DeSantis Harris War Ignites, Charlie Pierce Puts It In Brilliant Context

The self-immolation of Ron DeSantis just fired up several degrees. In the past 24 hours he’s solidified what a complete amateur he is by his “takedown” of Kamala Harris in the wake of her criticizing the newest Fantasy World version of history which the Florida Board of Education is directing be taught. Kamala Harris decided to blast down to Florida and set the record straight after DeSantis’ people revealed that a core principle of the New History would be that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” This was in the wake of the Board of Education unanimously backing new standards for teaching Black history that would put the state’s curriculum in compliance with the Stop WOKE Act previously signed into law by DeSantis.

Harris let them have it with both barrels. Politico:

Harris gave a fiery speech — without a teleprompter — that both called out the curriculum changes and knocked Florida’s Republican leaders. Among the targets, inevitably, was DeSantis — though Harris never mentioned him by name, referring to him and other top state Republicans as “extremists” and “people who walk around and want to be praised as leaders.”

“Come on — adults know what slavery really involved,” Harris said. “It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother. It involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world. How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”

Harris also said, “they want to replace history with lies,” and said it was wrong to “push propaganda to our children.” She also said, “Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget. We will be better if we remember. We will be stronger if we remember.”

Stirring words. Here is DeSantis’ response, which isn’t powerful enough to stir a cup of coffee, let alone the human spirit.

Surrounded by white people in the kind of carefully scripted, staged, controlled propaganda event that he loves, Desantis denounces Kamala Harris for coming to FL to “chirp and demagogue” about how FL teaches slavery and African-American history. pic.twitter.com/7upDGWWKaI

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 21, 2023

I like the sexist dig in there, Harris “chirped.” The plain fact is, DeSantis would do well to have 1/10 the skill as an orator that Harris has. He’s the one who chirps, and that’s only when he stops whining for a moment.

The award for saving the day here goes to Charlie Pierce at Esquire. The man’s expansive knowledge of literature and history is what has elevated him to the top of the heap in political commentary. If you can read only one article today, read this one. Pierce starts out by saying that Florida’s new standards, “look as though they were devised by Strom Thurmond on some very good mushrooms.” Esquire:

I was particularly intrigued by the instruction that the curriculum include “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” Given that the list provided by the Board is composed entirely of violence by white mobs against Black citizens — Tulsa, Rosewood, and the turn of the century race riots in Atlanta, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. — this equivocation reeks of trying to apply the standards of Both Sides Do It to racial violence. Even if you count Nat Turner, and that’s very arguable, this is a preposterous way to teach history, but it’s a great way to teach profitable ignorance. I know that first-hand, about which more anon.

The only reason I can come up with for that curious “and by African Americans” equivocation is that it might distressingly be referring to attempts by the victims of those bloody episodes to fight back. For example, the Ocoee Massacre, which occurred on election day in 1920. Armed members of the Klan prevented Black citizens from voting. A man named Mose Norman was particularly insistent to the point that the Klan and its affiliates went looking for him at the home of July Perry, a influential man among Ocoee’s Black community.

From the Florida History Blog:

The group’s leader, a military veteran and former police chief of Orlando named Sam Salisbury, knocked on the door of the wood-framed home. Perry knew they were cornered and reluctantly answered the door. The officer insisted that Perry must come with him, to which the 51-year-old replied, “Yes suh, boss, let me get my coat.” At that moment, Salisbury grabbed Perry by the arm and put him in a headlock, thinking he might run. Perry’s daughter Coretha responded by placing a rifle in the officer’s belly. Salisbury instinctively brushed the weapon aside. In that intense moment, the gun fired, shooting the officer in the right arm; he retreated out of the door and rolled on the ground to escape.

With only Perry’s family inside, a volley of gunfire erupted in both directions. Two of Salisbury’s men, Elmer McDaniels and Leo Borgard, were killed when they tried to storm the house by kicking in the backdoor. Coretha was also shot in the arm, possibly by a stray bullet from her father’s gun. Though the wound was not life-threatening, she had a scar for the rest of her life.

The story goes that the family so valiantly defended their home that some were convinced there was a large group inside. The mob retreated temporarily to get reinforcements and manpower from Klan members in surrounding cities. 

The Perry family used the two or three-hour respite to escape the house. July had been seriously wounded during the incident and fled, with the help of his wife, into a nearby sugar cane patch. While her two young brothers hid in the barn, Coretha remained in the house to tend to her injuries alone.

By the time it was over, an estimated 58 Black citizens were dead, their community centers and churches were burned to the ground, and July Perry had been lynched on a telephone pole outside a country club. Now, this would be a helluva discussion topic in a history class — the role of violence in self-defense against oppressors. Was Coretha Perry right to draw down on the cops trying to haul her father away? Of course, to have that discussion, you would have to describe in some detail the oppression against which someone like Coretha Perry was defending herself. And that would be, I guess, “woke,” and we can’t have that.

Anti-woke appears to be another term for colonialism, as the colonial mentality is first and foremost defined by erasure of the identity of the people being oppressed. Pierce goes on to cite how few African Americans know the names of their ancestors and he also tells an anecdote about how Native American Indians were shipped off to boarding schools with the admonition, “Kill the Indian, save the man,” the idea clearly being that to erase the roots and identity of the person and overlay the identity and values of the colonial oppressor, instead, was the move to make.

And Ron DeSantis wants to make that move now. He’s made that abundantly clear.

Let’s see if he’s able to sell this lunacy outside of Florida. If this is part of his campaign reset, what’s going to get him on track, in other words, I would hate to see what he would do if he wanted to self destruct. It will be a pleasure to see this little man (and I’m not talking about his physical height, I’m talking about the measure of his being) toddle off the presidential aspiration stage and into the history books — next to Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal.