Ron DeSantis: the book banner
Ron DeSantis: the book banner
The stereotypical “space cadet” used to be depicted as someone who had their head in the clouds, looking up and away. Times have changed. Distracted people don’t look up and away anymore, they look down and in. The method doesn’t matter. It is the costs of distraction that counts. It is important to be observant and present, which means it’s best to look both up and down. This is a story about looking up. It’s about art. It’s also a story about control, power, ideology and madness. I hope it might also make a point about freedom.
Some years back, I gave a commencement speech, and offered the new college graduates some wisdom from a John Denver song: “I know he'd be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly.”
The only way to see an eagle is by looking up. Yesterday, I was sitting outside looking at a pale blue California sky and a magnificent red-tailed hawk appeared suddenly, soaring low, just above the scrubby leaves of a cluster of oak trees. The hawk was graceful, beautiful, and powerful. It reminded me of the importance of looking up. It also made me think about Ron DeSantis, the front runner for the MAGA nomination in 2024.
Freedom of speech, religion and assembly are deeply rooted in the concept of human beings having natural rights to freedom of conscience, thought, and expression. Even in the darkest and most terrible places, the human being creates and dreams. Art is an expression of speech, thought, creativity and imagination, and therefore, it has always been political. Because art is subjective and interpretive it has always been at odds with ideologies that seek to make human beings conform and submit to political authority that imposes truth, belief, opinion and aesthetic sensibility at the whim of the state.
Fear has always been the weapon of choice for tyrants to impose conformity, stifle imagination and crush hope, and specifically, fear of execution, imprisonment or exile. Or, in the case of the state of Florida and her teachers, it is a third-degree felony for possessing a book on school bookshelves that is not approved by the state and Ron DeSantis.