I think NFTU still has a role to play for me, because this is the sort of post I don't wish to include in the marmot.

What brings me to the woodchuck hole today is another missive from the mediocre mind of Moss.

Essentially, it's a promo piece for local Republican pol, Dean Black. I suspect Moss is trying to elevate his profile in local Republican circles by currying favor with Black and getting the party line posted in a local news outlet. (Presumably in the interest of "balance." It's certainly not for its analytical or rhetorical excellence.)

The headline offers, "Love him or hate him, Dean Black continues to shape the narrative."

It's not a binary choice. There are a couple of other options, one being fatigue, the other, nausea.

There is nothing remarkable about Dean Black or the "narrative" he's shaping. It's the same old broken record of division, agitation and dereliction; and I guess I'm saying I'm "sick and tired" of it.

Moss and Dean are representative of what passes for Republican "thought" in Florida politics in the years since the Trump ascendancy. It's an adolescent, zero-sum view of politics, where parties are either "winning" or "losing," and the public interest is entirely out of the equation.

Florida is a failed state, after more than a generation of gerrymandered, one-party rule. It's facing environmental challenges due to the climate crisis and uncontrolled over-development, threatening its unique natural environment and wildlife. There's an insurance crisis that is doing as much to make home ownership less affordable as high interest rates. Florida "leads" as one of the states with the highest rates of uninsured citizens for healthcare. All because of a party-driven, petulant, myopic and simply inhumane refusal to expand Medicaid. Public education in Florida is being discarded in favor of publicly funded, private indoctrination centers.

The future of Florida is dark, "Sunshine State" or not. Gerrymandering and one-party rule have made the state's government vulnerable to corruption, group-think, and extremism when elections are largely decided by primaries, where the most motivated voters are the most extreme ones.

To a Republican mind, this is "winning," because politics are viewed as "sport," entertainment for the masses. Increasingly, if one listens to Republican rhetoric espoused by its leader, Trump, one that threatens to become a blood sport.

At its best, politics is where people of good will, acting in good faith, come together to serve the public interest through cooperation and compromise.

In Florida, politics is all about power and money. The power to raise money, and the power to give public money to favored interests. The public interest has been forgotten.

If Moss had any intelligence, he'd understand that. But he's a partisan climber, not a political thinker. I regret that Jax Today offers him a platform.