Florida's Henchmen of Ignorance
Willful stupidity has no place in Dr. King's vision for America.
Greg Steube is the U.S. congressional representative (sort of) for Florida’s 17th District. He’s a Republican. He’s probably got a lot of high-falutin’ dreams of being president of the U.S. himself one day.
And, he’s dumb as a post.
Or maybe not.
Maybe he’s not all that dumb, just all that self-serving. Either way, Steube-id is as Steube-id does. And he does it stupid.
And so do these other henchmen of ignorance: Florida GOP Chair Joe Gruters, Sarasota County Commissioner Christian Ziegler, and Governor Ron DeSantis.
To wit:
According to Jan. 8 reporting in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Steube doesn’t believe that Trump said anything incendiary during his Jan. 6 rally. Wow, really? Perhaps he don’t know what incendiary means: “tending to excite or inflame,” and “ person who excites factions, quarrels, or sedition.”
This is, after all, the same guy who’s against having metal detectors in the Capitol Building, calling them appalling and an atrocity …
… AND he wants to be able to tote his gun inside the Capitol .. AND he voted against certifying the results of an election that has already been proven many times over to have been completely valid and decisive.
Right alongside Steube on the impeachment issue, though I don’t necessarily count him as an official henchman of ignorance, Congressman Vern Buchanan said, “I voted against the impeachment of President Trump because the rushed effort to remove a president from office six days before he leaves office is divisive and misguided.” So, if there were six months before he leaves, would that make a difference? Is there really a timeframe for punishing a seditionist?
More idiocy comes from fellow Steubediot Christian Ziegler, Sarasota County Commission, who attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally just before rally-goers attacked the Capitol. Yesterday, Ziegler retweeted Donald Jr.’s tweet that posits this little gem: if law enforcement had prior knowledge of planned attacks, then Trump didn’t incite anything.
Oh, their poor, malnutritioned brains.
That’s pretty much the definition of incitement, there, boys. When you already know or suspect that someone’s leaning toward criminal or violent activity and you condone those actions through encouraging language, that’s Incitement 101. And, do you really think Trump wasn’t informed of what his minions were plotting? He was glued to Twitter and was no doubt well-informed about all the chatter. He knew. He knew at least some of what they were plotting and he knew how his words would be taken. The only people who don’t seem to get that or accept that are the very Steube-id or the very self-serving.
Trump who, in his own words via text, had earlier promised (or warned) that the events of Jan. 6 would be “wild,” he then talked about a theft taking place at the Capitol Building — on that precise morning— and exhorted his fans with this: "… if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." All this, immediately after Trump’s legal stooge Rudy Guiliani told the same crowd to engage in “trial by combat,” and his own son, Don Jr., warned those at the Capitol, “We’re coming for you.”
And, just to underscore who he thought the crowd should hold responsible when they arrived at the Capitol steps, Trump said this: “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.” Is it any wonder many insurrectionists were chanting “Hang Mike Pence?”
So, he tells people it will be wild, tells them something extremely valuable is being stolen from them, tells them they won’t have a country anymore and tells them that only one person stands in the way of them being “the happiest people.”
Nah, not incendiary at all.
Which brings me to Florida GOP Chair Joe Gruters who more than once toward the end of 2020 tweeted these words about Trump: “We are with him going forward.”
I haven’t seen Gruters walk those words back yet. And I’m not holding my breath.
And we’ll close with Governor Ron DeSantis who has sided steadfastly with Trump in his attempts to overtturn the election, is suspectd of cooking the books on Covid-19 in Florida, and has urged Trump to “exhaust all options” in his deranged attempts to stay in office.
While not quite the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, these four Florida men promulgate deception, wage war on truth, represent a famine of decency, and are a pestilence against intelligence.
Let us follow the creed of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Let’s all quit being willfully ignorant or voting for those who are. Let’s leave behind the desire to be distracted away from confronting what is happening. Let’s call out conscientious stupidity when we see it. Let us remember his words, “The time is always right to do what is right.”
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Well written MC ... as a longtime Floridian these last 4 years has been very disturbing!! Scary times right now and I agree with Di it’s sad we are being called “weird Florida” because I love our wonderful Sarasota
Great piece, MC! Our representatives and senators are certainly an embarrassment and much worse, a danger.