Letters to the editor for Saturday, April 22, 2023

Big Brother playbook

Governor Ron DeSantis is beginning to learn that corporate America (like most of the rest of America) doesn't want his Christian nationalist, anti-democracy agenda. CEOs and board members around the country are asking themselves: If he can screw with Disney for not being anti-woke enough, what's to stop him, as president, screwing with the rest of us? Like his rival, Donald J. Trump, DeSantis is a vindictive autocrat, ready and willing to use the power of his office to persecute his critics.

DeSantis relishes abolishing our secular society in favor of a Christian nation. His approved civics curriculum would have students believe our Founding Fathers never intended a separation of church and state. He intends to create generations of students who never learn of the horrors of slavery and genocide in our history. White students must never be made to feel "uncomfortable" with their race by learning about segregation and lynchings. In the DeSantis-approved social studies curriculum, Rosa Parks is simply a woman asked to give up her seat on a local bus. The context of racial injustice in which her story takes place is wiped away; she is an inspirational figure, not an oppressed one. MLK was not motivated by the wrongs inflicted on his race; he wanted to inspire all Americans to be better.

Let's call it the Big Brother playbook. First, rewrite history; next, ban books and discussion of certain topics (as DeSantis has done with the extension of his "Don't Say Gay" legislation). Within a couple of generations, there are no mechanisms by which people can even think about subjects the regime considers unsuitable. It's happening. Ray Clasen, North Fort Myers

Simply, honestly answer questions

In the “free state” of Florida, in addition to myriad ways of limiting freedom, we now have another instance --expanding “parental rights” so certain topics, which are part of life, cannot be discussed in the classroom through grade 12. Here’s what my husband and I thought about our parental rights and responsibilities. From the age of 4 or 5 when children’s curiosity about their bodies and questions about “where babies come from” arose, we answered their questions simply and honestly, leaving the door open for more questions, which came because our children weren’t afraid to ask us. We looked for opportunities to give them information and express our values even when questions weren’t asked. We watched “Roots” and “The Holocaust” with them when they were older, which helped us teach tolerance and empathy. We hoped that any adverse or incorrect information from other sources (their friends! their friends’ older siblings!) would be countered by what they had already learned or “fact checked" with us. Parents who are alarmed about what might be said in the classroom likely do not have an open, honest relationship with their children. They likely are not even aware of what their children learn from a variety of sources. That a minority of these frightened parents, one parent even, can force decisions by the Florida Board of Education and local boards that undermine the education of all children is disgraceful.

Mary Jo Nolin, Naples

Paid for charity work?

I had to read the article on the new Florida NIL Collective, Florida Victorious, twice to make sure I understood it right. They are going to PAY athletes to do charity work? That is either a sad commentary on today's athletes or a sad commentary on the folks that run this collective thinking this is a good thing. Either way, what message does that send to kids? Volunteering should be a learning lesson for kids to feel good about doing charity work and now they will learn that you get paid to volunteer? That is pathetic. This is just another reason why these NIL's might be the end of college athletics as we know it.

Mark Cunneen, Fort Myers

Anti-science death wish

The Collier County commissioners recently and unanimously passed a “health freedom bill of rights” which seemingly protects personal liberties by banning mandated masking and vaccines.

This bill of rights ignores a primary right. Our Declaration of Independence clearly states that we are endowed with “certain unalienable rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Note that the right to life is a priority because without life one cannot have liberty nor happiness.

The commissioners have taken it upon themselves to defeat the right to life during pandemics and epidemics by not allowing medical mandates. They have fixed things so that one has the individual right, the liberty, to make others deathly sick. They have ignored the logic of recognizing that the right to life has to come first and that liberty is subservient to that right. They have abandoned medical science just as they abandon environmental science.

Question: Are our commissioners being coached by Alfie Oakes? Mother Jones reports: “Alfie firmly believes in the Big Lie and that COVID is part of a globalist conspiracy to enrich corporate overlords, destroy small businesses and enable a new world order.”

With this new health bill of rights, our commissioners have unwittingly enrolled all Collier residents in an anti-science death wish. Read your new Collier bill of rights and weep for your children, for your grandchildren and for yourselves.

Joe Haack, Naples

Listen to experts

I recently spoke before Naples City Council in support of proposed site plan changes by the Naples Beach Club to the property across from where the Four Seasons Hotel is finally being built. I strongly support this entire project and the significant benefits it will have on our community, especially in terms of enhancing the city’s beauty and reputation and positively impacting our local economy.

Given that both the city’s Design Review Board and Planning Advisory Board voted in favor of these changes, I was shocked when City Council did not follow suit and voted instead for a continuance until May 1 to further consider the changes. This decision should be an easy one, especially when the Design Review Board members gave the changes two-thumbs up, calling them “wonderful” and “better than the original” site plan. So, why doesn’t City Council listen to these public boards that are filled with professionals, not politicians?

This project has dragged on far too long. The developer, The Athens Group, has done everything in its power to work collaboratively with City Council to meet its constant demands, including granting the historic Conservation Easement, which is now being held hostage from being recorded because of Council’s continued slow-walking and micro-managing of the project.

While Council just keeps kicking the can down the road, my wife and I would like to enjoy the Naples Beach Club before we kick the bucket. It’s time to get this development built.

Ron Sippel, Naples

Big red clown car

When and where will the Republican Party park the red clown car? Apparently, they got the largest one they could buy from the Ringling Bros. circus when it went belly up in 2017 and are filling it with certified clowns. From the Congress there's Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, George Santos, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar and Ted Cruz plus other lesser lights. Not one of them appears interested in anything but getting their faces on Fox News, let alone actually legislating. The non-legislative extras like Mike Lindell, Sydney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Alex Jones and Kari Lake round out the cast and it's no secret who's behind the wheel. To be fair, there are a lot of Republicans interested in rational governance as well as Democrats in the blue clown car but the overwhelming noise from the big red clown car is both deafening and saddening.

Florida also got one from the bankruptcy sale but that's a subject for a different day.

David Aldrich, Naples

Charity event supports shelter

Lely Resort Classics Golf & Country Club Women’s Golf Association (CWGA) has presented a check for $14,250 to The Shelter for Abused Women & Children. The group’s annual charity event raised funds through a silent auction, 50/50 sale, basket auctions, private, business and member donations.Included in the donation was a $2,500 gift from The Bay State Federal Savings Charitable Foundation.The Shelter for Abused Women & Children offers comprehensive services for victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.The Shelter’s mission is to lead the community to prevent, protect and prevail over domestic violence through advocacy, empowerment and social change.

Ann Miller, Naples

Trump now the death star

The April 18 settlement where Fox News will pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million for lying about the presidential election is a Trump penalty on a great company, based on the lie that the election was stolen.

Another Trump penalty is the more than 1,000 arrested, 420 criminal sentences and 18 imprisonments (so far) due to the Trump motivated Capitol riot.

The biggest Trump penalty is the loss of trust in our electoral system.

Trump has the worst post election legacy of any president in American history.

It’s not over. Trump is now working to wreck any Republican chance to win the next presidential election by attacking fellow Republicans who might challenge him for the nomination. He can’t win a general election but he is going to make sure that they won’t either. Trump lost to the inept Joe Biden before playing the major role in the January 6 tragedy. Enough said.

Throw that in with the two Republican albatrosses of abortion and gun control and we are looking at eight years of government by liberal Democrats. At the end of that time America will not be the proud, democratically governed, capitalistic meritocracy that made this the country that people are dying to enter.

Trump is now the death star to Republicans and the country.

Bob Stabile, Bonita Springs

Defiance of science

The pernicious influence of our twice-impeached, now-indicted former president has been trickling down to the county level for a few years now. In July 2021, the Collier County Board of Commissioners managed to vote down a proposal to make Collier County a “Bill of Rights Sanctuary County,” which, despite its official-sounding name, essentially amounted to seceding from the union.This year, in a move that was closer to home than in 2021, a board member himself sponsored a “Health Freedom Bill of Rights” resolution and ordinance. Many of the people who spoke against the ordinance mentioned that it is “redundant,” given the Florida state laws against mandates in a public-health emergency.I think redundancy was the point. In public school in Pennsylvania, we learned that if you repeat a lie over and over, eventually many people believe it. Our teachers told us that “this is called propaganda and it’s what they do in Russia.” We know that DJT lies constantly — first to himself and then to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, his followers suspend their critical intelligence and believe the lies. In this, they are aided by “news” networks and websites that routinely lie to them as well. (See the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News.)Mr. Chris Hall’s Resolution and Ordinance pound some of the same drums that Mr. T loves to pound: distrust of government (except for him), of genuine experts (he is the only expert), of science (he knows more than all the scientists). Boom, boom, boom. Trump, Tallahassee, Collier County. The noise is deafening. And redundancy is the point.

Just as those who opposed smallpox vaccination in 1898 clearly landed on the wrong side of history, this defiance of government and science has devastating consequences in our own times. The data demonstrates that, beginning with the third wave of COVID, many more people died in Trump-voting counties than in Biden-supporting counties (Pew Research Center, “The Changing Political Geography of COVID-19 Over the Last Two Years,” March 3, 2022). I read an excerpt from that report during the hearing and many in the audience wanted to drown me out. They didn’t want to hear that their trumpeted “freedom,” their determination never to be “mandated,” their resistance to masks, social distancing and the COVID vaccine, are literally killing them. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!The board could have refused to consider this resolution and ordinance, regarding them instead as suitable for a referendum (as one speaker suggested). But they took their vote — a vote that does not represent my views or the views of many others in Collier County. Which side of history will they land on? And when the next pandemic sweeps through, how many residents of this county will infect others before dying themselves?

Melanie Chadwick, Naples

Fox viewers uninformed

Fox News majority owner Rupert Murdoch just admitted under ”oath” that Fox lied about the 2020 election being rigged and knew Trump was lying from the start. He admitted this during a hearing in the civil lawsuit that Dominion Voting Machine Systems is bringing against Fox News over election fraud claims by Fox. This means Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and, the worst of all, Tucker Carlson, are all liars, propagandists and conspiracy peddlers -- certainly not journalists. Republicans who only watch FOX on TV are so uninformed they don’t know facts from fiction, and know little of the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

Rupert Murdoch is very disliked in his home country of Australia. Just last month Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that Murdoch was the worst person for America and our democracy. The people of Great Britain hate Murdoch; they call his newspaper News of the World nothing but trash. This newspaper was the leading culprit in a hacking scandal in 2011. After months of investigating, a gang of editors and reporters of Murdoch’s newspaper were arrested and charged with harassment of politicians, celebrities and the royal family.

This is all laid out in Prince Harry’s new best-selling book — “Prince Harry/Spare.” Murdoch’s newspaper tried countless times to ruin his life, along with those of Prince William and their father Charles, now the king -- with false stories.

E.L. “Bud” Ruff, Naples

Moving toward fascism

What future does Ron DeSantis have in mind for Florida?

I attended a very moving Holocaust Remembrance and Unity event on April 18, during which a 98-year-old witness to history described the horrors he saw in 1945, which were the culmination of the actions (below) that Hitler took in 1935 to begin to move Germany toward fascism. If these tactics sound familiar, we need only look toward the governor, Legislature, and school boards of Florida.

1. He banned books and burned them in later years (remember all those Florida school teachers who were forced to empty their classroom book shelves and the librarians who had to trim their collections?)

2. He attacked and marginalized minorities (remember the impact of the “Don’t Say Gay” law supplied by the governor’s legislature and recently reinforced by the State Board of Education?)

3. He restricted academic freedom and free speech at all levels of education (how about gutting the curriculum and philosophy of New College in Florida and overruling class material from the teachers who are experts in their fields?)

4. In his vendetta against Jewish citizens or opponents, he attacked and destroyed businesses (why are the governor and his advocates continuing the petty, juvenile battle against Disney World? Many observers, including Republicans, are calling DeSantis anti-business.)

For a guy who talks a lot about freedom, Ron DeSantis is certainly effective at chipping away at the freedoms of many Florida residents. One can only wonder what his long-term plans are for our state.

James Goodale, Fort Myers

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Letters to the editor for Saturday, April 22, 2023