The taming of the cranks

What if Bill Braswell called for a Facebook civil war; but only Seth McKeel showed up? The power of moral aggression in the stupidest, grossest election cycle in Polk County history.

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Like a bewildered first-year teacher, the “grown-up” Republicans of Polk County and Florida have completely given up on disciplining the (sometimes/often criminal) cranks that now dominate their party’s public life and voice.

For years, the “grown-ups” used the cranks to sustain their civic power. In recent months, the cranks came to smell power; and they rendered the grown ups impotent while polluting our shared civic spaces.

Check out this rogue’s gallery of political crankery and criminality that Polk GOP politicians and officials and activists have freely chosen to associate with recently. There are at least three different convicted criminals featured below — Roger Stone, James Dunn, Mike Flynn — and a 4th under investigation for child trafficking — Matt Gaetz.

The local Republicans with actual civil and economic power don’t like bending the knee to Ed Shoemaker and J.C. Martin and James Dunn and Matt Gaetz and Saga Stevin and the rest of these cranks.

But, as a group, with the exception of Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz (and maybe Wesley Barnett), the “grown ups” here lack the courage or competence or will or personal dignity to differentiate themselves from the gross cranks that most of them privately despise and mock. (Yes, they mock you behind your back, Ed, as you well know. At least I do it in public.)

Thus, in Polk County, the real power players have thoroughly outsourced the unpaid job of taming the cranks to me, of all people — and the other “libs” they have here-to-fore loved to hate.

Retaking the space

Today, I declare that we have successfully neutralized the cranks in this county, even if they win more votes on Tuesday, which is possible, but unlikely.

At last Tuesday’s School Board meeting, a tiny handful of CCDF, book-banner cranks whined impotently about the School Board doing an “opt-out” for the books the cranks wanted to ban, rather than an “opt-in.” They had zero effect on the School Board. Nobody fears them; they’re just annoying.

It’s a far, far cry from all the drama and media attention they generated with their screaming and aggression and supposed “organization” last spring and summer.

An ad hoc coalition of public school advocates, teachers, good citizens, and organizers with groups like Polk PRIDE and the NAACP are the heroes who politely took back the school board civic meeting space from the cranks.

And I am so thankful to my dear friends Lisa Miller and Sarah Fortney for putting themselves in slime’s way on the Polk School Board for all of us.

Here’s a video from Tuesday night from Lisa, describing how cranks have called her autistic son “retarded,” among other joys. You should watch it.

But Lisa and Sarah are great, constructive School Board members and human beings by nature—not combatants for civic space and decency. They do not see strategic assholery as part of their role.

That’s what I do.

Dominate the would-be dominators

To truly tame the cranks, the crankery needed to experience pain as a reward. To stop assholery, one must impose a personal cost for the assholery.

That is why I have spent the last nine months or so ambushing Saga Stevin with videos, inventing funny names like Hannah Book Bannah, crawling through the sludge of James Dunn, writing about CCDF anus obsessions, and otherwise trying to save any vaguely functional, vaguely moral governing remnant of the Republican party in the effort to save civic life for myself and other decent people in a reddish county.

“Hannah Book Bannah” is so aware of the public nickname I gave her that she called out to me on the street at a downtown Lakeland First Friday to whine about it. When your goal is dominance, whining is weakness.

Rick “T.I.T.S” Nolte better get used to the nickname he gave himself, too. I had to discipline him at a recent Kiwanis meeting when, as a guest, he tried to dominate our meeting and starting attacking and insulting people — our guest speaker included. He complied by shutting up when I told him to. When your goal is dominance, compliance is weakness.

I’ve been taunting the CCDF about its criminal, church-cheating campaign manager for weeks in public and directly in emailed questions with zero answers or pushback from the tough guys. Here’s an example:

When your goal is dominance, silence is weakness.

Somebody had to do it

Through all this period, I have sought, by applying moral aggression, to make all CCDF and CCDF-adjacent public behavior personally painful — because everything is personal.

My public cruelty toward the cranks, to flip the dynamic of a phrase, is the point — even though I am a person who despises cruelty and wishes we could live together without it.

Here’s a secret: aggressive humor aside, I have not particularly enjoyed this unpaid, confrontational job. I would rather have spent that time on my book about the Cross Creek invasion of privacy lawsuit. But somebody had to do it, for the sake of our shared community.

Somebody with a platform needed to inflict public pain and cost on the behavior of the cranks to discipline them. No “grown up” Republican — like say, Grady Judd or Scott Franklin — is willing to do it. But I am. That was and is my role.

“T.I.T.S” Nolte and friends made themselves gross and ridiculous; we’ve just revealed it fully and made them own it in humiliating, quieting ways.

Ultimately, there are sensations I despise more than dishing out cruelty to cruel people: submission to dominance and cruelty toward decent, constructive, and vulnerable people are two of them.

I’m genuinely happy and proud to have landed some painful, silencing blows on behalf of decency — for all of us.

Cranks without menace are irrelevant

I cannot overstate to you how much the traditional economic and political power in this county has been quietly cheering me on in leading this effort to discipline the grifty, criminal-hiring goofballs it’s too afraid or too lazy to do itself.

In 2020, all that same traditional power banded together to barely get rid of me in public life — or so they thought. They did this, in part, through blatant, made-up lies designed to appeal to these same cranks and to willfully mislead black voters. Gow and Kay Fields were certainly part of that effort.

Trust me, today, they are all — Fieldses very much included — happy they failed to disempower me by making me Public Enemy Number 1.

You’re welcome, Leadership Club.

They benefit as much — or more — than anyone from how we’ve drained the mass menace and energy that gives crankery its visceral power in civic space.

Should the cranks luck up and win, they will have no idea what to do sitting at a dais stupidly and vacantly, as targets of public criticism, in the middle of a statewide JebSantis teacher strike. They will be cranks in the headlights.

Indeed, the cranks are the least of Polk’s civic and operational problems as a local unit of the failed state school system. The failed JebSantis Florida Model of education is dead. All that matters is how and when we start rebuilding it. That won’t happen until we stop electing teacher-hating cranks as governor.

Sarah Fortney, Lisa Miller, and newcomer Sara Jones have a lot to offer if voters ever force the state to truly rebuild. Kay Fields has shown real signs of constructive evolution; and I agree with Grady Judd that she’s way better than criminal-hiring crank Terry Clark.

But it’s hard to overstate how little power an individual school board member has beyond public advocacy and engagement with staff about work conditions and culture.

The cranks might mumble something incoherent about wokism while hoovering up your $40K and health insurance payments; but we have made them “low energy,” to borrow another phrase.

Above all, they’ll be irrelevant and subservient to staff because staff is way way smarter and craftier than they are — and much less lazy. If we ever to get meaningfully rebuild, Fred Heid is a smarter, craftier, more collaborative, more moral, more confident, and overall better superintendent than Jackie Byrd.

You’re welcome for that too, Leadership Club/Lakeland First.

Try to imagine Seth McKeel fighting a civil war against the libs. LOL.

Here’s why the low energy cranks *could* — but probably won’t — win more votes on Tuesday: the median GOP Facebook activist brain is broken by its dark fantasies about who else lives in their community and country.

This is from sitting Polk County Commissioner — and crank — Bill Braswell. I took out his endorsed names because I’m not going to boost him.

We live in a partisan, divided world. There is no middle ground, there is no compromise.

Blah, blah, blah.

On the one hand, we shouldn’t get accustomed to this sort of eliminationist talk from people of official power. Historically, it gets a lot of people murdered, in the U.S. and elsewhere. And there is no reasoning Bill Braswell out of his pathologies, no matter how well Sarah Fortney and Lisa Miller have performed as board members. If you’re not a Republican, this county commissioner claims to hate you to the point of purging you from existence. He doesn’t want to share a community with you.

On the other hand, it is very hard to take Uvalde Man Bill Braswell and his 37-like civil war post seriously — both as a threat and a motivator. It’s even harder to take it seriously when you see who liked it.

Try to imagine rugged, manly, self-reliant, combat-ready Seth McKeel strapping on an AR-15 to keep the “democrat party” from “imposing their beliefs on your children” without giggling. You can’t; or at least I can’t. And I’m not even a Democrat.

But Seth is what passes for a “grown up” in the Polk GOP these days. And that is why you might — but probably won’t — wake up Wednesday with Rick “T.I.T.S.” Nolte stalking the halls of your daughter’s middle school.

Well done, GOP grown ups.