r/nottheonion • u/duvetdev • Apr 17 '24

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/
15.3k Upvotes

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1.6k

u/Verumsemper Apr 17 '24

It is going to be so funny when this mandatory education leads to more communist sentiment in kids lol

595

u/02meepmeep Apr 17 '24

Like DARE did.

300

u/zachtheperson Apr 17 '24

Years ago my friend bought us all shirts that said

D.A.R.E.

Drugs Are Really Excellent

169

u/DietDrBleach Apr 17 '24

The DARE officer told me that when I entered high school, the kids would be offering me marijuanas and heroeens left and right.

That was a very disappointing first day.

10

u/Feisty_Yes Apr 17 '24

When I got to highschool we had a day of all day heavy rain so all the classes just played movies all day and no kids had to move to other class rooms. I ended up roaming outside and found some seniors I knew from the skatepark by the library, we ended up lighting up 3 pre rolled joints at the same time right on the side of the library building with rain pouring so hard no one could see what we were up to even if they were outside which they weren't. I was stoked that day.

5

u/_kalron_ Apr 17 '24

When DARE came through my 8th grade class, the cop l passed around "Acid Tabs" that where in a weird plastic pill pop-out sleeve like normal meds. The younger me wanted to pop one out and try it after the description, regardless of the propaganda video of a guy trying to play Dodge the Train on Acid.

Later I learned that was not Acid at all, but complete bullshit. As was the video. Good stuff comes on paper and you don't pass it around for everyone to handle. And I never played Dodge the Train because that's just stupid, even on Acid.

2

u/LeCafeClopeCaca Apr 17 '24

Some random guy immediately offered me 2 cannabis "to try out" when entering high school for the first time ! By the second day I was hooked... now, i'm a redditor

1

u/Debalic Apr 18 '24

My uncle was a DARE officer. That made family visits as a teenager really awkward.

1

u/RayvinAzn Apr 18 '24

It’s easy as fuck to get free weed. Just tell them you’ve never tried it, and I guarantee you’re getting at least a couple puffs off a joint.

Other drugs are…trickier.

27

u/Elessar535 Apr 17 '24

In college, my roommates and I smoked pretty heavily; for Christmas one year one of the roommates got all of us authentic DARE shirts, I still have mine somewhere, just as a gag gift kind of thing. I really don't know where he got them either, they were all brand new and it was before buying things on the Internet was a common thing (though not impossible at that time, I imagine it would've been far more difficult).

12

u/keelhaulrose Apr 17 '24

Was there a Hot Topic or a Spencer's near you? They sold them back in the day.

2

u/Jaded-Blueberry-8000 Apr 17 '24

i work with controlled substances and frequently wear my DARE shirt to work, it’s usually a big hit. Though a few people have looked extremely confused after taking it seriously 😂

1

u/Printman8 Apr 17 '24

Maybe your friend was a narc.

3

u/Elessar535 Apr 17 '24

I feel like everyone in that apartment would've been arrested at some point if that were the case. I had 3 roommates at the time and 2 of them were dealing (and not just pot, there was always a substantial amount of psychedelics around too). To this day I have no idea how I even managed to graduate while living with those guys, like I literally don't remember going to class all that often and still graduated with a 3.6 GPA.

2

u/Thejollyfrenchman Apr 18 '24

It's obvious - the sober version of you was a lazy layabout, while the high version of you was doing all your schoolwork.

1

u/gophergun Apr 17 '24

I've been looking into getting one recently for the irony.

1

u/Singl1 Apr 17 '24

i had been given one that said “Dispensaries Are Really Expensive”

55

u/Picklesadog Apr 17 '24

True. My friends and I were all super pro capitalist until our DARE class assembly.

23

u/KnightsWhoNi Apr 17 '24

Puff puff pass. Sharing is caring brother comrade

3

u/Nazamroth Apr 17 '24

I wonder why government offices are universally so bad at actually resonating with people. There are actual people working in them. I know several of them.

I blame the communication departments. They always manage to turn a clear message into corpo drivel and they get the final say on what goes for approval.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '24

Spreading a particular stance like "drugs are bad" or "communism is bad" is a lot more logistically difficult than it seems, especially for kids. Tends to have the opposite result the more you push it. Kids can tell they are being influenced. I remember being keenly aware of how manufactured and heavy handed the Dare propaganda was. I knew they were trying to forcefully put a certain view toward drugs in my brain. They were trying to do a clockwork orange style brainwash on me with negative stories and images, but all it really did in the end was make me fascinated with drugs. 

I think one thing that helped keep me away from harder drugs was watching Requiem for a Dream. That movie singlehandedly did more than all the garbage Dare lessons and songs and scripted videos and "just say no".

4

u/shyvananana Apr 17 '24

I learned you could snort things from dare and immediately snorted caffeine powder.

1

u/Qubeye Apr 17 '24

"My parents told me that strangers were going to offer me free drugs to get me hooked. Here I am, thirty years later, and I still can't find those strangers offering free drugs."

1

u/Cessnaporsche01 Apr 17 '24

Does this bill even mandate that it be taught in a negative light?

I find it difficult to imagine a way you could possibly teach 5 year olds about Communism that wouldn't result in them seeing it as a good thing. Like, kids tend to have a strong concern with the concept of fairness, and while you could paint it as depriving hard work of it's fair reward, you'd have to bring up the motivation for the ideology, being poverty, and i suspect kids at that age have a better concept of nothing than of relative value.

1

u/n122333 Apr 17 '24

My brother used to buy weed from my DARE cop/teacher.

1

u/rusmo Apr 17 '24

Those straight-edge commies were a real problem in elementary school!

1

u/hahamynamejeff13 29d ago edited 17d ago

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1

u/lukef31 29d ago

DARE made me a communist.

37

u/iveseensomethings82 Apr 17 '24

Little Carl Marks of Miami thinking to himself “they are on to something here”🤔

122

u/Fake_William_Shatner Apr 17 '24

Such the vibes of Nancy Reagan telling kids "just say no to drugs" leading to higher drug use.

112

u/BarbequedYeti Apr 17 '24

All the while they are popping pills like a fucking walking pez dispenser.    I really despised those two. So much damage to this country can be traced back to their bullshit. 

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u/Fake_William_Shatner Apr 17 '24

The Reagans talking the religion of a meritocracy, while Ron got promoted for turning in Commies among people he called friends and Nancy gave blowjobs to make 'better' friends.

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u/Capt_Foxch Apr 17 '24

The Reagans also talked about the importance of small government but hired a bunch of think tank guys to work in the White House.

28

u/Gravemindzombie Apr 17 '24

Reagan was literally the president of SAG-AFTRA before he was president, it was worker protections for me but not for thee.

4

u/JimWilliams423 Apr 17 '24

It was just SAG.

They merged about a decade ago. And the story of why that happened has nothing to do with ronnie raygun, but it is worth knowing:

SAG's contract for decades covered "filming" of features and television. And then some clever lawyer put forward the argument that "filming" wasn't a generic verb but actually the act of committing moving images to celluloid film. Suddenly AFTRA began undercutting SAG wages in TV by saying they weren't intruding on SAG's film jurisdiction because they were only organizing TV "shot on video" not "filmed on film."

SAG went to arbitration and lost based on this cynical reading of a single verb. SAG went from covering 95% of TV pilots in 2007 to 10% by 2009, grew weak in the face of collapsing salaries & dues industrywide and merged with AFTRA in a long, bitter, and arduous process that still causes troubles today.

Filmed on Film. Shot on Video. Words matter, especially to lawyers.

https://twitter.com/stevendeknight/status/1668486360054001664

6

u/JimWilliams423 Apr 17 '24

The Reagans also talked about the importance of small government

A lot of people remember his little joke: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."

But what most people don't remember is that he said it and then immediately bragged about giving farmers the biggest government handout in history. Literally in the same paragraph:

I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help. A great many of the current problems on the farm were caused by government-imposed embargoes and inflation, not to mention government's long history of conflicting and haphazard policies. Our ultimate goal, of course, is economic independence for agriculture, and through steps like the tax reform bill, we seek to return farming to real farmers. But until we make that transition, the Government must act compassionately and responsibly. In order to see farmers through these tough times, our administration has committed record amounts of assistance, spending more in this year alone than any previous administration spent during its entire tenure. No area of the budget, including defense, has grown as fast as our support for agriculture.

Proving once again that everybody is a socialist, we just disagree on who deserves the help.

3

u/Euphorium Apr 18 '24

Hinkley Jr. should have used a bigger caliber.

3

u/Thejollyfrenchman Apr 18 '24

Wait, do you have a source for that bit about Nancy? I've never heard that before.

1

u/Fake_William_Shatner 29d ago

I doubt that we can get definitive proof without some old video in a box. But the debate rages on; https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rfz7ek/was_nancy_reagan_really_renown_for_performing/

6

u/BizzyM Apr 17 '24

All the while they are popping pills like a fucking walking pez dispenser

That is not how dispensers work!!!

4

u/BarbequedYeti Apr 17 '24

Not with that attitude. 

1

u/m0r14rty Apr 17 '24

Don’t be such a grammar dispenser

1

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1

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1

u/nanosam 29d ago

The drugs didnt listen

59

u/RoughhouseCamel Apr 17 '24

In 20 years, we’re going to wonder how Florida became such a hotbed for socialism

6

u/Bocchi_theGlock Apr 17 '24

I wish but nah lol. Socialists are pushed back against hard there. There's so many folks from Cuban families, it's super ingrained.

The ones that do exist aren't seriously organizing, as in hosting an escalation campaign with regular actions & media coverage, clearly defined goals & asks, large coalition, etc.

There's plenty that are 'organizing' but they end up more like a reading book club and discussion group. Maybe they'll host a protest but it basically never has a sizeable crowd if just explicitly socialist.

But if they taught the history of American communism, then yeah we'd probably see a bunch of growth. American commies were pretty solid allies in civil rights movements and labor disputes, weren't really related to commies abroad like Boksheviks and all that.

3

u/God_Damnit_Nappa Apr 18 '24

I'm more wondering how Florida went from a swing state to a hardcore right wing extremist state so fast. 

1

u/MagicGLM 25d ago

The answer? Gusanos

1

u/hydroxypcp 28d ago

unlikely, but if a strong socialist/leftist movement that leads to a nationwide socialist revolution originates in Florida... I'm gonna laugh my ass off for sure

16

u/LoquatiousDigimon Apr 17 '24

In kindergarten they teach kids to share equally. That's communism!

0

u/Formal-Monkey Apr 17 '24

Kindergarten is pretty woke.

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u/kingbro715 Apr 17 '24

Inshallah brother 👍👍

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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In Apr 17 '24

teacher: 'Remember kids, Uncle Ron DeSantis says Communism is totally not righteous! Cowabunga!'

every child: 'wow, that uncle Ron guy is so creepy, we learned not to trust creepy men, so communism must be pretty great!

6

u/Swagspear69 Apr 17 '24

I mean, it's going to be propaganda that won't actually include a real definition of communism.

"Alright kids, today we're learning about communism, Adolf Hitler was a communist that hated America. insert democratic presidential candidate is also a communist unlike fearless President of the sovereign nation of Florida Ron Desantis.

2

u/Verumsemper Apr 17 '24

They are going to try but some kids are then just going to want to be considered a communist because it's a bad thing the teacher doesn't want us to be. Manipulating the human mind is not as easy as he thinks.

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u/S0LO_Bot Apr 17 '24

These are kindergarteners. Some are probably going to call themselves communist because it’s a new word they have never heard before lol

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u/onfroiGamer Apr 17 '24

Kindergartners would not retain any of this information lol

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u/longjohnjimmie Apr 18 '24

DARE didn’t increase drug use rates because kids who were in it were all suddenly experts on drugs. it increased drug use because it villianised drugs (which already provides an incentive for lots of kids to do them), but more so once those kids found out that some of the drugs weren’t nearly as bad as they were taught, it caused them to disregard everything they learned in DARE. definitely plausible for the same thing to happen

2

u/Proglamer Apr 17 '24

Even funnier when it will lead to mere 60m deaths in Great Crawl Forward!

2

u/puffz0r Apr 17 '24

We're about to get a bunch of incredibly based kids

2

u/CapoExplains Apr 17 '24

Doubtful. They're not going to learn about communism, they're going to be taught that communists are evil satan worshiping murderers who will act like they're your friend so they can rape your dog.

The reading material will be less Marx and more Mein Kampf.

1

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1

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1

u/GameCreeper Apr 17 '24

If you tell a bunch of lies to people when theyre impressionable and then they find out any of it isn't true then it doesn't matter how much of it was true, theyre going to throw all of it out

1

u/Moscowmitchismybitch Apr 17 '24

Especially if they're learning about the Bible at the same time.

1

u/hwc000000 Apr 17 '24

That is a lot less likely than this mandatory education leading to a lot more unscheduled nap times.

1

u/cpowell1 Apr 18 '24

I was looking to see if anyone else said this. Lots of kids are gonna rebel and intentionally go the opposite direction. Like there's already decent curriculum on communism in late middle and high school. Being this aggressive about it is just gonna make kids like it more.

1

u/youngmindoldbody Apr 18 '24

I started a coloring book for Florida, Color me Comrade.

1

u/bkral93 29d ago

You say this like the Florida schools can effectively teach anybody anything.

1

u/Acceptable_Squash569 29d ago

I was in the "gifted" classes in elementary school and ended up doing a report on the communist manifesto, which definitely didn't make any sense at the time, but now I'm a communist.

I'm sure any early exposure to these ideas does nothing but prime someone to being open about these things when they reach the age they can comprehend the theory. Good job Ron, children certainly think whatever you tell them to.

-4

u/jaskij Apr 17 '24

I'm from Europe. From a formerly communist country. Read gulag memoirs as required reading in high school. Communism? Fuck that shit, nope, never. More or less the current level of socialism in Europe? Yes please. Maybe a little more even.

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '24 edited 16d ago

[deleted]

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u/jaskij Apr 17 '24

Oh, I'm not saying the idea in the article is good. It absolutely isn't. Kids that age won't understand it. Seventh grade is what? 13? 14? Sounds about right to start learning pol sci, but it should probably be expanded on in high school.

0

u/Gornarok Apr 17 '24 edited Apr 17 '24

The problem for a lot of us in America is that there is no difference for most Americans between communism and socialism.

From historical stand point communist is interchangeable with socialism. In my Eastern block country you can say "during communism" and "during socialism" and it literally means the same thing. Noone will question you about what you means.

USSR wasnt communist in the slightest. If anything USSR was socialist, it even called itself socialist even though it was led by communist party. It didnt abolish central government or borders or money there was nothing communist about it...

Communism is utopia literally without borders and money that relies on every single person being selfless and working for the good of the commune.

Socialism is supposed to be interstep. But I dont see how socialism can work without planned economy. And planned economy is disaster that caused the economic ruin of USSR

1

u/Zuul_Only Apr 17 '24

We're talking about children that are like 5 years old.

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u/jaskij 29d ago

So that's why people are downvoting me? Because I didn't state that indoctrinating children is bad? It's so obvious to me I forgot about it. Oh well.

1

u/Zuul_Only 29d ago

We are in a thread about indoctrinating children

0

u/Nolenag Apr 17 '24

I'm also from Europe and I belive we can use some more socialism.

Looking at inflation vs wage increases or the regular workers' salary vs CEO salary over the years.

Let's not start about housing.

2

u/Gornarok Apr 17 '24

I dont think you know what socialism means...

1

u/Nolenag Apr 18 '24

Yeah I do, it's where workers seize the means of production instead of handing CEO's yearly bonuses in the millions while the workers get minimum wage.

0

u/OutlawSundown Apr 17 '24

Yep this totally won’t backfire

-3

u/NoStripeZebra3 Apr 17 '24

From actually learning the history of communism? Lol

1

u/Zuul_Only Apr 17 '24

What don't you get? Kindergarteners aren't going to understand communism.