reckoning—it does not mean he is down and out. If the word “resilient” seems too praiseful, perhaps his sheer stubbornness, his endurance born of pure rage and ego is a better description of his ability to survive odds against him.
But if he does weather these storms and goes on to win the Republican nomination as he seems on course to do, it is worthwhile to ask: What would America be like if he went on to win? More particularly, what would life for Americans be like?
It’s worth asking the question because it puts the stakes of this election into perspective.
It can be said with confidence that the results of a Trump accession to power—whether electoral or through other means—would not result in a presidency. It would result in a dictatorship.
If past is any prologue, an American dictatorship would mean the end of individual “inalienable” rights, the end of democracy, the end of the Constitution, the end of a free press, the end of independent courts, the end of elections, the end of representative government, the end of security for individual persons and property.
Does all this sound too alarmist? Overblown? Unlikely?
It may be alarmist but the alarm is merited—and history provides a guide.
In the daily life of Americans a Trump dictatorship would mean a media diet of all-Trump all the time. It would mean an attempt to stamp out any objective reality and its replacement with a world conjured by the mind of Donald Trump; a combination of delusion, wishful thinking and pure lying that has been called “Trumpality.”
It would be a world based on this one man’s whims and caprices, where rationality and law would be discarded in favor of his appetites and urges, whether those were for power, wealth or sex, and where he would have absolute immunity from any restraint or consequence for any action, no matter how murderous or extreme.
It would mean an effort to stamp out individual will and independent thought outside the bubble of Trump-thought.
And it’s worth remembering that past loyalty is no guarantee of future reward. No expression of allegiance, of fealty, of complete subservience would ever be enough. Trump has turned on people who were otherwise slavishly loyal when it suited him or when suspicion crept into his mind.
The same would apply to cities, counties and states and their officials and representatives. Would Southwest Florida be spared? Certainly not. No matter how Trumpist and Make America Great Again (MAGA) it already is, it would be under the Trump heel just as much as any other place in the country.
What is more, this dictatorship and its oppression would not be driven just by Trump. It would be propelled by an army of enablers and sycophants pursuing their own ambitions. They would be competing to push the most radical, extreme measures and their measures would be ever more intrusive and petty. As it is, the fervor of his followers has grown with every obstacle he encounters. He has become their version of virility, their model of behavior, someone to be worshipped, not just supported; in short, their god.
Women would especially feel the heavy hand of a Trump dictatorship. His contempt for women is exhaustively documented and even led to an $83.3 million civil judgment against him. Not only would women’s right to abortion be terminated everywhere, their right to participate in society, even their right to vote, would be in jeopardy as all other rights in the Constitution were threatened.
As Trump and his worshippers demonstrated on Jan. 6, 2021, he and they are willing to go outside the law and use violence to get their way. They may not even wait for the verdict of the 2024 election before they attempt to impose their will. And in states like Texas and Florida—and in places like Collier County and Marco Island, Fla.—there are moves to break away from the “commanding hand” of federal law and the Constitution and leave its protections and lawful restraints behind.
Can all this dread be justified? Do all these warnings have any merit?
A look at history, the nature of dictatorships and Trump’s own past behaviors and statements provide ample cause, not just for concern, but for a vision of a dark, dreadful future that would follow a Trump victory.
But it also needs to be emphasized: This is not the way things must be, just the way they could be. And every voting citizen has it within his or her power to determine how things will be.
The nature of dictatorships
Adolf Hitler addresses the German Reichstag. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Dictators don’t lack for support. All past dictators have provided benefits to some element of the population they ruled. They were put in place by people who wanted that dictator in power, often enthusiastically. Those who opposed and dissented were crushed, killed or repressed.
Dictatorships are also governed by an internal logic of power, which can provide some indication of their future actions.
Americans have seen other dictatorships abroad but have never experienced one on their own soil. They have not been ruled by an authoritarian power since they overthrew the rule of King George III in the American Revolution. They have not had one imposed by military coup. They have certainly never chosen to be governed by a dictator who came to power in a free election.
So today there is little experience or appreciation in America of what a dictatorship means and how it manifests itself in everyday life.
Because this would be Trump’s second effort to hold power, it would be different from the chaotic and amateurish first administration. Now there are elaborate MAGA plans in place to overhaul the government to concentrate executive authority. The kinds of guardrails and institutional checks that hindered Trump’s worst instincts last time would likely be swept away.
An example of the direction that dictatorships take occurred on April 26, 1942. It’s not a date emblazoned in anyone’s memory but it should live in infamy.
It was significant because on that day Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany, asked for and was granted more power than any other human being has ever wielded.
In a very long, rambling speech to the Germany Reichstag, Hitler reviewed the world situation. But toward the end he got to the point.
The only thing that was important was victory, he said. “Nobody at this stage can insist on his vested rights and all must know that today there are only duties to be fulfilled.” (Emphasis ours.)
All the rights that Germans had enjoyed under constitutional parliamentary government—and there were quite a few—were now irrelevant, he was saying. Those rights had been abused and weakened ever since he took power in 1933 but now he was asking that they be formally swept away altogether.
“Therefore, I ask all the German Reichstag the definite assurance that I possess the legal authority to see to it that every individual performs his duty and that I may condemn such cases which in my opinion do not fulfill their duties to be imprisoned or to be deprived of their office and position no matter who they be or what rights they may have acquired and especially because there are only very few exceptions among millions of decent people.”
In other words, Hitler was asking—and was granted—the sole, unchecked, unrestrained power of life and death over every German and every human being under German control. No one any longer had any inherent, “vested” rights, including the right to live.
He and he alone would decide their fate. What was the basis for making his judgments? As he said: “my opinion.” If he thought someone needed to be out of the way he now had the legal authority to eliminate that individual in any way he saw fit.
It was as great and absolute an authority as any single individual has ever held—and it was the logical outcome of the Nazi dictatorship.
This is the ultimate end goal of all dictatorships and it would be the logical end point of a Trump dictatorship.
In contrast, in the American Declaration of Independence, the Founders stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
The idea that people have “inalienable” rights is the cornerstone, the absolute, fundamental bedrock of the United States. In fact, American rights are so fundamental they’re embodied in a Bill of Rights that was immediately amended to the US Constitution.
Democracies respect and protect human rights. Dictatorships crush them. A Trump dictatorship—like any dictatorship—would attempt to crush those fundamental rights.
Why? Because the animating principle of a dictatorship is the will of the dictator and subservience to that will, not the will and rights of the people. People’s inalienable rights get in the way of dictatorial rule, so dictators can’t abide them.
Trump’s whole life and his past administration was an effort to bend the American people and the world to his will and his will alone.
This was tellingly revealed on June 1, 2020 in a telephone call Trump held with the nation’s governors in the midst of the George Floyd protests.
“You have to dominate,” he told the governors. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate.”
American presidents don’t “dominate.” They lead, govern, preside, inspire, convince, sometimes cajole. The language of domination had not been used in American political discourse before. It’s not democratic language, especially from a president working under a system of checks and balances and serving the people. It’s the language of a tyrant.
It’s also worth remembering that total domination by one person means total submission by all others.
To date, that has not been the American way.
So it’s worth remembering just what rights Americans currently have that will be put in jeopardy by a Trump dictatorship.
The end of freedom
Right now Americans are free people. They can think what they like, say what they want, and protest if they feel the need. They can assemble without hindrance and petition government for a redress of grievances. If dissatisfied with a decision or policy they can appeal it through the courts.
All those rights, which people simply assume they have now, would be gone in a Trump dictatorship.
In dictatorships free thinking is prohibited. People are expected to think the way the dictator wants them to think and any deviation is punished. No expression of any other viewpoint is allowed.
Nowhere on earth is this more rigidly enforced than in North Korea, a country for which Trump has expressed admiration. “I may be wrong, but I believe that Chairman Kim has a great and beautiful vision for his country, and only the United States, with me as president, can make that vision come true,” he said in 2019.
Nor has Trump respected freedom of assembly and the right to protest and petition government. On the same day he called for domination, Trump had non-violent demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd forcefully cleared from Lafayette Square outside the White House so that he could be photographed holding a Bible outside St. John’s Episcopal Church. The incident was widely condemned as a violation of the First Amendment. It would only be a foretaste if he got in power again.
The end of press freedom
Trump has been at war with the media from the time he descended the escalator in Trump Tower to declare his candidacy on June 16, 2015.
Right now that kind of retaliation against the media for coverage he doesn’t like is purely rhetorical and theoretical. But in a Trump dictatorship it would be imposed with the power of the state.
One of the fundamental causes of the American Revolution was British repression of the American press. It’s one reason that freedom of the press was written into the First Amendment.
As his Jan. 16 remarks make clear, under a Trump dictatorship there would be no freedom of the press—for anyone, including media that’s now considered sympathetic to Trump. It would all be under his control. There would no longer be coverage of an objective truth; the only “truth” would be the “truth” that Trump allowed. To see what that would be like, one has only to read his Truth Social postings.
Reporters, editors, broadcasters—anyone involved in professionally communicating with the public and especially journalists covering the presidential campaign—have to be aware that anything they do to advance the candidacy of Donald Trump will ultimately result in their repression, possible imprisonment and loss of freedom if he wins.
The first Trump administration is close enough in time that people can remember what life was like while he was President; there was a constant, non-stop stream of news about Trump. If it wasn’t his latest tweet, it was his latest outrage, his latest gaffe, his latest pronouncement. He dominated the airwaves, the news pages, the Internet, the morning breakfast table.
Even in exile he was constantly in the news.
Now, imagine him in power again and dominating the media using state authority. The media would no longer provide coverage; it would only uncritically propagate whatever he wanted delivered. It would be all Trump all the time. He would literally be like Big Brother, a constant, inescapable, overwhelming presence. There would no longer be news, there wouldn’t even be conversation any more, there would only be Trump. He would even insert himself into peoples’ dreams.
The reason for government
Since human beings have inalienable rights, states the Declaration of Independence, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
A dictatorship doesn’t exist to secure people’s rights nor do people consent to provide its “just powers.” It has no “just” powers, only power. A dictatorship exists solely to assert and implement the will of the dictator.
In the United States, the people’s consent to be governed is expressed through elections where they make their will known. For democracy to function, all parties have to accept the will of the majority as expressed through the election results.
Donald Trump most spectacularly rejected the election results of 2020 expressing the will of the majority of the American people that Joseph Biden be their president. He lied about the legitimacy of the election, he tried to use every stratagem he could to overturn the results (for which he is facing trial in Georgia), he explored the idea of using the military to seize voting machines and cancel the ballots, he attempted to have fake electors invalidate the results, and when all that failed, he incited a mob to stop the certification of his opponent and even murder Vice President Mike Pence.
Trump’s refusal to accede to the will of the people was made clear in a conversation that Jenna Ellis, one of Trump’s lawyers, recalled to Georgia prosecutors.
A few weeks after the 2020 election, she said that Dan Scavino, one of Trump’s advisors, told her that “under no circumstances will the boss be leaving,” in reference to Trump. “We’ll just stay in power.”
She replied, “Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you know that.”
Scavino responded, “We don’t care.”
Trump was ultimately forced to leave office. However, if he is elected in 2024 it is unlikely that he will ever voluntarily leave office again no matter what the election results—even if there are any elections again during his lifetime.
Truly, it will be the end of American democracy, as Biden has pointed out.
His people and his movement
A Trump-incited mob attacks the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Tyler Merbler)
Dictators don’t come to power in a vacuum; it takes an army of enablers, enforcers and encouragers to put them in power and keep them there.
If Donald Trump proved anything to the world it was the unfortunate truth that there is no bottom to the barrel he can scrape for willing sycophants, miscreants and grifters to do his will.
If elected, Trump will bring back all the incompetents and parasites who served him in the first term as well as an even more mendacious and malicious cast of new characters. Indeed, applications are already being taken.
He will likely pardon all the criminals who have been justly imprisoned since January 6th and put them in charge of the nation’s business.
Former general and Englewood, Fla., resident Michael Flynn is one example. After losing his position as national security advisor and being convicted of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Flynn was pardoned and participated in the infamous Dec. 18, 2020 Oval Office meeting where he argued for seizing voting machines, declaring martial law and overturning the election results.
Once a dictatorship is established it develops a momentum of its own. Those who put the dictator in place have a vested interest in keeping him in power. A dictatorship builds a machine of repression that keeps chugging just to keep itself in existence.
There is a story from Africa that in 2008 when 83-year-old President Robert Mugabe, a dictator by all measures, lost the parliamentary and presidential elections in his native Zimbabwe—an election he expected to reliably keep him in power—he was ready to leave.
An army general sat him down and told him: “It’s not your decision.” Mugabe had to stay in power even if he was tired and ready to retire, said the general, because all the forces vested in his dictatorship needed him in place and could not allow him to leave. So Mugabe and his allies overrode the elected will of the Zimbabwean people using violence and fraud and his disastrous presidency continued for nine more years—only then was he was overthrown by the army.
It’s the same with all dictatorships. They need to be self-perpetuating. As Winston Churchill once put it: “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.”
Even if the charismatic figure is no longer at the helm, autocratic governments don’t automatically revert to democracy. Instead there’s a scramble at the top to replace the old dictator with a new dictator and since disputes in a dictatorship aren’t settled with elections, it opens the nation up to political strife, palace intrigue and even civil war.
Feeling the evil
So how would citizens feel a Trump dictatorship in their everyday lives, in Southwest Florida and everywhere else?
Aside from an all-Trump-all-the-time media, they wouldn’t be able to speak freely, think freely or feel protected by law.
It would be like living in an abusive relationship with a deranged, mercurial and unpredictable spouse, someone given to sudden rages, temper tantrums, and violence but with absolute power over your life.
You would have to self-censor, worry who was listening when you spoke, suspect that you were committing some unintended sin, and fear authorities who would not be there to protect you but to protect him—from you. Like so many people oppressed in so many places around the world you would have to build a secret life just to stay sane and determine reality and you would never know who could be trusted.
In 2020 the American people emerged after four years of an abusive relationship with their president. However, they had the comfort of having been protected by a Constitution and Bill of Rights, institutional checks and balances, a Congress that impeached him twice, and a tradition of democracy. Most of all they were protected by patriots in government who courageously worked hard to do what was right.
But Trump, his MAGA mob and the eviscerated Republican Party are determined to do away with all that in a second administration. If it comes to pass there will be no guardrails, no protections, no restraint, certainly no checks or balances and “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” as Trump stated in 2022.
That means there would be no recourse to courts or the legal system in the event of disputes or grievances or simply to seek justice. With the judicial branch neutered, corrupted or perverted, as it always is in a dictatorship, there would be no remedy, appeal, or relief for everyday people.
Moreover, with the state revolving around a single personality there wouldn’t be any way to rationally consider a decision, whether in government or personal life.
Why? Because in a law-ordered society, behavior is built on rational rules and logical laws. A person can base his or her decisionmaking on reasoned considerations and expect society to respond with equally rational reactions. Of course, there are people who violate laws but then they face rationally formulated penalties and they know it. (As the saying goes: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”)
But in a personality-based society, rewards and punishments are based on the whim and capriciousness of the dictator and no one can reasonably anticipate his responses.
There was an interesting example of this in Congress last October when Rep. Tom Emmer (R-6-Minn.) looked like he was going to get the Speaker’s gavel in the House of Representatives.
Although Emmer had not previously supported Trump, Trump told the world that Emmer had changed because Emmer had told Trump he was his “biggest fan.” Then, when Emmer, seeking support for his speakership, posted a video of Trump saying that, Trump was infuriated. He thought it sounded like they were too close. He instantly turned on Emmer, worked the phones, disparaged him as “totally out-of-touch with Republican Voters” and a “Globalist RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and Emmer’s candidacy immediately sank.
It was a perfect illustration of a tyrant turning on a follower for irrational reasons. There was no way Emmer could have known in advance that posting his video would offend Trump. No sensible calculation could have warned him or induced caution on his part. No thinking being could have anticipated Trump’s purely emotional response.
Emmer only suffered a blow to his ambitions. In a full-on dictatorship people suffer far greater punishments for far smaller offenses.
Nor is there any protection for those who believe themselves to be loyal. Indeed, the closer a person is to a dictator, the more precarious the person’s position and the more drastic the punishment at the dictator’s whim. As the careers and reputations littering the road to and from Trump’s White House attest, no one has proven this to be true more than Trump.
So all those Republican politicians who think they’ve made their careers and solidified their positions by endorsing Trump or who think they can publicly pander to the MAGA base while expecting he won’t win, or are actively working to make this man president, should think again.
In Southwest Florida that means its congressional delegation of Reps. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), Greg Steube (R-17-Fla.) and lately and belatedly Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.), all of whom have bent the knee or are aggressively promoting his candidacy. They will be as vulnerable and defenseless against Trump’s wrath as any other citizen if he wins and takes office again, perhaps even more than most. Furthermore, they will have the special onus of knowing that their endorsement helped put him in position to destroy them if he chooses.
A better way
The Statue of Liberty. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
These are only a few of the potential consequences of a Trump victory in 2024.
This essay doesn’t even go into the probable effects on the civil service, the economy, which would be thrown into chaos, the likely roundup of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, the institutionalized racism and the catastrophic effects on America’s place in the world. (As The Washington Post’s Max Boot pointed out, a Trump victory “could be the end of the Pax Americana. We would then enter a chaotic post-American world where rogue states committed aggression with impunity, democracies cowered and trade ties frayed. Sea lanes turning into shooting galleries would become the norm, not the exception, with the US economy paying the price.”)
Some people have been awake to the threat of a Trump dictatorship from the moment in 2022 when he declared his candidacy again. More and more traditional Republicans who voted for him in 2016 are publicly repudiating him now. A parade of his past officials, the people who worked most closely with him and know him best, have come forward to warn of the danger he presents.
And Biden has clearly and explicitly explained the choice before the American people.
“Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past. It’s what he’s promising for the future. He’s being straightforward. He’s not hiding the ball,” he said in a speech on the third anniversary of January 6th.
Despite this, Trump retains his grip on the Republican Party. Republican elected officials at all levels are falling into line behind him. Locally, the Florida Republican Party as a whole is expected to take a formal vote to endorse Trump at a meeting in Wesley Chapel, a town near Tampa, this coming Saturday, Feb. 10.
Nationally, Trump retains the power to block badly needed legislation like border and immigration reform and aid to Ukraine and Israel. He is already imposing his will on right-wing media.
There’s no guarantee that the overt threat to the Constitution and American democracy will wait until Election Day to play out. Some kind of action could occur sooner, especially if his candidacy is invalidated in court.
But for everyday, law-abiding citizens the defense lies in the ballot and if all goes as planned the balloting will be completed on Nov. 5, 2024.
Americans, including conservative Southwest Floridians, have to understand and fully appreciate that this election is not “normal.” This is not politics as usual. This is history, it is epochal and the alternatives are stark: this is a choice between freedom or tyranny, darkness or light, good or evil, democracy or dictatorship.
It is not enough to simply vote. Americans who want to preserve their democracy need to get active in every possible legal, civilly-responsible way to achieve the outcome that keeps darkness at bay.
Right now Americans have the power and freedom to choose their own destiny. They can work and vote to keep their power and freedom or give it all to a would-be despot.
As Biden put it in his January 6th speech: “This is the first national election since the January 6th insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy. We all know who Donald Trump is. The question we have to answer is: Who are we? That’s what’s at stake. Who are we?”
On one thing and one thing alone, those who would defend democracy should heed Donald Trump’s words.
On Jan. 6, 2021 he said in his speech on the Ellipse: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
He’s right. Unless Americans fight Trump like hell for their country and their democracy this year they’ll lose it all.
A sign warns of red tide at the entrance to Delnor-Wiggins State Park in Naples during the 2018 Big Bloom. (Photo: Author)
Jan. 22, 2024 by David Silverberg
While a new study puts a price tag on the cost of harmful algal blooms (HABs) in Southwest Florida, two bills meant to help protect the region’s clean water are languishing in the US House of Representatives, ignored and forgotten by the member of Congress who sponsored them: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.).
One bill is the Harmful Algal Bloom Essential Forecasting Act (House Resolution (HR) 325). It would ensure that federal agencies monitor potentially HABs even if there’s a government shutdown. The other is the Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act (HR 1008), which would make a slight change to existing legislation so that HABs are treated like other natural disasters and victims receive federal benefits.
Last year the organizations commissioned the outside consulting firm Greene Economics LLC, Ridgefield, Wash., to do an extensive and thorough analysis of the precise value of clean water to Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties.
The study found that the value of clean water is massive: it provides $18 billion in value to the coastal economy of the three counties.
The study found that of all the threats to that water like hurricanes, saltwater intrusion, and wastewater pollution, the most costly and dangerous were HABs like red tide and blue-green algae. A major HAB has the potential to cost Southwest Florida $5.2 billion in coastal economic losses, $17.8 billion in property value losses, and $460 million in commercial and recreational fishing losses. It might take out 43,000 jobs in the coastal economy, according to the study.
In 2018 an extensive and persistent HAB (what The Paradise Progressive dubbed “the Big Bloom”) of both red tide in the Gulf of Mexico and blue-green algae in the Caloosahatchee River and along the interior shoreline, tormented Southwest Florida.
The Big Bloom led to a variety of measures meant to cope with future blooms. Then-Rep. Francis Rooney, who represented the 19th Congressional District, the coastal area from Cape Coral to Marco Island, from 2017 to 2021, brought together all the federal agencies and local governments dealing with HABs to fashion a coordinated response.
During Rooney’s tenure, the bills never made it out of committee.
When Rooney’s successor, Byron Donalds, took office in 2021, the Harmful Algal Bloom Essential Forecasting Act was the first bill he introduced, on March 17 of that year. The Combat Harmful Algal Blooms Act followed on the 24th.
However, like all other legislation he has introduced, Donalds did nothing to advance his own bills. The bills did not move past the introductory phase in the 117th Congress.
Following his re-election in 2022, Donalds reintroduced the bills in the 118th Congress. However, as before, Donalds did nothing to advance them and to date they have not even received subcommittee consideration, the first step toward passage.
Instead, Donalds has concentrated his efforts on out of state political campaigning for former President Donald Trump, attacking the current administration and pursuing his own political ambitions. According to the official congressional database, Congress.gov, Donalds has introduced 63 bills in the current Congress and advanced none of them.
Analysis: The importance of clean water
Water is essential to human existence in the otherwise swampy and hostile tropical environment of Southwest Florida—but not just any water. It must be clean water, consumable by humans, beneficial to animals and nourishing to plants.
Legislation cannot stop HABs but these two pieces of legislation are at least steps that will help Southwest Florida monitor potential blooms and then, when they occur, help businesses and individuals get the same kind of relief and support they would receive in the event of a disaster like a hurricane.
HR 325, the Harmful Algal Bloom Essential Forecasting Act, is especially important given the continuing threat of government shutdowns. Once a rare and very damaging occurrence due to partisan brinksmanship, the US federal government now faces a shutdown every other month as Make America Great Again (MAGA) representatives refuse to vote for essential appropriations.
Ironically, Donalds, a member of the extreme MAGA House Freedom Caucus, has consistently voted for shutdowns by vocally opposing critical appropriations. Of all the members of Congress he should be actively pushing this measure to protect Southwest Florida from the consequences of his own votes.
The need to deal with them transcends political party or region. In the United States this is attested to by the fact that HR 325’s only co-sponsor in this Congress, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, (D-7-Mich.), is from Michigan, another state dealing with persistent HABs. Slotkin’s district is centered in the city of Lansing and Lake Lansing has suffered from HABs.
Slotkin is a co-sponsor of another bill, the Protecting Local Communities from Harmful Algal Blooms Act (HR 132) that does the same thing as HR 1008. This bill, introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-16-Fla.) on Jan. 9, 2023, has six cosponsors; one other Republican, Rep. Mike Kelly, (R-16-Pa.), and five Democrats, three of them Floridians: Reps. Darren Soto, (D-9-Fla.), Kathy Castor (D-14-Fla.) and Frederica Wilson (D-24-Fla.). (The other Democratic co-sponsor is Rep. Hillary Scholten, (D-3-Mich.)).
Interestingly enough, Donalds is not a HR 132 co-sponsor. (The Paradise Progressive reached out to Donalds’ office by e-mail with a question and a request for comment on his bills but received no reply or acknowledgment as of post time.)
Commentary: Paying attention at home
Legislation that helps Florida cope with HABs is vital to the state and region. The Impact report makes clear the specific dollar cost of these events to the region’s economy, industry, quality of life and jobs.
Passage of these measures would benefit the region, at least ensuring that people get some advance warning of developing HABs despite even a government shutdown. If a HAB occurs, people would be entitled to the same government benefits they would get if struck by a hurricane.
But for Southwest Florida to get the aid of this legislation these bills have to be nurtured, advanced and developed by the congressman who introduced them. They have to be pushed through the subcommittee and committee process and then presented to the entire House. That takes work, attention, effort and, most of all, concern for the district and its people.
So far that hasn’t been shown by Donalds on these matters.
Perhaps it’s time for Donalds to worry a little less about New Hampshire, Hunter Biden and Donald Trump and a little bit more about Lee and Collier counties and show that he can actually do the job he was elected to do.
Bridget and Christian Ziegler at Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. (Photo: Florida Trident)
Dec. 12, 2023 by David Silverberg
Floridians—indeed, all Americans—owe a debt of gratitude to Christian and Bridget Ziegler of Sarasota, Florida.
They may not have intended it but the two—and with a friend, actually, three—have struck a blow for intellectual, academic and publishing freedom in a state that desperately needs it.
Revelation of their conduct could not have been timelier. Florida has increasingly lurched toward repression, ignorance and intolerance. In Collier County alone, over 300 books have been pulled from school library shelves in compliance with state mandates.
But the Zieglers have shown the utter folly and futility of banning books on a whole different level.
How is this?
To understand the entire situation, a recounting of the facts as revealed to date is in order.
What happened
Christian Ziegler, 40, born in Georgia, is chair of the Republican Party of Florida. He has served on the Sarasota County Commission. He was elected to the Party position in February of this year in what was widely seen as a victory for former President Donald Trump over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). As is to be expected, Ziegler is a hard-core adherent of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda. In April he issued a statement on X that “…for the Republican Party of Florida, the work continues as our job is not done until there are no more Democrats in Florida.”
His wife, Bridget Ziegler, 41, born in Michigan, is a high-profile conservative cultural activist and one who has gone very far. A former student at Florida International University and formerly an insurance consultant, she is the mother of three children. She was first appointed, then elected to the Sarasota School Board in 2014 where she has remained and risen to chair. There she has been a vocal critic of the existing educational system and was often described as “a fighter.” Along with Collier County School Board member Erika Donalds, she was a founder of the Florida Coalition of School Board Members as a conservative alternative to the Florida School Boards Association. She went on in 2021 to become one of the founders of Moms for Liberty, a group known for its extreme educational positions. It rocketed to prominence in the MAGA media world and began a push to place its adherents on school boards throughout the country, becoming a major player in the Republican policy firmament. In April of this year Bridget was also named National Director of School Board Leaders Programs at the Leadership Institute, a non-profit organization designed to train conservative school board candidates and “do everything possible to stop the slide toward socialism.” She was also appointed by DeSantis to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the board overseeing the former Disneyworld district. And she promoted and championed Florida’s Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, widely described as the “don’t say gay” bill.
“Bridget Ziegler was the poster girl for Moms for Liberty,” wrote Rick Wilson, a Florida-based pundit and prominent Trump critic. “Pretty, poised, and poisonous, she was a blonde tornado of action and activity. She helped elect dozens of like-minded MFL types to school boards, none of whom cared about education. Instead, they were passionately committed to injecting their flavor of social conservatism into the curriculum and the libraries.”
The two are a top-rank Florida power couple.
On October 4, a friend of the third party in the relationship called the police. “She told me she was raped yesterday and she’s scared to leave her house,” she told them.
On Nov. 30 the Florida Trident, an excellent investigative platform of The Florida Center for Government Accountability, broke the news that Christian had been accused of rape by a woman with whom he and Bridget had been having a longstanding three-way bisexual affair.
Police investigated and discovered that Christian had visited the woman prior to a Sarasota political meeting. When Christian showed up at her apartment, the woman said she was reluctant to have sex with him since it was actually Bridget in whom she was interested. Nonetheless, Christian gained entry and engaged in a sex act that he claims was consensual. Moreover, he videoed the act on his cell phone as it happened.
After he left, the woman alleged rape and the friend brought it to police
As it stands right now there is a chorus from all sides of the Florida political spectrum demanding that Christian resign as Republican Party chair.
Bridget appears to have resigned from the Leadership Institute and is under pressure to resign from the Sarasota School Board. A rally demanding her resignation is planned before a School Board meeting at 4:30 tonight, Dec.12. The scandal has thrown Moms for Liberty into profound crisis.
As of this writing Christian remains defiant. A Republican Party meeting scheduled for this coming Sunday, Dec. 17, may hold a vote to expel him from the Party.
Commentary: Books, bans and the Zieglers
What conceivable connection is there between a Ziegler three-way and book banning?
The movement that the Zieglers championed has made banning books the most obvious and tangible act of their effort to impose their doctrine on Florida’s students.
Book bans go back to the time when books were written on parchment scrolls. Once movable type was invented in Europe around 1450 and pages were bound into folios and called “books,” the banning began almost immediately.
A book ban is an attempt to destroy an idea; the book itself is just a physical manifestation of the idea that opponents can lay their hands on. Famous instances of this abound. For example, in 1616 the Catholic Church banned all books stating that the earth revolved around the sun. Clearly, banning such books put the planets back in their proper Ptolemaic orbits. That showed ‘em!
The Nazis took book banning to a whole new level when in 1933 they held bonfires throughout Germany to burn what they called “un-German” books.
The current book banning craze in Florida began as an attempt to protect school-age children from a culture many parents reject, one that includes diversity, complex history, tolerance of differences and general “wokeness” open to a varied and changing world. It has since been expanded and exploited for political gain both at the state and national level.
On its face, Moms for Liberty, DeSantis and allies believe that by banning books parents can exert control and eliminate ideas and sexual practices to which they object.
But it won’t be from books that Florida’s students, even the youngest ones, will learn of bisexuality, or three-way marriages, or adultery, or unfaithfulness, or exploitation, or hypocrisy.
No, they will learn all that from the Zieglers and if they don’t already know it from media both mainstream and specialized, they have probably already discovered it on every iPhone and Google search and newssite on the Internet. All the book bans in the world and even the purging of school libraries to their bare shelves will not keep those facts and that reality from them. Indeed, they’re probably way beyond this current sex scandal and already on to fresher and kinkier news.
So the Zieglers have revealed the utter futility of book banning. Every reader owes them thanks.
Parental concerns are legitimate. All parents want to protect their children from harm and guide their education, growth and development. That’s just natural and proper.
But as every parent—and grandparent—also knows, the primary and most fundamental form of education is by example. If a parent wants to raise a child in a way a parent considers decent and moral, the parent has to set an example of decent and moral conduct.
The Zieglers have set one example that Florida students may follow. Former President Donald Trump presents one that is similar, with multiple infidelities, casual rape, incessant lying, constant rule-breaking, outright criminality and endless “hatred, prejudice and rage.”
But if Florida parents want a different example, they need look no further than one state north to Plains, Ga., and former Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
Carter may not have had the most successful presidency but he certainly had the most successful post-presidency. He set an outstanding example of humility, service, and philanthropy. He built houses for the poor with his own hands. He wrote books that contributed to the national dialogue. He taught Sunday school at his local church. He lived his values without rancor or intolerance. In his personal life he and Rosalynn remained faithful and married for 77 years until she passed away on Nov. 19 of this year. Although he admitted once that he “looked on a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in my heart many times,” in his heart is where that lust stayed.
If worried Florida parents want an example of a moral, Christian, value-driven life to hold up to their children they should point them no further than Jimmy Carter.
And they should make one other point to those children: no matter what else Jimmy Carter has done in his nearly century of life on this Earth—he never banned a single book.
Then-candidate Donald Trump (center) takes the stage in what was then Germain Arena in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. 19, 2016. (Photo: Author)
Nov. 22, 2023 by David Silverberg
“How did we get here? Ten years ago Collier County wasn’t like this.”
That was one of the questions posed to Rev. Paul Raushenbush and a panel of community leaders on Nov. 9 at an event titled “Christian Nationalism 101: What is it? And Why Does it Matter?”
In a testament to the degree of alarm over current trends, a crowd of over 275 people packed the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Naples to hear Raushenbush and other speakers try to address those questions.
Though one of just three questions asked by the audience, the question of how Collier County arrived at its current situation was the most pertinent and perceptive of the evening.
It was especially poignant given that 2023 marks Collier County’s centennial year.
How, in ten years, did Collier County, Florida, go from an open, welcoming, relaxed place chiefly known for beautiful beaches, warm winters and a charming downtown, to a Petri dish of political and cultural extremism and intolerance?
Rev. Paul Raushenbush speaking at the Naples Unitarian Congregation (Image: Interfaith Alliance)
Raushenbush is an ordained Baptist minister and president and chief executive of the Interfaith Alliance, a national non-profit advocacy group committed to American religious freedom. While he was concerned with the rise of the political ideology of Christian nationalism nationally, a panel of local community leaders testified to their own local experiences of intolerance before the packed audience.
Rabbi Adam Miller of Temple Shalom in Naples recounted being berated for his views and Jewishness following a Collier County School Board meeting and expressed alarm at the rise of local anti-Semitism.
Rev. Barrion Staples, pastor of Service And Love Together Ministries in neighboring Lee County, saw a return to a time when history was twisted to serve Christian nationalist ends. He recounted past racial discrimination and compared current attempts to rewrite history to the “Slave Bible” of the pre-Civil War era, which excised all references to freedom or exodus from slavery.
Cori Craciun, executive director of Naples Pride, described how the town’s annual Pride festival was initially welcomed in Naples’ public spaces but after the COVID pandemic was increasingly restricted by local officials.
Kathy Curatolo, a former member of the Collier County Public Schools Board of Education, recounted that, “What has emerged to the dismay of many is the emergence of a one-sided ideology that is being infused into public education,” in Collier County.
Given all this and the question asked at the gathering, the time has come to take a look back at the causes for Collier County’s radical turn, answer the question of how this came about and to discern the direction ahead.
Looking over the past 10 years, six factors stand out as leading causes for Collier County’s extreme devolution.
1. The Trump factor
Any history of Collier County’s radical rightward movement has to begin with Donald Trump. His influence has been intense and pervasive and felt down to the very grassroots of this community.
Before Trump’s 2016 candidacy, life in Southwest Florida was relatively “normal.” Politics, was a peripheral and distant concern for most people. But this single individual unleashed a wave of what he himself once characterized as “hatred, prejudice and rage.”
As a candidate in 2016, as president and after his presidency, Trump made overt expressions of hatred, prejudice and rage acceptable in public discourse. He encouraged those sentiments in his followers. His personal example of rule-breaking, disdain, insults and violent rhetoric infected the crowds that heard him. His division of the world into absolutely loyal, unthinking cultists and “radical” opponents destroyed any middle ground for civil discourse or compromise between differing parties. Though a physical coward himself, he encouraged violence in his followers.
That this impacted Southwest Florida was very clear from the time of his candidacy.
Trump made two visits to Southwest Florida during his 2016 campaign. The region had been largely overlooked during previous presidential campaigns given its low population and its established Republican majorities. In a break with past practice for presidential candidates, Trump held two rallies in the area, one on Sept. 19, 2016 in what was then Germain Arena and then on Oct. 23 at the Collier County Fairgrounds.
The Southwest Floridians who stood four hours in the heat and threatening weather to get into Germain Arena that September were everyday friends and neighbors, some already Trump believers, some curious, some offended by Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark. As they stood in line they were largely quiet, patient, peaceful, and very respectful of the sheriff’s deputies and security officers. A single black man in the crowd was amicably welcomed. A lone protester was left alone and largely ignored. It was a crowd of the kind of people who would come to a neighbor’s aid, who volunteered for food drives and did good works for their churches and communities.
Southwest Floridians wait on line to enter Germain Arena to hear Donald Trump on Sept. 19, 2016. (Photo: Author)
That day Trump brought a message that was by then familiar to national audiences: distrust of immigrants, whom he compared to snakes; attacks on his opponent, Hillary Clinton; resentment toward perceived liberal elites and hatred of the federal government. He was rapturously received by his audience.
When the crowd left after a roughly hour-long harangue, his attitude, behavior and approach had inflamed his listeners. He had given them permission to express hatred, prejudice and rage toward “others,” and stoked feelings of anger, resentment and grievance against the world, with an implication that violence in expressing those feelings was acceptable.
Those feelings and attitudes intensified over the four years of the Trump presidency and culminated in the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
These kinds of attitudes and behaviors continue to this day and found particularly fertile soil in Collier County.
2. The federal factor
Southwest Florida and Collier County are about as far south from the seat of federal government as it is possible to get on the American mainland.
The federal government has very little presence in Southwest Florida. There are some national parks and preserves in the region, there’s the US Coast Guard protecting boaters but otherwise, there’s very little consciousness of the federal government’s existence. Social Security is a federal program that tens of thousands of Southwest Floridians rely upon but they seem to have little awareness of it as a federal presence.
This distance makes the federal government seem like a remote and alien presence. There is a strong belief among a minority of Collier Countians that the federal government is intrusive, tyrannical and invalid, an oppressive “commanding hand” as an ordinance put it, encroaching on citizen rights and privileges. They would like to get federal benefits (Social Security), aid (disaster assistance) and protection (law enforcement, Coast Guard) but without strings, obligations or responsibilities.
There was also fury among local Make America Great Again (MAGA) followers that Trump lost the 2020 federal election. Like him, they clung to his lie that the election had somehow been rigged or stolen and they regarded—and still regard—the presidency of Joe Biden as head of the national, federal government as illegitimate.
This sense of alienation and estrangement increased because of the third factor that led Collier County to its current situation.
3. The pandemic factor
From 2020 to 2022 the federal presence in Collier County suddenly became immediate and pressing as the United States—along with the rest of the world—attempted to cope with the outbreak of COVID-19. The extreme right minority of Southwest Floridians and in particular Collier Countians took umbrage at federal efforts to protect American citizens from a global scourge.
In this they were following the example of Donald Trump. When COVID struck, Trump did not react well. Initially, he dismissed it, said it would “disappear,” called it a “hoax” and minimized its dangers. When it couldn’t be wished away he advocated bogus treatments like hydroxychloroquine and injecting bleach. He discouraged mask-wearing and the recommended precautions from public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
While a minority of Southwest Floridians aped Trump’s responses, they made up in noise what they lacked in numbers. There was ferocious opposition to mask-wearing and to vaccinations when vaccines became available. The kind of rule-breaking and defiance that Trump encouraged also encouraged resistance to public health measures.
Local politicians jumped on this bandwagon, encouraging further rejection of public health protections and defiance of local and federal law.
These factors ingrained a strain of alienation and disaffection in this population and led to a persistent perception that COVID was a sinister, globalist hoax.
Once the pandemic was largely over, their resentment took the form of trying to pass an ordinance that would prohibit future public health mandates of any kind, whether public or private.
A draft resolution for the county laid out the accusations: “federal and state health agencies have demonstrated a clear inability to be truthful, transparent and consistent in protecting the citizens of Collier County,” they “violated” county citizens’ rights “through discrimination based on vaccine status” and subjected county citizens “to death and injury with little recourse” and stopped doctors from speaking freely or treating patients as preferred (i.e., with hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or other unproven and discredited remedies).
The experience of the COVID pandemic in Collier County further incentivized MAGA radicals to continue and accelerate their campaign against the federal government, against constitutional law and embrace the extreme fringes of political logic and practice.
4. MAGA mania
For the past 10 years—and long before that—Collier County’s population was predominantly Republican. Party registrations remained largely stable at 65 percent Republican and 35 percent Democratic.
The Republican coalition consisted primarily of residents whose roots went back to the beginning of settlement of the county around 1920 and relative newcomers, mostly from upper Midwestern states where Interstate Highway 75 originated at the Canadian border. Naples is the southernmost town before the highway turns east to Miami. It’s easy to drive down from Chicago or Detroit and just stop. While easterners settled Florida’s east coast, Midwesterners, many retirees, settled its west coast.
For the most part these people were mainstream Republicans from states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. They believed in limited government, restrained spending and a strong national defense. However, they never challenged or attacked the Constitution or the rule of law.
That changed with the onset of Trump in 2016 and his total domination of the Republican Party in the years that followed. In Collier County, as in the rest of the country, non-Trumpers were denigrated as Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) and kicked to the margins. Trumpers took over the county Party apparatus, pushing out or defeating longstanding Republican activists. The entire Party radicalized.
There was some resistance—sometimes lapsing into screaming matches and personal attacks during Party conclaves—but while non-Trumpers complained, they never organized or fought back as effectively as Trumpers. Ultimately, the county Republican Party really became the Trump Party. Personal loyalty to Trump became the yardstick of Republicanism rather than conservative ideas or positions.
This Trumpism has led the Party to keep pursuing extremes in its pronouncements and activities. Infused with Trump’s “hatred, prejudice and rage,” its most fanatical members have descended into anti-Semitism and promoted intolerance in all forms.
Before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, much of the MAGA energy was directed against abortion. After the Dobbs decision last year, that energy turned into a Christian nationalist religious crusade, with county MAGA officials on the Board of Commissioners and the School Board trying to impose religious dogma and stating overtly that there is no separation between church and state.
This kind of Christian nationalism leads to only one destination: the imposition of a state religion, which the Constitution’s founders explicitly sought to avoid. It will also lead to doctrinal conflict as different faiths try to impose their dogmas on public schools and the whole population. This is what happened for 200 years in Europe before the Enlightenment. In the New World, the American experiment began trying to leave that bloody legacy behind.
However, Collier County’s MAGAs appear determined to head down this Christian nationalist path, one that has the potential to pit Catholics against Protestants and different Protestant sects against each other. It has already manifested itself in the seemingly endless and inordinately time-consuming debate over whether to hold a religious invocation prior to the start of county School Board meetings.
At least the only thing being wasted in that controversy is time. History has shown that books and bodies come next.
5. The media factor
Collier County has an extremely weak media establishment when it comes to covering serious issues of governance, representation and elections and provides little to no counterweight to anti-democratic extremism.
The role of the press in a democracy is to provide a check on officialdom, examine official actions, point out wrongdoing or imbalances and provide the public with the information it needs to make rational, enlightened decisions. This was recognized by the Founders at the very beginning of American government. As the Virginia Declaration of Rights put it:“…the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” A free press was enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In Collier County there is little to no fulfilment of that role by existing media outlets. Only one television station, NBC2, has a dedicated political reporter with that title. In fact, local news directors seem to go out of their way to avoid reporting on anything even remotely political. Otherwise, television coverage focuses on car collisions, canal crashes and potholes, mostly in neighboring Lee County where the stations are based.
But the media fails most spectacularly in Collier County’s own Naples Daily News (or the Naples Delayed News or the Typo Times, as this author prefers to characterize it).
The Naples Daily News is suffering from the same malaise infecting local newspapers across the country. Its revenue base is down as advertisers seek new and more effective media outlets. It has been sold several times and every sale diminished its capabilities and coverage. Its staff has repeatedly been reduced, its deadlines shortened and functions like graphic design and printing assigned to remote locations.
In the past, like most local newspapers, the Naples Daily News published original editorials every day, hosted op-eds from outside authors and featured letters to the editor. It pursued a scrupulously fair and non-partisan editorial policy. However, on June 1, 2022 the newspaper’s management announced that it was dropping the daily editorials, op-eds and letters in the print edition. Instead, it created a tombstone letters page buried in the back of the book that appeared on weekends and then, begrudgingly, on Wednesdays. Cancelation of daily editorials and letters deprived the community of a common forum outside of stovepiped social media platforms.
As a result of this and the general failure of the regional media, important political developments, especially at the margins, go uncovered, allowing extremists to operate in darkness. Also, voters remain uninformed about the actions of the officials governing them and those representing them to higher bodies like the state legislature and the US Congress.
An important source of information for voters is missing in Collier County. The county’s lurch toward unchallenged extremism is the result.
6. The activist factor
A history and analysis of Collier County’s political trends can’t overlook the role of key individuals in shaping its development.
Alfie Oakes at Patriot Fest, March 19, 2022 (Photo: Author)
Oakes is Collier County’s very own Trump, whom he strikingly resembles in a number of ways and whom he adores.
“I love our president and his family with every bit of my being! I love all that he has given for our country and all that he stands for!” Oakes posted on Facebook on Dec. 22, 2020 after speaking on the phone with Trump, who was fighting the results of the election. “May God bless our great President Donald Trump, his family, his team and all of the 75 million patriots that support him!”
Like Trump, Oakes is a businessman accustomed to risk-taking—and arguably more successful in his own realm than Trump. Also like Trump, he is known for his blunt outspokenness and broad-brush denigration of critics and opponents. He shares Trump’s affinity for extreme politics, insults and absolutism.
In the same way that Trump initially dismissed COVID as a hoax, so did Oakes who vehemently fought all forms of COVID precautions in his store, Seed to Table, and battled county officials who tried to protect public health through masking and distancing.
In an infamous June 2020 posting on Facebook, Oakes denounced the murdered George Floyd as a “disgraceful career criminal, thief, drug addict, drug dealer and ex-con who served 5 yrs in prison for armed robbery on a pregnant woman, and spent his last days passing around fake 20’s to store owners in Minnesota.” The post sparked outrage and protests throughout Southwest Florida.
During the run up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, Oakes sponsored two busloads of Trumpers to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on the National Mall and flew up himself the day of the protest. Despite a video purporting to show him inciting rioters to attack the Capitol, Oakes vehemently denies that it was him and says he peacefully protested elsewhere. He blamed the riot on “the obvious six or eight paid actors (used in other events such as [Black Lives Matter] riots, hard to believe they would be that blatant and sloppy) … followed by a small group of aggressive Trump supporters caught up in the moment, these paid actors lead the charge.”
Just as Trump dominates the national Republican Party, so Oakes dominates the Collier County Republican Party where he was elected a state committeeman in 2020. Through his Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee (CANPAC), he funded local MAGA candidates for county Board of Commissioners and the school board. They won and are now driving the county’s rightward direction. Although he has tempered his public pronouncements recently he still influences enough of a MAGA audience to determine the outcome of party primary elections, which are usually the deciding ones.
But also, like Trump, Oakes can be mercurial, inconstant, bullying and sometimes illogical. In September 2021 he was demanding a hand recount of the 2020 election in Florida, an election that all parties agreed Republicans had won. The effort got nowhere. He can also turn on former allies: when Kelly Lichter, chair of the Collier County School Board, whom Oakes had backed, had the temerity to vote for a school superintendent Oakes opposed, he called her a “traitor” and sued the school board.
In another similarity to Trump, Oakes has also endorsed clearly unqualified candidates for public office based just on their ideological purity and personal loyalty. “I don’t want to hear about what IQ someone has or what level of education someone has,” he said at PatriotFest, a gathering and rally that he sponsored in Naples on March 19, 2022. “I graduated from North Fort Myers High School—a bunch of rednecks. Common sense and some back is all we need right now.”
Given Oakes’ urging and the backing of CANPAC, these candidates won races for county Commission and School Board.
Oakes has been a significant figure driving Collier County in its current direction.
Keith Flaugh speaking before the Collier County Board of Commissioners in 2021. (Image: CCBC)
Another MAGA activist is Keith Flaugh, head of the Florida Citizens Alliance, a non-profit conservative organization founded in 2008 primarily to influence education. The organization argued that the liberal political trend of young voters was the result of indoctrination in their schools (which presumed that young voters couldn’t draw their own conclusions but had to have been somehow brainwashed).
Flaugh, 77, is originally from Montana where he received his Master of Business Administration degree from the state university, according to his LinkedIn page. After service in the US Army and a career in finance at IBM Corp., he retired to Marco Island.
According to his Facebook profile, (as posted) Flaugh “considers himself US Constitutionalist and is fed up with how our political system has been hijacked by both monopoly parties and the ubiquitous Federal Government. They have bankrupt us morally and financially to the brink of collapse. He is an organizer for Southwest Florida Citizens Alliance and the Florida Citizens Alliance, an Oath Keeper and an active supporter of SWFL 912, the Naples Tea Party, Save America Foundation, Fair Tax, Foundation for Economic Education, KrisAnne Hall’s Constitutional Ministry and Sheriff Mack’s County Sheriff Project.”
Flaugh is an active lobbyist for the causes he supports, frequently speaking at county Commission and School Board meetings. During the 2021 debate over Collier County’s anti-federal ordinance he demanded that commissioners pass the ordinance or resign. Flaugh and the Florida Citizens Alliance have also been active in opposing COVID vaccinations and in denying climate change, opposing measures to manage or prepare for its effects.
Oakes and Flaugh could not have shifted the county in the direction it has gone without the aid of numerous active supporters and followers.
However, their example illustrates the power of individuals and solo efforts in moving a community.
And that’s power that works both ways.
Commentary: Collier County, America and the next hundred years
No political turmoil or conflict is obvious to the visitors who come to Collier County and Naples during the winter season. The shopping malls light their Christmas trees and the season’s celebrations have begun. The stores are open, the beaches are warm and life is to be enjoyed.
However, for those who have chosen to live permanently in Collier County, who think about local affairs and especially for families with children in public school, the stakes are high.
Will Collier County’s next one hundred years be ones of hatred, prejudice and rage? Or will the next century be one of progress, promise and possibilities?
Collier County is not immune from the currents and storms afflicting the country as a whole. In large part these questions will be determined by the 2024 election.
The next year will without a doubt be one of the most significant in American history. The real, true bedrock issue that will be settled if the election comes off as planned is whether the United States will remain a democracy or become a dictatorship under Donald Trump.
There is no subterfuge about this. Trump’s plans are out in the open. If elected, he has stated that his regime will be one of revenge and retribution. He and his co-conspirators intend to destroy all checks and balances and impose an unlimited, unrestricted tyranny on the American people. All the abuses of one-man rule that the nation’s founders resisted and tried to prevent will come cascading forth.
If there’s a Trump tyranny in Washington there will be a similar tyranny in Collier County. Its enablers are already waiting in the wings.
What they don’t seem to realize is just what a dictatorship will mean; they show no appreciation or understanding of history’s lessons. A dictatorship imposes tyranny on everyone.
Last year American women learned what it means to lose a right when the Supreme Court took away their right to choose.
Under the dictatorship being contemplated by Trump, all Americans will lose all the rights they cherish: freedom of speech, thought, worship, assembly, petition, press, property—everything embodied in the Bill of Rights.
For example, under a dictatorship, if Donald Trump decided he wanted to seize and gift Seed to Table to Ivanka or Jared or Barron he’d simply be able to do it and no protest, process or court proceeding could stop him. In a dictatorship there’s no appeal, no reprieve, no redress. That’s what Russia’s oligarchs discovered when Russian President Vladimir Putin gave them similar ultimatums and then demanded half their wealth.
In a dictatorship, especially one based on a personality as sick and twisted as Trump’s, past loyalty is no guarantee of future favor. No matter how strenuous, how complete and how total a person’s subservience to the leader was in the past, any perceived slight or current whim of the dictator can mean punishment in the future.
A microcosmic example of the fragility of past loyalty came in Collier County this year when Oakes turned on Lichter for defying him on the appointment of Leslie Ricciardelli as school superintendent. Oakes had supported Lichter for election to the school board. But when she showed the slightest independence in basing her vote on what she regarded as the most qualified candidate rather than the one he demanded, he branded her a “traitor.” A traitor to what? What did she betray? Certainly not the students, teachers and parents of Collier County to whom she owed her real loyalty.
In a dictatorship any show of independent thought or commitment to a good greater than the dictator is cause for punishment.
That’s the way Trump governed as president—and it will be orders of magnitude worse if he’s re-elected.
Ironically, it’s the example of local MAGA activists that should inspire defenders of democracy to greater action.
Collier County’s MAGAs have shown that individual actions matter; that no act is too small or insignificant to make a difference. For those on the side of democracy, every envelope, or phone call made, or donation can help defend democracy in Collier County and the nation. Activism is the answer and that activism is needed like never before. The most impactful acts of all, of course, are voting, helping others to vote as well and protecting free, fair and accurately counted elections.
Like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane, every action by every friend of freedom can generate a blue wave that can grow into a tsunami.
Right now Christian nationalism, MAGAism, Trumpism, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia and a host of other biases and bigotries and the willingness to act on them, potentially violently, are inspiring the kind of fear and concern expressed at the Interfaith Alliance gathering.
But while hatred, prejudice and rage can’t be banished, they can be contained and ultimately defeated. It takes everyone’s courage, commitment and consistency to do it but it’s worth the effort—in Collier County, in America and in the world.
And the willingness of people to take action is a reason to truly be thankful, in this season—and always.
“Freedom from want.” (Painting: Norman Rockwell, 1943)
The Roman Senate is addressed by Cicero as it debates the expulsion of one of its members, Cataline, for plotting to overthrow the republic. (Painting: Cesare Maccari, 1889)
Nov. 5, 2023 by David Silverberg
This coming Wednesday, Nov. 8, if all goes as scheduled, Republican presidential candidates will gather in Miami, Florida at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County for their third, nationally televised debate.
This one will be hosted by the NBC network and moderated by anchors Lester Holt, Kristen Welker and Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio talk show host. It will have the legitimacy of a traditional, mainstream media event, so no matter how anti-media the candidates have been, they cannot escape its credibility and real impact.
It’s not clear as of this writing which candidates will qualify to be on stage. But what is almost 100 percent certain is that the leading Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, will deliberately be absent.
“I’m up 56 Points, so the Debates would seem to be a complete waste of time,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sept. 28. “The Debates should be ENDED, BAD for the Republican Party!”
As usual, Trump completely misunderstands the nature and value of debate. He prefers to have people unquestioningly obey his own dictatorial dictums. He’s most comfortable delivering his rambling, stream-of-consciousness harangues to an utterly accepting audience of believers.
However, his dismissal of debate is also revealing of how trivial and superficial political debate in America has become. This is a pity because debate is the very essence of democracy, indeed, of non-violent discussion and change.
So with a major, if crippled, debate coming to Florida’s shores, it’s perhaps a good time to examine the nature of debate, its value and its elemental place in the democratic process.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines debate as “a contention by words or arguments” and “a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides.”
As a verb, to debate is “to argue about” and “to engage (an opponent) in debate” or “to turn over in one’s mind: to think about (something, such as different options) in order to decide.”
There are many kinds of debate in many fields. But when it comes to candidate debates, at its core, a debate’s real purpose is to give voters the opportunity to examine and weigh candidates, their records and proposals in an absolutely equal, apples-to-apples setting. Voters should emerge from a debate informed, enlightened and ready to make a reasoned, intelligent choice at the ballot box.
It’s not the screaming or the insults or the horserace or even the resulting poll numbers that make a debate worthwhile. It is the education of the public.
Of course, that’s not how it has always played out and certainly not recently.
The cornerstone
Free, open and unfettered debate pervades all democratic governance, whether in legislative lawmaking, executive rulemaking or in citizen selection of governing officials, i.e, elections.
From the very beginning of democracy in Athens, Greece, through the Roman Republic to our own time, debate is essential to government decisionmaking.
This was embodied in the very first official document of what would become the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Reaching that “consent of the governed” can only be achieved through debate.
There can be debates over different courses of action in autocracies but those debates are usually limited to a few councilors around the autocrat, who makes a decision in his own mind and then imposes it on everyone else.
Throughout American history there were debates of enormous consequence: the Constitution itself was forged through debate; the country was held together through compromises in 1820 and 1850 after debates over nullification of federal law and the expansion of slavery.
Perhaps the greatest example and archetype of all American political debates were those held between Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Sen. Stephen Douglas in 1858. Held in each of Illinois’ nine congressional districts, the debates largely covered the question of slavery’s expansion and received saturation coverage from the nation’s newspapers, elevating Lincoln to national status.
As an incumbent, Douglas was initially reluctant to debate. But he was branded a coward by his opponents and the newspapers, forcing his hand. There was a penalty to be paid for dodging debate.
Douglas defeated Lincoln for the US Senate seat for Illinois, which was decided by the state legislature. Lincoln went on to win the presidency in 1860. But importantly, their debates set the archetype for candidate campaigning and proper conduct in American elections until our own time.
Television and trivialization
Debates have been a cornerstone of American election ritual at all levels of government. So routine and fundamental were they that singers Simon and Garfunkel mocked them in the song “Mrs. Robinson” when they listed ordinary, banal activities: “Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon, Going to the candidates debate.”
What has happened over time, though, is the gradual trivialization of what should be serious discussions and an ever-growing media obsession with the horse race aspects. As soon as the screen fades to black after a debate there’s an obsession by pundits and politicians with who “won” the debate. Politicians gather in “spin rooms” off the debate stage to influence media coverage. There’s little to no real analysis of policies, positions or records. After all, that stuff is boring.
The trivialization seems to have begun with the introduction of television. The first televised presidential debates came in 1960 between Democratic Sen. John Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. While the debate covered policy substance (and people listening on radio thought that Nixon won on points) Nixon’s perspiration and five o’clock shadow were thought to have lost him favor with the audience.
Clever comebacks and bon mots have always been an element of debate and they certainly have an impact on voters. When in 1984 Republican President Ronald Reagan debated Democratic former Vice President Walter Mondale, he torpedoed the issue of his age (73) with the line: “I want you to know I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Mondale was no stranger to his own deft thrusts. Earlier that year he skewered the lack of policy substance in his primary opponent during a debate with Sen. Gary Hart by asking him, “Where’s the beef?”
Debates may have become increasingly trivialized but there’s no doubt that their quality plunged in 2016 with the arrival of Donald Trump. His campaign was full of lies and insults and crudeness that spilled onto the debate stage both at the primary and general election levels. He dragged political discourse into a gutter from which it has not arisen to date. The screaming matches of the previous two Republican primary debates are evidence of this.
There’s also no denying that Trump’s performances worked for him with Republican primary voters and won him the nomination. However, given that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2 million votes, it’s debatable whether those same tactics scored in the general election.
But if reasonable debate has been damaged, it’s being damaged further by attacks on the very institution of candidate debate itself.
Southwest Florida and the decline of debate
In 2018 in Southwest Florida’s 19th Congressional District, the coastal area from Cape Coral to Marco Island, incumbent Republican Rep. Francis Rooney was running against Democratic challenger David Holden.
In September of that year the Collier County League of Women Voters set a date for a debate and invited both candidates to attend. Holden accepted immediately. Rooney responded that he had “no availability” on that date—and “no future availability.” What was more, he stated he had no need to debate because “everyone knows my positions.”
In days gone past, a debate would have been held anyway with an empty chair representing the absent candidate—or, as in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the non-debater would have been branded a coward. In any event, refusing a debate would have come with a price paid in public opprobrium and at the voting booth.
That didn’t happen in Southwest Florida. All the institutions that should defend democracy, the civic organizations, the media and other politicians, remained silent and cowed. There was no debate, there was no penalty for Rooney and voters remained uninformed. Rooney never had to defend his record or the policies he was pursuing and voters never saw him face to face with his opponent.
Rooney wasn’t alone. Other Republican candidates that year dodged debates altogether rather than be forced to defend Trump and his policies—and got away with it.
At least in 2020 Trump was forced to debate his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in person, on stage. Trump performed abysmally, coming across as crude, rude, impatient and ignorant.
Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who praised Trump at the time, has now revised his assessment of that debate.
“This is something you have to earn. Nobody is entitled to this,” DeSantis said in a Fox News interview on Sept. 28. “You know, I remember back in 2020, I had a big party in Tallahassee for that first debate that Trump did with Biden. And the reality is Biden beat Trump in that debate—Biden—and I don’t know how you can lose to Biden in a debate, but that happened.”
Now Trump is dismissing debates altogether and calling for their end. His opponents are understandably infuriated. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has branded Trump “Donald Duck” for ducking previous debates.
DeSantis is saying that Trump is hiding behind a keyboard by issuing social media insults rather than coming out to debate. DeSantis has suddenly become a great advocate of debating.
“You know, it’s one thing to do it behind a keyboard; step up on stage and do it to my face,” he told Fox anchor Bill Hemmer. “I’m ready for it. You used to say I was a great governor. Now all of a sudden you’re saying the opposite. Let’s have that discussion. And I’ll do it, we could do it one-on-one. Let’s do that. And let’s give the American people the choice that they deserve.”
For once, DeSantis is right. Voters deserve the right to see candidates for election—for any office—together, in person, debating the issues, their records and their proposals.
Quite clearly Trump doesn’t want to debate. He’s a terrible performer in a real debate and he just wants to continue his digressive rants to an adoring and unthinking mob. He wants election without having to defend his past or reveal his future. His Trumplike minions running for office down the ballot want similar validation without facing scrutiny.
But more, Trump doesn’t want debate of any kind in any sphere. He tried to overthrow the legislative branch of government where laws are debated. He wants to just dictate his version of reality.
That’s not democracy. That’s dictatorship.
It’s long past time to bring back serious, substantial political debates at all levels. American democracy depends on it.
Trump—and any candidate for any office—should pay a steep price for dodging this basic rite of democracy. Civic organizations like the League of Women Voters need to step up and do their part. They need to make candidates who ignore or avoid debates pay a price. Such candidates should be publicly shamed and debates should proceed without them, using an empty chair. Their opponents should benefit from their absence and cowardice.
It would also be worthwhile if the media tried to bring at least a little more seriousness into their commentary and analysis. It would be beneficial if at least one member of a panel of pundits actually examined what the candidates say in a debate and evaluated the substance of their policy proposals—if they have any.
But most of all, it’s long past time that debates were returned to their fundamental purpose: educating voters and giving them the opportunity to make a rational, informed choice when they consent to be governed. After all, as the saying goes, “elections have consequences” and the results of those elections fundamentally affect every person’s life. People should know what they’re getting.
That kind of education is not to be expected in Miami on Wednesday night. But that doesn’t in any way invalidate the ideal and value of a rational, orderly, substantive debate.
Debate may be an imperfect means of assessing candidates and making decisions. But to paraphrase what Winston Churchill once said of democracy itself, it’s the worst possible means— except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.
Rep. Byron Donalds explains his failure to vote on Fox News Sunday. (Image: Fox News Sunday)
Oct. 2, 2023 by David Silverberg
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), must now live with the consequences of his failure to cast a vote on one of the most momentous issues of the 118th Congress.
The failure to cast a vote implies an inability to make a decision, to take a stand, to hold and defend a political position. Doing those things are the marks of a leader and a skillful politician.
In this case, Donalds’ non-vote was an act of cowardice and dereliction of duty, a failure to serve his constituents and the partisans who supported and elected him.
Why is this? What were the circumstances of the vote and why was it so important? What are the likely consequences of this failure for Donalds, his ambitions and his political future?
The circumstances
On the afternoon of last Saturday, Sept. 30, it looked like the United States federal government would shut down at midnight.
House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-20-Calif.) had until that moment been unable to get the Republican caucus to vote in favor of a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded.
The chief opponent of that CR was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-1-Fla.), a member of the hard-right, Trumpist, 45-member, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Freedom Caucus.
Donalds had been a player in events leading to that impasse. He had negotiated with McCarthy on behalf of the Caucus and endorsed a compromise CR. That CR never advanced and Donalds was ferociously denounced by Gaetz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14-Ga.), as well as his own constituents for his willingness to compromise.
McCarthy wanted to pass his CR with only Republican votes but it was clear that he couldn’t do that by the deadline so he turned to the House Democrats. The CR resulting from those negotiations had no money for Ukraine, which Democrats and many Republicans wanted. However, it would keep government functioning for 45 more days until a more complete solution could be found.
Very importantly for Southwest Florida, the CR contained $16 billion to replenish the National Disaster Relief Fund and keep the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) functioning. FEMA is playing an outsized role in the region given the ravages of Hurricane Ian last year. FEMA funding is also essential to all of Florida in the wake of this year’s Hurricane Idalia.
So this was not some abstract intellectual debate being played out in some remote ivory tower. While local media looked backward and celebrated individual tales of resilience and signs of recovery on the anniversary of the hurricane, all future progress was in jeopardy. The CR also included money to keep people clothed, housed and fed on the ground in Southwest Florida.
On Saturday afternoon the new CR went to the House floor. It needed a two-thirds vote of the members to suspend the rules and go straight to a vote of approval. The votes were there and it passed overwhelmingly, 335 to 91. All Democrats but one voted for it along with 126 Republicans. Only 90 Republicans voted against it.
In the final tally, 426 of 435 members of Congress—roughly 98 percent—voted on the CR one way or another. None abstained (an option if a member doesn’t want to vote for or against a measure). Seven members did not vote at all.
One of these was Byron Donalds. (The others were: Reps. Earl Carter (R-1-Ga.), John Carter (R-31-Texas), John Joyce (R-13-Pa.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-13-Fla.), Mary Petolta (D-At Large-Alaska), and Katie Porter (D-47-Calif.).
To date, Donalds has offered several explanations for his failure to vote.
Immediately after the vote he announced on X that he would have voted “no” but the time to vote closed before he could cast his ballot.
On Sunday, Donalds appeared on Fox News Sunday and was asked directly about his absence.
“First of all, why did you miss this vote and not vote?” asked host Shannon Bream. “Everyone knew it was coming, it was a big deal. You put something on X, formerly known as Twitter, but the replies are pretty brutal.”
“Listen, here’s what happened. I was coming up the elevator in the Capitol Building to go vote,” replied Donalds. “They closed the vote down because there were members on the House floor who were changing their votes from ‘yes’ to ‘no.’ I was told that there were senators on our floor begging our leadership to close the vote so the measure would pass because it needed two-thirds. The leadership knew I was a ‘no.’ If I was a ‘yes’ they would have held the vote open for me. It’s that simple.”
Analysis: The ‘whys’ have it
Donalds’ explanation simply does not hold water. Members have a specified time in which to vote. The period for changing votes comes after the formal voting has closed. Four hundred twenty six members of Congress were present and able to vote during that time. (Although one, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-16-NY) pulled a fire alarm in a House office building, supposedly to gain more time but he says accidentally. The incident is under investigation although Republicans are calling for his prosecution.)
But in the case of Donalds, one has to wonder why he was supposedly rushing to vote during the change period, after the vote had closed.
The obvious conclusion is that he was present in the Capitol for the vote; he knew the voting was taking place and he could have easily voted. But he didn’t want to vote, so he held back until the voting was fully closed and then blamed his absence on the Republican leadership, i.e., McCarthy.
The other alternatives are that he was so neglectful and indifferent to the vote that he simply ignored it until it was too late (perhaps having a Johnny Walker in his office?) or he is so spectacularly inept after nearly three years in Congress that he doesn’t know the Capitol, doesn’t know how to get to the House chamber and doesn’t know how to vote.
It’s hard not to draw a conclusion from this interpretation of events: that purely and simply, Byron Donalds is lying.
This raises the question: Why would Donalds deliberately not want to vote?
It puts the spotlight on the difficulty of making the kinds of hard choices that face leaders.
If Donalds had voted “no,” he would have been voting to significantly damage the United States by bringing its government to a shuddering halt. More parochially, he would have been voting against the $16 billion in disaster aid that his state and district so desperately need. He would have been directly harming the people of Southwest Florida who are looking for federal help at this time and who voted for him in the last election. He would have come in for outrage and criticism for enabling this suicidal course of action and not just from marginal liberal bloggers but from community leaders and elected local Republicans.
However, if he voted “yes,” he would have outraged his MAGA base and his idol Donald Trump, who had called for a shutdown to stop his own prosecution. Donalds was already being hammered by Gaetz for his willingness to compromise on the CR, now the voices calling him a Republican In Name Only and a turncoat to the extreme Trumpist faith he has embraced would have reached a screeching new volume.
Neither course was palatable. He could have abstained but that would have also been on the record and drawn criticism—and he would have stood out as the only abstention.
So the easiest—if most cowardly—course was to skip the vote altogether, if possible, and hope no one would notice. Then, when it was noticed, he tried to shift the blame to forces outside his control.
Even Fox News didn’t buy that.
Commentary: The consequences
It is premature to say that this action—or inaction—ends Donalds’ political career. People have come back from worse setbacks in the past.
But it certainly doesn’t help at all.
Donalds’ political career has been marked by his ambition. He embraced the Republican Party credo of “just win, baby,” which holds any falsehood, innuendo, hypocrisy or contradiction acceptable as long as there’s election victory at the end of the day. He built his brand as “everything the fake news media says doesn’t exist: a [Donald Trump]-supporting, liberty-loving, pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment black man.” It enabled him to win election and represent a heavily MAGA, 85-percent white district. He fought masks and embraced vaccine skepticism during the worst pandemic of the century as it killed constituents. He is willing to front for the nuclear power industry and follow an ideological line that often contradicts the real interests of his coastal district.
Once in the House, his ambition glowed again when he ran for the third-place Republican position, only to lose. Then, as a sophomore representative-elect, he had the brazenness to put himself forward as a Speaker of the House, nominated by no less than his close friend Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-3-Colo.). It brought him international prominence, good committee assignments and raised his star in the Republican firmament.
Donalds’ unique position as a vocal black MAGA Republican provides all sorts of opportunities: there was always the Speakership, or else a slot as Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, or a run at governor of Florida in 2026 when the current governor steps down. There was the chance for significant fundraising, attracting major donors and spreading his own largesse to build his following among other Republicans and the public at large. And there were the perks of national, mainstream media appearances, speaking slots at conservative conclaves and the chance to meet and greet famous politicians and celebrities.
However, by ducking this important vote and displaying abject cowardice in the face of both enemies and circumstances, he has confirmed what his critics have long alleged: that he lacks the character and capability to handle those higher offices and greater responsibilities.
Instead of a smooth potential path to the speakership or higher office in the Republican caucus, the failure to vote showed Donalds unable to lead or take a stand and face the consequences. He transgressed Trump’s sacred dictum that a shutdown was desirable. He enraged Gaetz and the Gaetzniks who are ready to burn the nation to the ground. He also provided Gaetz a weapon against himself should they both pursue the governorship. He violated the holy unity of the Freedom Caucus, whose whole purpose is to ensure lockstep loyalty to whatever positions 80 percent of them adopt. Constituents who tend to ignore congressional politics may forget this incident but his absence will be remembered by his Republican colleagues in the House. And he has invited a MAGA revolt in his own district that could take the form of an even more extreme primary challenge in the next election.
Donalds has responded to criticism of his non-vote with his usual barrage of accusations, imprecations and denunciations of President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Democrats, border crossers, and phantom far-left radicals.
That may fool some people who, as President Abraham Lincoln once said, can be fooled all of the time.
But as Lincoln also famously noted: “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
The Paradise Progressive 