My My, Florida
The sun had only been up a few hours. The wind had died to nothing, leaving me floating quietly in my small sailboat. I was 11 or 12 at the time, so it must have been about 1969 or 1970. For me, this experience, these moments to follow, were decidedly transformative and magical, creating memories that would last a lifetime.
It was a Saturday summer morning in a cove on the eastern side of the Indian River Lagoon. Stretching up and down the east coast of Florida, the lagoon is where fresh and saltwater meet. According to Wikipedia, the Indian River Lagoon is “one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the Northern Hemisphere and is home to more than 4,300 species of plants and animals.”
Large loggerhead sea turtles floated unperturbed on the mirrored surface of the crystal clear water. Bottlenose dolphins were fishing, almost casually. A manatee rose for a breath of fresh air. I could actually hear the turtles, dolphin and manatee breathing. Stingrays were swimming (or perhaps flying?) so gracefully in the shallow water below me. Mullet were jumping. Pelicans, seagulls and osprey were circling, diving, making a raucous show of it. And I, just floating there in wonder at all the life that surrounded me.
This immersion into Florida’s natural world affected me, indelibly so, more than 50 years ago.
Long gone are those days of marine abundance. Gone are the essential sea-grass beds and the clean, clear water that fostered this amazing, dynamic profusion of life called Florida.
Also gone, it seems to me, are enough people who care. We have made huge advances in science, describing individual species and their interconnections in this web of life. Yet, we humans loudly reject our place in this web, and refuse to understand or accept the consequences of this refusal. I am quite sure, this will be our undoing.
I no longer recognize my Florida.
The Florida where I grew up in the 1960’s and 70’s bears no resemblance to the Florida of today. Not the places. Not the people.
Florida’s population has quadrupled since I was a kid. This wouldn’t be so bad if a fraction of these people had an iota of concern for what the Florida State Park system advertises as “The Real Florida.” But they don’t.
Moreover, the fact that Florida is now solidly “Red” after these last midterm elections doesn’t bode well for what’s left of Florida’s true beauty and magnificence. Floridians’ tastes now mirror those of the rest of the materialistic U.S. Strip malls, fast food joints, big box stores and parking lots are what we have traded for the unrivaled diversity and abundance that were once here, not so long ago. Republicans and Democrats are both staunchly pro-business, at all costs.
And one of those costs is our dwindling and dying natural world.
I have come to accept that my Florida is gone. Bulldozed, drained, dredged, mined, poisoned, and “developed” without a hint of sadness for the loss. In fact, this wreckage is celebrated by those for whom money is the only green thing to be cherished.
Florida’s ecosystems have been decimated. An inevitability when the only goal is what some call “development” or “progress”. Perhaps, because so many Floridian’s wealth and income are directly tied to the destruction of Florida, it is off the table for discussion.
Throughout my formative years, I reveled in the beauty and diversity of Florida. In the 1960’s and 1970’s my parents took our family to the many truly amazing and inspiring state parks, with their winding rivers, pristine beaches, dense forests, cool springs and coral reefs. When I was old enough, I spent much time canoeing, kayaking and sailing the creeks, rivers and lakes throughout the state, the shaded mangrove tunnels of the Florida Keys and the freshwater springs of north Florida. I have hiked and camped on many miles of the Florida Trail. Florida was a rich, rich state. Rich in biodiversity. Rich in history. Rich in habitat.
Twenty years ago I left. Some would say I bailed. Perhaps that’s true. But what do you say to someone who decides to evacuate before a hurricane? “Stand your ground”? I saw what was coming. I decided it was enough.
Not just the physical destruction of my home state, but the change in those who called themselves Floridians. Today, Florida seems overcome by ignorance, an unquenchable thirst for money and shiny things, and a cult-like attachment to mindless social media, with a Donald Trump or a Ron Desantis at the end of that dead end road. I watched it happen to my family and friends.
Eventually, I got tired of tilting at windmills, weary of watching the environmental and cultural degradation.
For many people the world over, Florida has become a caricature of social and political cartoonishness, as the Republican Party works overtime to take Florida back to the cerebral Dark Ages.
Florida has become a national laughingstock, with Desantis, the ideological spawn of Trump, merely the latest buffoon. With a governor who embodies the ignorance, cruelty and violence of the new Florida and the MAGA nation as a whole, it isn’t really too hard to predict the future, is it?
When the Florida governor says, “Florida is where ‘Woke’ comes to die.” it’s clear that the assault on critical thinking, history, decency and true freedom is reaching its apex. So much for Ivy League “thinkers” like Desantis, whose piss poor political posturing is merely red meat for his mindless base.
I have heard the media talking heads use the word “polarization” to describe our current politics, as though the issues are merely disagreements among equals, who happen to hold different beliefs. What Florida, and America as a whole suffer from is not polarization, but rather ignorance.
I don’t need anyone telling me what went wrong. I watched it happen. The love of money took over. It took over politics. It took over the churches. It took over Floridian’s souls. Florida is now a state of mostly soft city folks who have very little connection with, or concern for, the natural world. Few read. Fewer seem to think at all.
The intellectual and moral descent of our country has been carefully shaped and choreographed. As a medium, television has been instrumental is shortening the attention span of its viewers. This decreased ability to focus is perhaps even more damaging than the ignorance produced by FOX TV programming. Now, the ubiquitous, 24/7 distractions of TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp have rendered moot the possibility of careful, considered reflection on anything. Worse, our schools and universities have been bought and paid for by the corporations and the ultra rich. Many fail to understand and grasp these dynamics. I wonder why. (No, not really.)
Since the dawn of the age of mass marketing, some hundred years ago, our best and brightest have been drawn to the magic of sales, and to the allure of the “big money” of Finance. The hedge fund managers, bankers, lawyers, accountants all worked for those who had one interest and one interest alone: to make more and more money. These underlings pledged their loyalty to the corporations and the big money, in order to secure their place in the “good life.” Too bad the deal involved selling their souls. Over the years, these people suffered a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, whereby after 30–40 years of going along to get along, they adopted the ideologies of their captors / bosses. It goes well beyond just kissing ass.
In 1964, after my dad got out of the Air Force my parents moved us back down to Florida. All my childhood memories are of Florida, and they are happy and rich memories: catching bags of snakes and letting them go in and around our house, to the chagrin of my mother. Raccoons, armadillos, rabbits, opossums, lizards, alligators, deer, bobcats, bear. The Florida of not so long ago was as good as it gets.
The Indian River Lagoon was an incredibly productive and diverse ecosystem. The mullet runs were legendary. Fresh, delicious seafood was there for the taking. Onshore, game was plentiful and the soil was dark and rich. Now, it is difficult to find a manatee without propeller scars on its back, or a sea turtle without tumors.
The change I saw most clearly was the enthrallment with the rich. Moving down from the north, the rich were no longer “snowbirds”; they were people to be listened to and cozied up to. Who cares how they got their money? Who cares that they have neither the understanding of, nor concern for the life that was already here.
South Florida turned into a suburb of New Jersey and a haven for Latin American and Caribbean kleptocrats. Meanwhile, memories dimmed of the true richness that had come before. We welcomed the snowbirds who wanted only lower taxes and snowless winters. We welcomed the terrorists, drug kingpins and scam artists who found south Florida to their liking, and a safe place to hide.
With the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision, the doors opened even wider for the purchase of our government by those enthralled by and motivated by money alone. Florida became a commodity, controlled by those who raised the most campaign money. Or, more precisely, their benefactors who “contributed” that money. The statistics are rather clear on this point.
But, enough about my Florida. The one that no longer exists, thanks to our misguided pursuit of more, ever more. More money. Bigger homes with bigger yachts. Backyards with hangars for private jets. Ever more roads to bring ever more people, A never ending quest, it seems, to bulldoze and pave over as much precious Florida land as possible.
There is little to be hopeful for, as I see it. A rapidly rising sea level, the MAGA (bowel) movement, the worship of money, ascendant militarism, Christian Nationalism and boastful ignorance — all these contribute to the death by a thousand cuts to a once truly great state.
My My, Florida.
