256 Comments

Floridians have to resist the autocratic moves of Ron DeSantis to limit what is taught about slavery, sex education, and other information about injustice to other Americans. Hopefully DeSantis will be voted out of office and fade into history. Fortunately Ron DeSantis does not seem to have enough support to even compete against President Biden in the Presidential election.

Expand full comment

You obviously don’t live here and have no idea what’s going on. When one parent, who has had to be taken by police out of school board meetings for being disruptive, writes an illiterate reason on why a book should be removed, then the book is removed because one stooge found it objectionable, then it is removed, ie books about Rosa Parks, Roberto Clemente, books by Judy Blume, Amanda Gorman. Oddly, books by and about minorities. This is autocracy, not democracy.

Expand full comment

I don’t know what the “woke”are upset about. Slavery did teach skills in various disciplines. Health care: how to treat whiplash wounds, heat stroke symptoms and heat exhaustion, gynecological wounds from rape. Social graces: how to gracefully tolerate separation of your family or your child being taken for sale to a distant plantation in. How to smile through grief and hate. How to be invisible to escape rebuke or punishment. Sooooooo many skills!

Expand full comment

tfg and his cohorts have made alternative facts acceptable. I can't understand why the Republicans went along with the lies even after the truth was known. One theory I have is they participated in the lies and when the lies are exposed, their lies will be exposed as well. Lying politicians must be unacceptable. Facts do matter. The truth matters most. I long for honesty!

Expand full comment

Anyone else feel like we’re in another reconstruction-type of backlash? This country seems mired in an epistemological and constitutional crisis fueled by fear and marked by the narcissistic individualism and (white male) aggrieved entitlement, cultivated by a society founded on racism and delusions of grandeur!

Expand full comment

Since when does a Governor have this power related to the state curriculum, not a revision of the curriculum in its entirety, but a personal decision to cherrypick certain details to make them suit his own misperceptions? This is a disgrace.

Expand full comment

Just when I think Florida has reached its pinnacle of stupidity it extends even more. The sad part for me is Ron is just seeing how far he can push it to get elected he doesn’t give two shots about anything other than himself. I would say I have no understanding on how stupid Florida voters are but I live in Ohio so there’s that.

Expand full comment

😊🙏

Expand full comment

Well said, Mr. Rather. I particularly loved your phrase: "We can either look back from whence we have come with clarity, or we can try to muddy the roots of the present and weaken ourselves in the process." To paraphrase Faulkner, the past is not past, it's not even dead...something like that. The Civil War and its repercussions still echo, the colonial ills of WWI still resonate in the Middle East, and the lessons of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire have never been more fresh.

Expand full comment

The only way to keep thugs like DeSantis and Trump from rewriting history to suit their own agendas is to tell the truth loudly and often. If kids can't hear it in school, we must use the media to counteract the lies. We must speak out and say "No! That is wrong. That is not what really happened, and let me tell you what did." thank you, Mr. Rather, for speaking the truth!

Expand full comment

Well said. But it must be emphasized that history, even if it is a long time ago (which the effects of slavery are not) must be taught and taught accurately.

Expand full comment

DeSantis is frightening! His governing in Florida is as dictatorial as he can get away with! I live in Florida; his delusions scare me! And he is attempting to destroy the public school system. As much as I hate him in Florida, heaven forbid he would become president!

Expand full comment

Everything that Florida, Texas, and other states like those are doing, is exactly what happened leading up to the Holocaust. People going to those states for "vacation" is the same as someone going on holiday in Germany in 1938.

Expand full comment

Words from a wise human being. Pay attention.

Expand full comment

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirshner - THANK YOU For DEMANDING truth-telling.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND EVERYONE experience the affiliated Montgomery, Alabama museum to the one pictured in the photograph.

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) houses THE LEGACY MUSEUM: FROM ENSLAVEMENT TO MASS INCARCERATION.

GO!

https://museumandmemorial.eji.org/museum

Some events, collections and memorials may educate books, videos or personal experience documentation.

BUT THE LEGACY MUSEUM is an interactive, immersive "holy ground" that one can enter and walk through, once or multiple times, and be impacted with each space, each encounter.

It is a profound experience.

It would baffle me if anyone could travel the journey within the Legacy Museum and not come through impacted.

Maya Angelou says

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived,

but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."

Expand full comment

Immigrants will not know that.

Expand full comment