Another hot one building outside this near-noon Friday here in California’s Central Valley — we’re still under triple digits right now, but the heat-blasting doesn’t always intensify until late afternoon.
We’ll weather the weather, as we have so far, and eventually, hopefully, we’ll persevere.

Anyway, spied this earlier — Ron DeSantis epitomizes the entire Republican agenda (h/t tweet Digby):

First sentences in a federal judge’s order blocking FL’s Stop Woke Act:

“In the popular television series Stranger Things, the upside down describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world. Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down”

— Jay O'Brien (@jayobtv) August 18, 2022

Background via NBC News this morning:

Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said in a 44-page ruling that the “Stop WOKE” act violates the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague. Walker also refused to issue a stay that would keep the law in effect during any appeal by the state.

The law targets what DeSantis has called a “pernicious” ideology exemplified by critical race theory — the idea that racism is systemic in U.S. institutions that serve to perpetuate white dominance in society.

Walker said the law, as applied to diversity, inclusion and bias training in businesses, turns the First Amendment “upside down” because the state is barring speech by prohibiting discussion of certain concepts in training programs.

“If Florida truly believes we live in a post-racial society, then let it make its case,” the judge wrote. “But it cannot win the argument by muzzling its opponents.”

Judge Walker, don’t you know, that’s the only course for Republicans — muzzle the truth is the start point. In our current political bullshit from Republicans is the literal ‘whitewashing‘ of US history, as the DeSantis ‘Stop WOKE Act” signifies, which puts hardcore, stringent limits on any kind of discussion of “white man’s privilege,” or other racial viewpoints contrary to ‘white-man’s privilege‘ (see the shift) — so American history is empty of slavery and genocide. A lot of life never happened. A horrible ‘upside down‘ version.

Further on yesterday’s ruling from The New York Times, also this morning:

But the judge, Mark E. Walker of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, said in his preliminary injunction that the law was something you might find in an alternate universe.

“In the popular television series ‘Stranger Things,’ the ‘upside down’ describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world,” Judge Walker wrote.
“Now, like the heroine in ‘Stranger Things,’ this court is once again asked to pull Florida back from the upside down.”

“In the popular television series ‘Stranger Things,’ the ‘upside down’ describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world,” Judge Walker wrote.
“Now, like the heroine in ‘Stranger Things,’ this court is once again asked to pull Florida back from the upside down.”

Judge Walker said the restrictions in the bill were overly broad and “naked viewpoint-based regulation,” aimed at particular ideas that Mr. DeSantis and other Florida lawmakers don’t like.
The legislation, he wrote, “does not target trainings because they are mandatory,” but rather “because of the speech delivered in them.”

…

Judge Walker’s ruling is preliminary. But Joel Paul, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said it appeared to be well argued.

“When you say that a law is viewpoint-based, the burden shifts to Florida to provide why the government has a credible interest in restricting this type of speech,” Paul told DealBook.
“I don’t have a clue what that governmental interest would be.”

A statement which could cover the absolute sum total of the GOP point of attack — from abortion, book banning, election fraud, all kinds of conspiracy shit, everything — which doesn’t allow any sense of governing, or actually doing any real work at all, leaving the end result as cruelty and crime. One of the inherent dangers in getting a handle on Republicans via the ballot box is that the ‘upside down‘ can be violent.

A creative insight via the ‘upside down‘ of alternative stranger things in life (from inventive, imaginative SuFu Eats Flies):

Yes, just go ask Alice as here we are once again…

(Illustration out front: Salvador Dali’s ‘Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion,’ found here.)