Alligator Alcatraz is Florida's great shame [View all]

How can everyone not see?

One year ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a path toward restitution for boys who endured unspeakable torture. For decades, these boys were beaten and raped, spirits and bodies broken at the state’s notorious reform schools. Others were murdered on taxpayer dimes, their remains buried beneath shrouds of soil and reduced to ghastly archeological finds.

Those boys stole things. They were truant. They broke the law. But back then, just a year ago, society agreed that their offenses did not justify their fates. No matter what indiscretions these boys committed, they didn’t deserve to wake in hell with their humanity pulverized.

How, then, can we not see so clearly now?

Today, leaders are not even bothering to conceal their depravity as they gleefully launch Alligator Alcatraz in the service of pleasing a red devil daddy. They are funding campaigns by selling T-shirts that read, “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” hawking branded golf balls and beer koozies, reducing public service to a dollar store. President Donald Trump clearly finds it hilarious, this sycophantic rush to kiss his toes. He can say anything he wants unscathed, unchallenged in any meaningful way, and he knows it. During a visit to the Everglades site Tuesday, he warned would-be escapees, “Don’t run in a straight line.”

This country and state’s Republican leaders have gone spiritually bankrupt. They do not care for the least among us. They do not welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. They are callous, unsparing, rotten from the soul out.

https://www.tampabay.com/viewpoints/2025/07/02/alligator-alcatraz-florida-everglades-desantis-trump-krome-dozier/