Gillum, DeSantis at fringes of Florida’s hollow core
We recently had an arborist give us advice on some trees we have in our yard. The most spectacular of our grand-canopy oaks has seemed under the weather. Maybe just symptomatic of latesummer, late-day thunderboomers, it has been dropping limbs.
I love this tree. It shades us throughout the long summer and provides a constant source of rich soil for the ground around it. We marvel at the diversity of life that it supports: winged and bushy-tailed critters living among hanging Spanish moss and slimy buggers that crowd into the lively earth at its base. It’s a teaming ecosystem unto itself.
“See that there? It’s all hollowed out. It’s gotta come down.” Continuing with his laser pointer like a piling-on politician who saw the worry on my face: “Removing a grand oak, especially in this neighborhood, is a big deal. You’ll need permits and hearings, but if the trunk is hollowed out like that, it needs to come down.”
The last thing I want to do is chop down this tree. And yet, I fear, based on the observations of this expert, it might not survive.
Experts also observe that the political center in Florida has been hollowed out. When Adam Putnam and Gwen Graham, traditionalists within their respective parties, lost to fringe populist insurgents, Floridians were seemingly left without a center. Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis, as described by each other and their partisan proxies, are on the fringes of their respective parties. Traditional pundits would predict a rush to the center to capture the low-hanging chads along the I-4 corridor, but the Trumpers and SandersWarren-Ocasio-Cortez-ers are doubling down on their populist leanings: appeals to short-term pandering over sustainability.
DeSantis’ alignment with Trump’s Congress-marginalizing brand of wall-building and dog-whistling is a gross distortion of Reagan-Kemp-Ryan conservative — equity in opportunity, respect for rule of law, and special reverence for the 10th Amendment — values. Gillum’s alignment with ultraprogressives — hostile toward entrepreneurship, identity-politics pimping, and citizen-bashing via job-destroying tax schemes — grossly distorts Carter-ClintonObama bleeding heart — valuable and ideological — liberalism.
Those describing a “far left” as “socialist” and a “far right” as “conservative,” describe the wrong continuum, arguing against marginalized political foes and
HOME DELIVERY RATES using outdated political rhetoric to do it.
They’re barking up the wrong tree.
What we see on the fringes, and crowding out traditional classical liberals (true conservatives and true liberals) are, instead, on a populist continuum. Ultra-progressives and Trumpers are equal to each other in their lack of core ideology; they draw upon the power of the mob to advance shifting political tactics. Our candidates for Florida governor seem less concerned with Florida than with national and international agendas. DeSantis campaigns on building a wall in Texas. Gillum aligns with forces concerned with walls in Palestine.
If we as a state have a future, GOP and Democratic classical liberals will tarry; establishment Floridians will not sell their souls to the neo-Marxists and neo-fascists (Ultra-progressives exploiting mob rule and Trumpers exploiting authoritarian rule) who purport to speak for our respective parties.
Both candidates are concealing their own hollow, populist, liberal-core-hiding opportunism behind predictable partisan tropes. They hope we don’t see that this is all an obfuscation aimed at hollowing our traditional Florida values by turning over our state’s sovereignty to a stronger, more activist, less locally accountable federal government. Their insurgencies have pruned a Florida-concerned statesman and an institution-respecting stateswoman from our November ballots, but we know better. We’ve known great governors like Jeb Bush and Bob Graham. We bask in the historical, cool embrace of an established, political grand Floridian oak.
Trump and DeSantis and Sanders and Gillum are hollow branches that we may put off pruning, but that will fall on their own when the natural winds of rational scrutiny blow upon them. Hurricane season lasts through November, after all. We will have a mess to clean up either way, and that may not be until 2022. Floridians are nothing, if not resilient in the face of disaster.
We had a second arborist out who confirmed that the core of our grand oak is solid and healthy. The tree may not need to come down, but, “we should probably clear out the hollow branches sooner than later.”
I can live with that.