Gov. Ron DeSantis gave no explanation for zeroing out the $32 million in grants that were approved by state lawmakers.
…
Leaders of arts organizations in Florida, many of whom have worked in the state for decades, cannot remember a governor ever eliminating all of their grant funding. Even in the lean years of the Great Recession, at least a nominal amount — say, 5 percent of the recommended total — was approved.
Established arts organizations usually know better than to overly rely on nonrecurring state dollars subject to the discretion of politicians, said Michael Tomor, executive director of the Tampa Museum of Art. But to cut funding at a time when arts organizations are still struggling to recover from the coronavirus pandemic sends a concerning message “that taxpayer dollars should not be used in support of arts and culture,” he added.
…
Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, gave no explanation for zeroing out the arts grants. His office said in a statement that he made veto decisions “that are in the best interests of the State of Florida.”
In all, Mr. DeSantis vetoed nearly $950 million in proposed spending and proclaimed that the remaining $116.5 billion came in under the previous year’s budget.
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What an absolute skid mark.
When does his tenure as governor end? He can’t run again so guess he tries for congress.
When does his tenure as governor end?
He’s obligated to take a two year hiatus from his current position at the end of eight years. But he’s free to run for another office during the downtime.
That’s why Rick Scott became a Senator after his gubernatorial tenure.
And people elected him after that tenure. That’s the crazy part.
Florida has a long history of bombarding the North Atlantic ex-pat contingent with reactionary propaganda and disenfranchising everyone else.
I think what’s most surprising to me is that Florida’s legislature was in favor of the art grants.
Because arts uplift, and misery is a huge part of the engine of fascism
Well adjusted societies have less temptation for it on the pro side, and a lot stronger and more inspired resistance to it from the anti side. It needs to breed sickness in order to really take hold and thrive.
I doubt DeSantis has that much of an organized plan for it, of course; I think it’s simple mean spirited ness on his part that he happened to see some vulnerable people that he can punish.
Art is also political, and more popular with open minded people than regressives. Fascists have historically hated art.
This is the better answer. People don’t want a bleak, colorless world, they want art that makes them feel good.
But art isn’t something that makes you feel good necessarily. It can but it also can make you feel other things, it’s a tool for conveying feelings and ideas to someone else, it’s a type of communication. We were supposed to have been taught this as children, that art is communication and we have to be able to hear and see things that make us uncomfortable or we will never, ever succeed in life at the things we want.
Fascists don’t want people empowered, they want people’s imagination squashed so people don’t imagine an alternative narrative to the propaganda that keeps people propping up their dear leader. All channels of communication will be controlled.
This is some toddler-level conceptual understanding. When we start banning forms of communication then everyone should stand up and point at someone trying to undo society. This is a real threat to everything we’ve accomplished as a species.
Not entirely true, they can’t get enough of art that is exactly like the things they already like. A boring landscape that could have been painted a century earlier? They love that shit.
But if you dare try to get creative (with message or medium) they will demand your head.
Id say that is exactly why they hate art. Art is inherently an extension of oneself, everything from a beserk warrior creating poetry as they fight to a master craftsman working for a week straight on a statue are expressions of art. Hell even things not generally considered art could still be classified as being from the same expression, like a person restoring and touching up an old axe.
Fascistshate personhood, they wish to strip away all that is unique if not in a literal sense then by a cultural sense. They hat the broad capacity of mankind thusly they hate art. Reminder Hitler threw a bitch fit when German archeologistswere digging up actual ancient Germanic and pre Germanic villages because it broke his narrative.
True. And art brings people together who might then talk to each other and find allies and form a base of communication centered around something other than “do what I say or I’ll punish you.” There’s lots not to like about it if you’re trying to destroy a country’s democratic institutions.
What a miserable fuck DeSanctimonius is
What a fucking shithead
If the goal is to destroy art culture in Florida, I guess the Russian psyops have done their work.
Enjoy brutalist, colorless Florida in a couple of generations.
Brutalism? You wish. Corporate style.
I think at that point you wander into whatever the architectural equivalent of Zombie Formalism is.
Is that what happens to architecture when fully submerged in salt water ?
Yeah, I get it. When has the world ever become a better place when nations fund artworks?
Look at this Florentine shit:
That is what you get when a nation’s leader becomes a patron of the arts. Is that sort of smut what you want our kids seeing?
Those patrons of the arts the medicis were the oligarchs of their time.
And they used part of their considerable wealth to fund the arts.
“Would you censor the Venus de Venus just because you can see her spewers?”
The true horror is that this is some Greek smut. We need good, clean Christian nudity for our money.
Fucking Aristophanes… getting famous just because the Athenian government wasted money on dramatic competitions.
Greek smut.
You know the Greeks were one of the first editors of the bible? I think they gave us the Old Testament.
Yeah what an absolute waste of money!
Next thing theyll do it paint porn on the roof of the Cistine chapel, however you spell it
That’s okay, that’s the church paying for it. DeSantis is fine with church smut.
You’re saying a cis teen painted this chapel? Woke agenda!
And it took him like 30 years.
You can’t defund social welfare programmes without refunding the arts first. To defund healthcare you have to defund the arts. To defund schools, you first have to defund the arts.
You know where this is going.
The arts are the canary and it is lying dead at the bottom of the cage.
To defund healthcare you have to defund the arts.
To defund schools, you first have to defund the arts.Why are the arts required to be done first, or at all? I’m not seeing it. They could be separate, and done in any order.
That’s a fair question.
The arts are seen as a luxury and a frippery. They are also seen as elitist.
If you want to defund public services and remain popular, the playbook is to remove the arts first. That way you are demonstrating the order of needs.
to me having a funded arts curriculum is a sign of an fully developed/advanced education system. Of course you need the mandatory subjects for function like reading, math, science, etc. But to complete the full human experience you need subjects like history, music, art, philosophy, etc. You take those things away, it’s like removing a part of what makes being alive enjoyable, and also in parallel, the ability to express struggle in an an almost universal way. The education is no longer for thriving, but for surviving
Desantis hates culture.
Republicans hate culture
“When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”
Seems that’s a slight mangling of the line, but it’s a common Nazi trope
Was it Goering?
The first paragraph on the wikipedia page linked says
"The statement “When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun”, variously misattributed to Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, was in fact a corrupted version of a line in his play Schlageter. "
So no, I don’t think so.
Culture cuts through their slimey veneer
Whoa there pal.
What part of driving pickup trucks with giant tires through the mud while drinking cases of ~~bud light ~~ Modelo and wearing jorts and a tank top with a picture of Rambo Trump firing footballs from a grenade launcher isn’t culture?
It’s not that.
Outraging the left fires his base.
The Left: People who like art
Look at how art fared in Nazi Germany.
I mean, you can scratch that up more to the war time economy than anything.
If all your young artistic talent is getting methed up, loaded into APCs, and driven into the thick of Russian winter, they’ll have less time to make art at home.
I might argue that the biggest thing we’ve done for the arts in the United States is to eliminate the draft. Now you can have a professional artistic community AND a professional military. Then they can come together to make the next Top Gun or Transformers or Marvel movie.
I’m pretty sure this is all related to Hitler’s failing out of art school.
I mean yeah, just listen to him talk.
He doesn’t know what culture is.
Sure he does. It’s drinking a warm can of Bud at a Lee Greenwood concert.
It’s Bud woke or something? Or did they move on from that already?
HORSES!
The horses woke up now? I’m so out of the loop.
you mean the patriarchy?
They offered an apology for daring to do a small barely publicized promotion with a queer person and then did a partnership with UFC, so they love the all-American company owned by the Belgians again.
Monocultures are as stupid as they are dangerous.
Yeah! Fuck lawns!
Rotation! Revolution!
I hope some of the “artists” that make those photos of “trump” with shirt off and a fake chiseled, glistening physique get unintentionally caught up in this grant cancellation - you know these images, the ones they stare at for hours while locked in the bathroom thinking about how straight they are.
I wish this turd would choke on his banana pudding already.
This comment would get you banned on Reddit.
No, I can’t. Fucking… Is banana pudding a euphemism for something or has reddit gotten that awful??
Something about “calls for violence”
Exactly…and this ain’t Reddit so Say what you mean
“I wish this piece of shit waste of oxygen would choke on his food and then fucking die.”
How much you wanna bet that somebody tied to the arts recently emasculated Ron in public? Pulling funding from a huge swath of people over a petty personal embarrassment is a very on-brand move for DeSantis.
Is there a perception that arts are more likely to have gay and lesbian people? Dumbass would do anything to hurt them.
Does a bear shit in the woods?
Not even that the arts have more gay people, but people involved in the arts are much more likely to be accepting and fair to gay people. So they want to hurt these people too. This is maybe overused but I think it’s appropriate and I think about it a lot:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
This guy originally supported Hitler. He said this after the war.
This man has not felt joy a single time in his life.
This high heeled tough guy wannabe is the living embodiment of poor and spiteful decision making. Nothing he does helps anybody. It’s fascinating really. Everyday I wake up I count my blessings I escaped that shit hole state
Fascist 101:
Blame minorities
Get to Power
Make things worse for everyone
Blame minorities harder
Manifest more power
…
run on “government bad”
get elected
govern poorly
“told you so”
I think he does help some people, primarily his rich donors and the rest of the do nothing class.
Nothing he does helps anybody.
He’s been a real boon for the state’s money laundering, human trafficking, landlord profiteering, and fossil fuel industries.
