I went to Florida last weekend for a wedding: the sights
The first night was at Margaritaville: channeling Jimmy Buffett à la Beach Bum
Actual wedding was on a boat ⛴, I hung out on top for the views
Back 🏡
Bonus: picture of Ziggy at boarding looking like a Chinese New Year lion
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I went to Florida last weekend for a wedding: the thoughts
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/27/can-ron-desantis-displace-donald-trump-as-the-gops-combatant-in-chief
Leading up to this trip, I gave myself strict instruction to stick to small talk and avoid politics. But, I am a curious person, and I'm willing to have every conversation once. In this case, I had never spoken before with someone who believes semi-automatic weapons should remain for sale and in distribution.
I don't have anything mind-blowing, or rational, to share about a person who holds these beliefs. I was most interested in how a person who holds such antisocial views (antisocial: "hostile or harmful to organized society") interacts face-to-face with other people. Are they able to maintain eye contact, sincerity, and intimacy?
It was insisted that our views were more alike than they were different, and that I would come to agree with the pro-gun POV with further discussion. The term libertarian came up a lot. Praise for Ron DeSantis came up as well. Which brought me back to this passage from a New Yorker profile on the politician from the last year:
Nearly everyone I talked to who knew DeSantis commented on his affect: his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids. One former associate told me that his demeanor stems from a conviction that others have advantages that were denied to him.
There is a lot of interest among centrists in "reaching across the aisle" and finding common ground. But how do you find common ground with a belief system rooted in white patriarchal entitlement and hierarchy? How do you find common ground with politics borne of grievance, when a person feels victimized by the fact that they haven't received all that was promised with their birthright?
I genuinely don't know what else to think or do, when it comes to our collapsing society and the white supremacist demagogues and their followers ushering in its demise. After several years of fetishizing Gen Z as the generation that will save us, I'm beginning to see that they are a group of people in our society like any other, with their fair share of opportunists and regressive instigators. I also don't think I can change anyone's minds, values, or beliefs (nor should I).
I genuinely don't know what else to think or do, and while someone might say it isn't my responsibility to think or do anything, as a private citizen, everyday person who lives and works in obscurity. But, the problem is none of these horrid, regressive developments are happening in a vacuum; we live in a society. So, within my grim view, I am trying my best to keep my pro-social, community-loving values upright, intact, and updated 📚🗣️👂, and hoping that others who might otherwise succumb to hopelessness, indifference, or nihilism don't look or shy away from what powerful people are doing in places like Florida and to whom. Fight transphobia wherever it's happening, whether it's being written into law by a state's legislators, or stoked by the New York Times.
I genuinely don't know what else to think or do, and while someone might say it isn't my responsibility to think or do anything, as a private citizen, everyday person who lives and works in obscurity. But, the problem is none of these horrid, regressive developments are happening in a vacuum; we live in a society. So, within my grim view, I am trying my best to keep my pro-social, community-loving values upright, intact, and updated 📚🗣️👂, and hoping that others who might otherwise succumb to hopelessness, indifference, or nihilism don't look or shy away from what powerful people are doing in places like Florida and to whom. Fight transphobia wherever it's happening, whether it's being written into law by a state's legislators, or stoked by the New York Times.