Editorial: Florida, we’re No. 1— for all the wrong reasons
Congratulations, Florida. We’ve done it.
After months of lagging behind Texas, we’ve finally caught up and are now tied with the Lone Star State in number of people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol.
That’s according to tracking by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, which has the number of arrestees in each state at 47.
They say everything’s bigger in Texas, but not, apparently, when it comes to disloyalty to the country.
Who knows but that we might even surpass Texas by the weekend? We’ll be No. 1 with a bullet if we keep making it easy on the FBI by, say, posing with a lectern taken from Nancy Pelosi’s office and waving at a camera or posting on Instagram that the riot was “our Boston Tea Party” and that we’ll “F------ DO IT AGAIN” or taking it to Facebook Live while in the middle of a violent confrontation with Capitol Police or organizing with your fellow Proud Boys before entry to the hallowed halls of Congress.
Speaking of that last one, we may be tied with Texas for most arrests, but according to the Herald-Tribune’s count, we’re leading that other state in terms of arrestees who are Proud Boys or Oath Keepers. Great to know that we can rely on Floridians to be not just violently unlawful, but violently unlawful in an organized manner.
To what do we attribute Florida’s tendency toward degeneracy? Certainly, we can write off a lot of it to population — Florida’s a big state, and statistically, we’re just going to have more lawbreakers. But the other most-populous states, No. 1 California and No. 4 New York, don’t have the number of Capitol riot arrestees found in the Lone Star and Sunshine states.
We acknowledge also that things are just weirder here, for reasons that are constantly speculated upon. Did Florida Man riot at the Capitol? Of course he did.
But one thing Florida and Texas have that California and New York do not: Congressmen like Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Texas’ Louie Gohmert, who were among just 21 Republicans in the House who voted Wednesday against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the officers who defended Congress during the attack. Governors like Ron DeSantis, who has pushed voting restrictions in response to the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and Greg Abbott, who has pushed the lie himself and whose attorney general filed a lawsuit to try to reverse the election results.
The rot of lies and conspiracy theories that led to the Capitol riot began with Trump and his false claims of election fraud, perpetuated by his followers among Republican leadership around the country. Florida and Texas have a lot more of those Republican leaders than either California or New York. Is it so surprising that the voters who put faith in them actually believe what they say?
