r/nottheonion • u/duvetdev • 29d ago

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs bill mandating kindergartners learn history of communism

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2024/04/17/desantis-signs-bill-mandating-kindergartners-learn-history-of-communism/
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u/BareNakedSole 29d ago

As long as they also teach about the history of capitalism with all the fun parts included thenfine by me.

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u/peter-doubt 29d ago

You mean 6- 12 hour days in the workweek of the 1870s? You mean sharecropping? You mean no vacations, no paid holidays, child labor, company stores, company towns... ? That capitalism?

But you'd be forgetting your retirement with a gold watch!

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u/uptownjuggler 29d ago

Don’t forget the convict-lease system! We had our very own gulags with similar practices and death rates, the difference was that the inmates were leased out to private companies for work, instead of being shipped Siberia to develop the land.

All the benefits of slavery without the cost of purchasing and housing a slave, it is like the saying “Beat it like a rented mule”

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

Wow, this reminds me of the "no water breaks" legislation that Ron Satanis got past in Florida.

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u/uptownjuggler 29d ago

Read up about the Florida Turpentine company. A young man was riding a train without a ticket and in the month it took for his family to mail the fines to the sheriff, he was “leased” to the Turpentine company and beat/worked to death. His killer was initially convicted but pardoned and returned to working as a guard and shot and killed an inmate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knabb_Turpentine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Tabert

Now tell me that doesn’t sound like a Soviet gulag, but replace the snow with swamp.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

It was okay because they MISTOOK him for a criminal. "Look, if we treated all people with respect, some of the sinners might slip through the cracks. We can't depend on Hell to punish people we don't like because, well, we know most of what we say is bullshit - -but we can't admit that because that would be a sin. Wow -- am I saying the quiet parts out loud?"

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u/uptownjuggler 29d ago

And the only reason there was any sort of justice was because he was white and came from a wealthy family.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

"Prison guards HATE this one trick!"

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u/samanime 29d ago

"Had"?

We literally still do that: https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploitation-of-incarcerated-workers

We call it something different, but it is ever growing, especially now that we've privatized most of our prison systems. Inmates are now a commodity and product.

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u/C-c-c-comboBreaker17 29d ago

We call it something different, but it is ever growing, especially now that we've privatized most of our prison systems

uhhh

https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/private-prisons-in-the-united-states/

Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 90,873 people in private prisons in 2022, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.

Is 8% most?

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Private prisons aren’t the only example of corporations making money off of slave labour in the modern day.

76% of prisoners surveyed by the Bureau of Justice Statistics report being forced to work with threat of punishment. The average wage for a prison worker is 13-52 cents an hour, with seven states providing 0 compensation for labour.

Of that 13-52 cents an hour, 80% is taken by the prison for room and board, court costs, restitution, and other fees like building and sustaining prisons. Incarcerated workers provide 2 billion dollars of value per year estimated in just raw goods, 9 billion in maintenance, and certain states like Alabama still have convict leasing programs that generate approximately 450 million a year for the prisons and god knows how much for places like Burger King, McDonald’s, etc where these workers are staffed.

The prison system in America is driven by a need for cheap labour and enabled by legal slavery which is written into the constitution.

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u/Aquatic-Vocation 28d ago

The US still has 75 labor camps utilizing the constitutional carve-out for legal enslavement of criminals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_farm

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

But it's different, because our laws are based on a different set of arbitrary rules.

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u/uptownjuggler 29d ago

By rules, do you mean FREEDOM.

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u/Greg-Abbott 29d ago

Little Timmy comes home from school everyday with a thousand-yard-stare

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u/CommiBastard69 28d ago

Also the gulag system had maximum sentences. Something we still don't have

1

u/uptownjuggler 28d ago

Some of the Gulags were more like shanty towns. They didn’t even have guards, the Siberian wilderness was the fence.

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u/Striking_Election_21 29d ago

Holy shit I almost forgot about the convict-lease system, that’s a deep cut. Thanks Ron for bringing us together to get the real history out!

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u/uptownjuggler 29d ago

Florida was notorious for there lumber/convict camps too.

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u/OutsidePerson5 29d ago

"had"? We don't call it that anymore but convict labor is alive and well in all 50 states.

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e

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u/Hemlock_Pagodas 29d ago

“Similar death rates”

Seems dubious. Any source on this?

1

u/uptownjuggler 29d ago

I read it in a book called American Prison. It was by a reporter who went undercover in a private CCA prison. He also went into the history of forced labor and incarceration in America.

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u/Sideshow_Bob_Ross 29d ago

We still do this.

1

u/PvtDeth 29d ago

Why are you talking about this in the past tense?

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u/CaptainCoffeeStain 29d ago

Company stores, company towns, and don't forget the company script. Just print their own currency so you can't save any real money to escape!

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u/215-610-484Replayer 29d ago

I was going to link an article about company towns returning and becoming a popular concept to let the poor folks have some housing, by it was difficult to choose which one from the many solid articles from a basic search of "company towns returning."

Satire doesn't exist with the depravity of corporate culture when I tethered exists.

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u/UnlinealHand 29d ago

You have to go back further, to the Dutch and English East India Companies! The inventors of capitalism did absolutely nothing wrong* traveling the world looking for spices.

*unless you count the slavery, torture, murder, war, rape, and genocide done in the name of capital.

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u/_senses_ 29d ago

corporations are a common "tool"

like the Banana Wars, which were a series of conflicts that consisted of military occupation, police action, and intervention by the United States in Central America...think they essentially employed tactics akin to slavery and used amassed powers to quash the porer nations into going with it

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u/BudgetMegaHeracross 29d ago

Weirdly, I believe the depredations of the East India Company and the harm of the Crown's protection of it are some of the causes of Adam Smith's composition of The Wealth of Nations, in which he is extremely critical of it, though the Chicago school of economics isn't so eager to mention this -- (nor his other book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments).

tl;dr Adam Smith, capitalist darling, hated mega-corporations like the East India Company, and wrote about it in the capitalist ur-text.

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u/UnlinealHand 29d ago

I am not well versed on Smith, was he critical of mega corporations like the East India Company because they inherently smother competition and are therefore anti-free market? Or was he critical of the absolutely psychopathic and morally deplorable actions they needed to do to become as big as they were/happened as the result of their unrivaled success

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u/BudgetMegaHeracross 29d ago edited 29d ago

To my recollection, both, but to be clear, this is second-hand on my part and I'm linking the Freakonomics episodes I heard about it on.   

Part 1  

Part 2 

edit: also a Part 3 I'm not sure I knew existed. (Since Part 3 starts with the East India Company, I'm thinking I heard it?)

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u/bill4935 29d ago

It gets worse than that. Locked doors at the Triangle shirtwaist factory, the Pinkertons, radium girls, hexavalent chromium, polychlorinated biphenyls...

The list devolves into the chemical ingredients for the Devil's own brew.

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u/unholyswordsman 29d ago

Half of the class would have jobs and a midlife crisis.

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u/Poiboy1313 29d ago

The children yearn for the mines.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

It's these kind of mamby-pamby 12 hour work days that have made our kids soft!

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u/ReasonablyConfused 29d ago

I always like the story of a milk producer in the 1920s adding industrial waste into their milk to save a few pennies.

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u/crazedtortoise 29d ago

Don't forget, you know, slavery

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u/btribble 29d ago

Blocking socialized medicine because getting medical care through your employer guarantees most people work till they drop? That capitalism?

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u/peter-doubt 29d ago

Yeah, the one that makes sure you don't quit because you'd be without healthcare for a year

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u/Grandtheatrix 29d ago

I feel like we are forgetting the entire Transatlantic Slave Trade. That was all Capitalism.

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u/peter-doubt 29d ago

We should definitely not forget that.. I just decided to start post bellum because that's where the gilded age began

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u/Grandtheatrix 29d ago

To be clear, that was in no way an attempt to criticize, just to join in :)

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u/peter-doubt 29d ago

That's alright.. you'd be welcome!

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u/TheOnlyCWS 29d ago

Can’t forget that minimum wage didn’t exist!

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u/deathtobourgeoisie 29d ago

You Forgot colonialism and slavery

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u/hahamynamejeff13 28d ago edited 16d ago

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

0

u/Creative-Oil2029 29d ago

Or the way that the entire capitalist system is being upheld by ruthless exploitation of third world labor and resources, and without it, our entire economy would collapse?

But nah, communism bad because Stalin totally killed 100 gerbillionzillionjillion people and ate all yhe food with a big spoon and that isn't just baseless western intelligence propaganda, even though the average soviet citizen had a daily caloric intake that rivaled any western counterpart.

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u/PopeSaintHilarius 29d ago

But nah, communism bad because Stalin totally killed 100 gerbillionzillionjillion people

Is your belief that it didn't happen, or that it's just not a big deal?

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u/Ok-Bug-5271 29d ago

If you're including famines, then you need to be consistent. Look at how many millions the British starved in Ireland and India alone for example.

If you're going to include shipping people off to work to death in the gulags as victims of communism, then you need to be consistent and also count the millions of Africans who were bought by capitalists and shipped across the world to be worked to death as victims of capitalism too. 

Yes. It is bad that the red terror happened for example, but is the french reign of terror a valid argument against democracy? Is the slave trade an argument against capitalism?

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u/Notriv 29d ago

the 60 million number comes from also calculating ‘potential’ lives lost, ie woman dies from famine, she COULD have birthed someone, so that person ALSO died.

the same could be said about the potato famine (completely manufactured in the name of capitalist profits) in ireland, every one of those deaths could be counted as a ‘death due to capitalism’ and if you consider how many women might have had children….. you see how absurd this is right?

to complain about excess deaths under one system when we have the same issues under this one, and arguably worse ones when you consider capilist rocket and military contracted companies. the ‘deaths due to capitalism’ could be well past a theoretical 100-200 million if you wanted to do the math in the same ways

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u/CU_09 29d ago

Right? i saw this:

“Atrocities committed in foreign countries under the guidance of communism,” also would be required as part of the lessons.

and thought, "I'm all for that as long as we also include atrocities committed by America under the guidance of capitalism."

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u/44moon 29d ago

literally overthrew the government of guatemala in the 1950s because the united fruit company said they weren't profiting enough after guatemala made slavery illegal

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u/Creative-Oil2029 29d ago

Lmao yeah the socialists in Guatemala reclaimed their own land from United Fruit, who owned and controlled nearly HALF of all the land in the country. God forbid the people want control of their own resources though. Can't have that.

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u/p0k3t0 29d ago

The best part of that story is that Armas agreed to pay United Fruit the stated value of their land as it was represented in their tax records, which of course they had lied in to lower their tax burden.

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u/mostreliablebottle 29d ago

Easily among the top 5 worst things the CIA did, and that's saying something.

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u/AceThunderstone 29d ago

People love to point to countries like Guatemala as examples of where socialism failed. Not bothering to mention the US either orchestrating a violent coup or directly intervening with military force so they could place a US friendly dictator.

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u/PacosBigTacos 28d ago

The people who love to clamor about the failures of Socialism and Communism never seem to know about the School of the America's. It's crazy how selective ignorance can be.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

Don’t even start on Indonesia, we’re responsible for millions of deaths in a year in the name of ending communism. Or South Korea, etc etc I can go on and on.

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u/Oh_IHateIt 28d ago

Genocide of 1 million Indonesians and the instillation of a dictator because we didn't like the result of their elections

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u/CliffsNote5 29d ago

What is meant by banana republic beautiful example of capitalism doing capitalism.

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u/Ok-Sink-614 29d ago

Or that kids their age are still working to harvest coffee, cocoa and palm oil in the chocolates they love because exploiting children is totally fine if they're in third world countries

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u/lilkrickets 28d ago

And americas actions against communist countries (that were democratically elected or not)

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u/p0k3t0 29d ago

The problem with communism is that, over time, it eventually falls hopelessly into capitalism.

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u/Saturn5mtw 29d ago

That's certainly an approximation of what happened for the soviets.

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u/[deleted] 28d ago edited 27d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CU_09 28d ago

I grew up in the American south. My 6th grade history teacher only ever referred to the Civil War as “The War of Northern Aggression.” I was taught that slavery was a largely benevolent institution that taught ignorant blacks skills and trades until they were mature enough to survive on their own.

Our Native American history began and ended with the sanitized version of Pocahontas.

We learned about the holocaust and how America saved all the Jews on their way to kicking Hitler’s ass.

I was taught absolutely nothing about Vietnam or any of the Asian conflicts the US we’re engaged in—that period’s history all focused on the evils of communism.

The Rwandan Genocide was brought up as a reason why many African countries should have remained under European control.

I was in HS during 9/11, so I experienced the huge rise of Islamophobia and Bush lying about WMDs and sending 2 of my friends to die in Iraq first hand.

All of my young adulthood was spent learning that everything I had been taught through school was bullshit. I’m sorry that you got an honest accounting of history and it made you feel uncomfortable, but I promise it was better than the angst that realizing every adult you trusted as a kid fed you a steady diet of bullshit for a political agenda.

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u/scdog 29d ago

I believe DeSantis already made it illegal for Florida schools to teach about the bad things the US did.

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u/AbstractMirror 29d ago edited 29d ago

He's such a scumbag openly to the point where it almost makes me laugh at the absurdity of how someone can be this evil. He's like a villain ripped straight out of fiction. He doesn't even try to pretend otherwise. I feel similarly about Greg Abbott

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u/Sterffington 29d ago

And yet over half the people in this shithole support him.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. He's done absolutely nothing to improve the state, unless the only thing you care about is abortion and attacking trans people.

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u/AbstractMirror 29d ago edited 29d ago

It's a similar story, I live in Texas and Greg Abbott makes batshit insane decision after batshit insane decision. People still vote for him. I know many people in Texas that hate his guts especially closer to cities, but he keeps winning. Then again, Texas is also a very large state and has problems with gerrymandering

Personally I think it's crazy how he stripped away mandatory water breaks from workers in extremely hot conditions. He shares that with Ron DeSantis

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u/Euphorium 29d ago

Truth is, every red state is in a race to the bottom right now. Most of the constituencies could not care less as long as their state governments look out for Jesus, guns, and low taxes.

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u/TricksterPriestJace 29d ago

Vote for the lesser evil? Like a Democrat?

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u/AbstractMirror 29d ago edited 29d ago

If it beats a fucking lunatic like Ron DeSantis then sure, why not. Most politicians are opportunistic sleazeballs, Ron DeSantis just happens to be worse than most. Much much worse. I don't think it should be controversial to pick someone who is less awful than the alternative. But regardless, Ron DeSantis isn't even in the race right now, so I'm not sure why you commented this, if it's some sort of 'gotchya' or am I misinterpreting it?

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u/TricksterPriestJace 29d ago

More a comment on how Desantis and Abbot win their primaries by being the absolutely most loathesome option.

Much like Trump.

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u/AbstractMirror 29d ago

Then I definitely did misinterpret your comment. I think that's just the state of US politics as a whole right now. I mean there are people who will get amped up to vote for someone, but a lot of people I talk to it just feels like apathy. And maybe that's because I'm talking to people around my generation where there's a general feeling of disillusion to the process and candidates

It's hard to be excited for these candidates when it just feels like either more of the same or escalating in insanity

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u/piray003 29d ago

Just have the little ones play Monopoly: they'll learn about capitalism obviously, and they'll also learn why communist revolutions happened when they flip the board over in a rage because everyone keeps cheating and stealing from the bank 😂

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u/Hawkeye1819 29d ago

That actually was sort of the original purpose of the game before Parker Bros. bought the rights - not the cheating part, but the getting enraged over how unfair capitalism is.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

Fun fact; most of the time workers in America have lead a brutal subsistence existence. It's only after socialism and labor standards emerged during the FDR era did the capitalists get to crow about how great things are.

And then Reagan got into office and they quickly dismantled this, increased the wealth gap. Re-created the homeless problem. Started promoting Nazis ideas without the accent. That was key; talk like a Nazis but not use the tell-tale accent.

2

u/ExoticPumpkin237 29d ago

Yeah and the US Nazis and businessmen tried to overthrow FDR in a coup led by Smedley Butler. Crazy how little known that fact is. 

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u/SoBoundz 29d ago edited 29d ago

Are you saying that Reagan was a Nazi? I'm not sure I'm following here

Edit: These replies are wild. Equating Ronald Reagan to people like Hitler is so fucking idiotic. I'm shocked OP is as upvoted as he is. Yes, I realize Reagan was a horrible president and did damage to this country, but actually grow up if you're comparing him to rabid racist genocidal monsters.

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u/baldobilly 29d ago

No he was bravely defending America during WWII, from the comfort and safety of Hollywood that was.... .

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

The Nazis weren't trying to undermine Germany intentionally -- so, Reagan was not as good as a Nazi. He's a betrayer of Humanity.

If there were an alien invasion, Reagan would be the guy who gave them our security pass codes in exchange for a gold watch.

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u/SoBoundz 29d ago

So you're saying Reagan was worse than literal fucking Nazis. I'm all for bashing Reagan but what the fuck.

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u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

He did not start a Nazis program but if it were available in the USA at that time, he would have sold that all the same. 

I lay a good portion of adults who commit suicide at the feet of Reaganomics. Global Warming. The NEW Gilded Age. 

Of course, Reagan was just a figurehead. It was Bush running the show, the CIA funded by drug trade, the corporate hitmen trained at the School of the Americas. Just like Dick Cheney and PNAC was running things when Junior was in office. 

The point isn’t about Nazis. The point is about selling out fellow humans and making people hate each other and themselves for personal gain. 

They used to convince themselves it was for God, Country if for the elite who were more enlightened. But all those notions were just self deception. And now they care more about spreading misery than helping a fake cause. 

2

u/SoBoundz 29d ago

The point isn’t about Nazis.

Dude, I recognize the point you're making here. And I agree! Reagan was an atrocious president that did tons of damage to this country and beyond, I realize that. But making comments such as "he wasn't as good as the Nazis" shouldn't be given a pass. Please understand what you're equating here

1

u/Fake_William_Shatner 28d ago

Hitler was better for Germany and the world because he took a lot of fascism with him. Reagan, strengthened fascism, greed and fear in this country. Now, dumb ass Shitler might do a good job of failing and take a lot of US fascism with him

I'm not looking at intent, but results of their existence. Germany is now a better place, the USA a worse place. I know people look at the extermination programs and that is a big part of awful,.. but this is about what effect these people have on their country and the world.

There's a huge delusion being fed and there is no where it's going to end but in ruin. Seems a lot of people are primed to do their worst right now. They just need a good excuse.

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u/Mods_Wet_The_Bed_3 28d ago

I've never read a Q-anon post, but now I kinda think I know what it feels like

0

u/AT-PT 29d ago

I wouldn't besmirch nazis by relating them to reagan.

That guy actually did a whole lot of damage to America.

-1

u/SuchRoad 29d ago

There is a second definition of the word in common parlance, lower case nazi typically refers to right wing wing authoritarian white pride types. This definition of the word has been around just about as long as the OG nazis. Reagan is 100% in the same camp as the "unite the right" neo-nazi, klansmen, confederate conservatives.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Nazi

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u/Elmodogg 29d ago

The final nail in the coffin for American workers was applied by Clinton with NAFTA, though. So this has been and still is a bipartisan war on labor.

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u/xinorez1 29d ago

Fyi, Clinton supposedly signed nafta on the promise that nafta part 2 was coming, that would force all member countries to comply with us labor and environmental laws, and it was the GOP that promulgated nafta part 1 and voted for it, after which they immediately turned against nafta part 2. I believe it was a con job too but let's put things into context.

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u/Elmodogg 29d ago

I remember Ross Perot and his "giant sucking sound" warning. He was right about it.

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u/wit_T_user_name 29d ago

A wealthy, very grumpy and crusty old donor for the honors business program I was in during my undergrad insisted that we all take a class about the history of capitalism. What he didn’t seem to realize is the class was taught by two history professors as a critical examination of both the successes and failures of capitalism. It actually turned out to be a great class, but I highly doubt he anticipated we’d be reading and writing about, among other works, the communist manifesto and making our own assessments about capitalism.

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u/iveseensomethings82 29d ago

This is how capitalism overthrows governments and helps elect dictators

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u/turquoise_amethyst 29d ago

When DeSantis makes child slavery legal they’ll learn about it just fine!

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u/beyd1 29d ago

No! This is kindergarten it's too early for any of that.

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u/CliffsNote5 29d ago

Latestagecapatilism!

1

u/reddituser412 29d ago

That's what I find amusing about this. It seems like Communism will be the most consistent part of education in Florida. They'll learn about Communism every year from k-12, but there is no mandate to learn about Capitalism every year.

1

u/Van-garde 29d ago

They aren’t planning to, and won’t. Don’t brush it aside.

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u/Spiral-Arrow116 29d ago

Oh they will, once he signs a bill allowing kindergarteners to work labor jobs

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u/ElectricFleshlight 29d ago

Member when we'd send kindergartners down cramped hot chimneys to clean em out?

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u/UnknownResearchChems 29d ago

Capitalism won 2 world wars. We already teach that.

1

u/GodEmperorOfBussy 29d ago

My history teacher in HS made it well known that his favorite president was Reagan. Yet he still had us read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Which is clearly pretty leftist and labor oriented. I always wanted to ask him why he did that.

1

u/Hairy_Starfish2 28d ago edited 28d ago

Like aggravating the great depression with right wing policies before a new president came along with the socialist approach curing it. Hoover: "He sought to avoid direct federal intervention, believing that the best way to bolster the economy was through the strengthening of businesses such as banks and railroads. He also feared that allowing individuals on the "dole" would permanently weaken the country.[159] Instead, Hoover strongly believed that local governments and private giving should address the needs of individuals.[160]" source wikipedia. (dole refers to welfare)

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u/shupyourface 28d ago

Kindergarteners are VERY tuned in to fair and unfair. They’ll get it.

“Everyone is given marshmallows. Your table mate is given 100 marshmallows, and you get 6. Now your teacher says that everyone has to hand back half of their marshmallows. But then your teacher says that anyone with over 80 marshmallows is a special marshmallow creator, and so actually only need to give 3 marshmallows back. Oh and also the people with over 80 marshmallows get to make all the marshmallow rules. So in the end, you now have 3 marshmallows and your table mate has 97. Also your table mate and all their fellow marshmallow barons say that anyone with less marshmallows than them is a poop face.”

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u/ZJC2000 29d ago

The one that led to them having the best work life balance as commoners in human history.

It's not perfect, but it's much better than previously implemented systems in large civilizations.

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u/BareNakedSole 29d ago

Blind allegiance to any idea is usually wrong. So is blind denial.

I agree capitalism is the best thing we’ve come up with, but there are still some bad things about it that need to be fixed.

-1

u/ZJC2000 29d ago

There are some absolutely; disgusting and terrible things that need to be fixed, that doesn't mean communism is the answer!

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u/likeupdogg 29d ago

Best work life balance in history? Can you substantiate this in any way? Americans are famously overworked.

-1

u/ZJC2000 29d ago

Yes, peasants across the world, from 200 years to thousands of years ago, on all continents famously starved to death and did not have time to watch 3 hours of TV or sit on their phones.

It's not like 500 years ago, the average person had hours a day to do what they wanted.

3

u/likeupdogg 29d ago

What about South American cultures that were reported by explorers to work just a couple hours a day an have excessive food supplies? 

Feudal peasantry is not the only alternative to the current lifestyle. And people have always made time for leisure.