this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
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My natural inclination is toward black gallows humor in situations like these, but I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of people are going to get harmed and laughing is an unacceptable faux pas.
I also have to remind myself that "not knowing what to do with all these feels" may result in unhelpful reactions.
Yet I still want to stand on DeSantis' head and shout "what the hell did you damn well expect you fucking troglodyte". Feelings are tricky.
They (collectively) voted him into office. A lot of people are going to be hurt, but then again most people don’t vote at all.
4.6 million people voted for desantis, and 21 million people live in Florida. Less than a quarter of the people that live in the state voted him into office. It is deeply unfair to say "a lot of people voted him into office" because it ignores the people that are affected by this decision and either voted against it, can't do anything about it, or just didn't. I know you said most people don't vote at all but Florida isn't a monolith and it's really important to remember that when things like this negatively affect millions of people that either didn't want this to happen or had no say.
By these people not voting, we assume that they are OK with how things are going in their state. In which case, they asked for it.
You realise voter suppression is a thing right? It's unfair to say these people asked for it. It's also unfair to everyone stuck there and too poor to leave, or don't want to leave because it's their home.
You know kids are adversely affected by desantis's policy and cannot vote, right? just as a single example.
Theres only ~5 million kids in Florida - that still leaves about 16 million people who are eligible to vote who didn't.
1.4 million in florida have felony convictions, and a disproportionate number are minorities in florida. Then 1.8 million non-citizen immigrants in Florida, from Mexico or Cuba or other places in the Carribean. And that's not including the people that didn't vote because of local efforts of voter suppression, which is a nebulous number but still statistically significant.
people have already chimed in but, as just one example of how not-clearcut this is: Florida essentially refused to implement a policy which was democratically passed that enfranchised felons. Florida has over 1 million felons, a disproportionate number of whom are black and would otherwise likely vote Democratic. when they finally had to implement the policy, they made it much harder for felons to be re-enfranchised (against the will of voters)—such that in practice, the state maintains a ban on voting while being a felon which disproportionately impacts Democratic voters. you cannot seriously blame people for the situation the state is in, except in a very abstract sense.
Unless I'm mistaken, the vast majority of the people who own houses, and therefore stand to lose them, are middle-class white people with no criminal record, not black people or felons.
i have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to raise here when the context of the conversation is whether the people of Florida, collectively, deserve to suffer for voting in the wrong guy when:
My argument is that the people who now stand to lose their homes are not the same people who have been disenfranchised.
Black felons did not vote for DeSantis, but the wealthy white law-abiding homeowners who are now losing their homes did vote for DeSantis, unless I'm mistaken.
then that's a fundamentally incorrect understanding of the situation and of how class and race disparities are going to play out during the climate crisis. white, middle-class homeowners aren't going to lose their homes—and if they do they're just going to move because they have the capital to do that even at a loss. the people who are going to lose their homes, or who will be stuck in their position even if they need to leave will overwhelmingly be Florida's working poor and minority groups. this has been the story of every natural disaster in that part of the country. take, for example, Hurricane Harvey:
"They said nothing, therefore they asked for it" isn't a great opinion, friend.
The 21 million includes everyone, not just registered voters. Until 2015, I couldn't vote because I wasn't a citizen. Still had to live with the shitty policies that Floridian politicians passed into law.