I have no idea if you’ve noticed, but the USA seems very hectic for some time. In recent years, this has led to countless Boulder doctors traveling to the critically ill country to assess the situation. Nothing is more attractive to Dutch TV fans than the collapse of the American dream.

However, in practice, it usually turns out that few TV doctors have a medicine bag at home to make truly accurate diagnoses. Doctor’s reports usually remain with some flat generalities. Yes, America is quite a divided country, but it’s also very big and fat, right?

Former American correspondent Elko Busch Van Rosenthal usually avoids those things that are replaceable. to Dreamland America And Battle of Texas Dr. Bush Van Rosenthal often kept his finger on the American pulse in an objective and resolute manner. His brilliant series on America usually present a multi-layered portrait of a country slow motion Thunder in the valley.

We saw on Sunday evening in the first episode of the program that the bottom has not been reached yet Battle of Floridawhere Bush Van Rosenthal to Sunshine case He went to re-examine the symptoms of a sick country. In this case, it led him to New College in Sarasota, a university known for decades as a safe haven for hippies, liberals and the gay community. It had gone well for years, but now New College had also fallen prey to the grim culture war.

After all, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis – who dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday evening – abhors anything that even smacks of progressive ideas, and urges his voters to root out everything that is “woke.” In the case of New College, this led to the creation of an ultra-conservative supervisory board, which also included anti-trans activists. There is little safe haven left for the LGBTI community.

Because Florida may be a freedom state: one person’s freedom can no longer coexist with another person’s freedom. the Sunshine case It seems, in Bush Van Rosenthal’s words, like a kind of proving ground for right-wing revolution, with a strong “anti-woke politics” and engagement on campuses (where even history around apartheid is labeled “woke”). ), and banning books in schools.

Bush van Rosenthal appears in Battle of Florida Especially a country that is completely stuck in black and white thinking, where anyone with a different opinion automatically becomes the enemy. Perhaps one former New College student summed it up best: “There was so much freedom here that it felt like a dream afterward.” It was almost too good to be true.’

His words were about the new college, but they could just as easily have been about a country in serious decline.