Sunday's letters: Turbulent board meetings, far-reaching consequences, authoritarian state

Right-wingers aim to disrupt School Board

The endgame of the Trump-enabled radical right-wing destruction of America is on display at every Sarasota County School Board meeting. Come to a meeting, if you have the stomach for it, but be prepared to ruin your evening and lose your faith in humanity (“School meeting ends abruptly,” May 4).

See two board members, Bridget Ziegler and Karen Rose, inciters and enablers of the radical fringe, sit smugly while the other members struggle to maintain a semblance of functionality under the onslaught.

Hear the crowd repeatedly click their noisemakers and shout random inanities at board members (“Groomer!” “Degenerate!”) and hear obviously unstable folks preach and pray. Hear these parents proclaim that their “First Amendment rights” are violated when they are not allowed to derail the business meeting.

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Never heard of Robert’s Rules? There is no right to subvert. But they don’t care. They are there precisely to disrupt. They proclaim they are Christians, but they are just plain mean. Horrifyingly, these parents are role models for their children, our next generation. American carnage is here.

But so is a School Board election, with three seats up for grabs Aug. 23. This election may spell the end of public education.

Your tax dollars may soon be funding radical right-wing schools. Wake up!

Louise Machinist, Sarasota

Stakes of voting could not be higher

Republican congressional leaders applauding the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion about overruling Roe v. Wade make clear they relish the success of their decades-long effort to control the bodies of every woman in this country.

As if that were not chilling enough, the text of this ruling is an invitation to reverse Supreme Court precedents protecting the right to birth control, interracial marriage, same-sex marriage and equal treatment for gays, lesbians and transsexuals.

If this draft becomes law, as is likely, every city, county and state in this country will be exposed to Republican lawmakers who will capitalize on the opportunity to criminalize behavior currently protected by the Constitution.

If ever an action at the national level had an impact locally, this is it, thanks largely to the last three Republican presidents, who nominated the five Supreme Court justices who here reject precedent and principle: George H.W. Bush (Clarence Thomas), George W. Bush (Samuel Alito) and Donald Trump (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett).

Every potential voter should know exactly whom she or he is voting for at every level of government, and vote accordingly. The stakes could not be higher.

Marvin H. Morse, Sarasota

Justices may have lied about abortion

During their confirmation hearings, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh said Roe v. Wade was established law and they would respect the principle of stare decisis.

If they vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, they lied their way onto SCOTUS and should be removed from the court.

Michael McGuire, Sarasota

Governor creating authoritarian state

In their seminal book, “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discuss the critical moves that contemporary authoritarian strongmen have used to consolidate their power.

Be they Erdogan, Orban, Maduro, Fujimori or Chavez, they made the legislature subservient to them, co-opted the courts to sanction their laws, punished large businesses to silence their opposition and created populist chaos by pitting groups against each other to distract and dissipate the unification of power groups against them.

Here in the not-so-free “State of Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis has done exactly what the world’s strongmen did to consolidate his power:

The impotence of the Legislature allowed the governor to dictate the election map and influence appointments to the court; pitted citizens against each other with culture war legislation; punished the largest employer in Florida for criticizing his legislation; eliminated authority and threatened to punish local government agencies who oppose his policies; created a personal police force; and instituted voter suppression legislation to make it harder for his critics to vote.

When you go to vote for governor in November, look at the totality of DeSantis’ actions vis-a-vis Maduro, Chavez and Orban, who imposed populist authoritarianism.

Alan Sprintz, Sarasota

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: School meetings out of control, stakes of voting could not be higher