The mean-spirited, far-right DeSantis and his Republican allies have inverted an insight taken from the renowned, late educator John Dewey who recognized that politics required informed judgments, public dialogue, dissent, critical exchange, judicious discrimination, and the ability to discern the truth from lies. Instead of embracing these democratic elements of education as central to creating citizens with an open mind and with a willingness to engage in a culture of questioning in order to expand and deepen the conditions necessary for a flourishing democracy, DeSantis and the GOP are doing everything they can to remove such practices both from schools and other cultural apparatuses that function as teaching machines. Under such circumstances, DeSantis and the GOP are producing what Dewey claimed amounted to the “eclipse of the public,” which he considered the most serious threat to the fate of democracy.[1] DeSantis has put into place a range of reactionary educational policies. These include banning books and critical race theory, requiring educators sign loyalty oaths, and forcing them to post their syllabus’s online. He has also instituted legislation that restrict tenure and allows students to film faculty classes without consent, and much more. [2]

Not only are these laws aimed at minorities of class and color, but this GOP attack on education is part of a larger war on the very ability to think, question, and engage in politics from the vantage point of being critical, informed, and willing to hold power accountable. More generally, it is part of a concerted effort not only to destroy public education, but the very foundations of political agency.[3] DeSantis poses a dangerous threat to higher education, which he would like to turn into “a dead zone for killing the social imagination, a place where ideas that don’t have practical results go to die and where faculty and students are punished through the threat of force or harsh disciplinary measures for speaking out, engaging in dissent and holding power accountable.”[4] In this case, the attempt to undermine schooling as a public good and democratic public sphere is accompanied by a systemic attempt to destroy the capacity for critical thinking, compassion for others, critical literacy, moral witnessing, support for the social compact, and the civic imagination. DeSantis justifies these acts of repression by claiming that “Florida schools have become socialism factories” and that students at all levels of education should not be subjected to classroom material that would make them uncomfortable.[5] This is code for a pedagogy of repression that revels in deception, kills the social imagination, depoliticizes students, and transforms schools into militarized punishing machines, propaganda factories, and components of the security-surveillance state. In many ways, the GOP and DeSantis approach to education is not unlike what Putin is doing in Russia. As a senior Kremlin bureaucrat, Sergei Novikov, recently put it, Putin’s goal is “impart state ideology to schoolchildren….We need to know how to infect them with our ideology. Our ideological work is aimed at changing consciousness.”[6] Indeed! Max Boot, writing in The Washington Post, argues that DeSantis’ educational policies represent “one of the most alarming assaults on free speech and academic freedom [and reveal] a troubling pattern of authoritarianism and vindictiveness that would be extremely dangerous in the Oval Office.”[7]

When asked about Biden’s low approval ratings, Newsom pivoted and brushed it off to say that both Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron have lower approval ratings than Biden, adding that it’s difficult “these days for anyone in leadership to have more than a 40 to 50%” approval rating. He says people are justifiably angry and frustrated after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, international economic issues, and political strife.

But, Newson added, “You have to recognize what you’re up against, and right now, we're up against the ruthlessness of the Republican Party.

"That's not a cheap shot. You see what's happening to all the progress we've made in the 21st century, all of the rights that we in many ways have taken for granted that had been afforded since the ‘60s, are being rolled back in real-time," Newsom said. "This is a totally different moment." He adds that the Democratic Party needs to "wake up with a different mindset" and go beyond “advancing the collective cause.”

"That's where the party comes in. Democrats need the Democratic Party—not the president, not a speaker … the party, the infrastructure, I think, has to organize with more ferocity of focus, more determination to set the agenda, set the course, and put the other party on the defense," Newsom said. “They are dominating the narrative. The facts are not on their side, but they’re dominating the narrative. And in this world, right now, you dominate the narrative. You win. And that’s what I’m worried about,” he said.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation Thursday tweeted out additional video of the Georgia Guidestones showing a dark figure sprinting to and from the monument shortly before an explosion destroyed one of its four pillars.

It also served as a sundial and astronomical calendar. But it was the panels' mention of eugenics, population control and global government that made them a target of far-right conspiracists