Governor Ron Desantis is not a stupid man. He has degrees from Harvard and Yale with a record of being an excellent student, but he chooses to play the role of ignorant oaf in order to please the multitudes of dolts who inhabit parts of Florida, enough parts to make a big difference at election time. There is, of course, an elderly, very conservative part of the citizenry, many frozen in time and seemingly bereft of reason, curiosity, or any desire to leave 1950’s white America behind in terms of current science or racial awareness.
The governor’s choice for Surgeon General in the state was Dr. Joseph Ladapo, seemingly also mired in the America of sixty years ago, and, as a black man, an excellent prop for “racial equality” in the state. Dr. Ladapo makes a perfect hand puppet for the governor, whose deliberate, attention-getting insult of teenagers last week for wearing masks was a painful scene, not just for the innocent teens, but for the governor himself in his feeble attempt to demonstrate his loyalty to the current far-right’s defiance of science and medical facts. It was an embarrassing, dangerously insensitive display of political posturing in an attempt to mimic Donald Trump, the would-be dictator, still attempting to regain his throne.
If there were a trophy awarded to the most two-faced impostor in politics today, it would surely end up being ensconced in an illumined cabinet at the home of our governor. JB
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
View all posts by John →
