When the archaeologists dig us up, it’ll be a scary sight | Fred Grimm

Centuries from now, archaeologists will unearth the ruins of ancient Florida and discern a primitive society consumed by strange trepidations. Imagine a people who without a lick of evidence claim that crackhead omnivores are terrorizing the suburbs.

My hypothetical disaster strikes on a winter’s day in 2024 and swallows Florida whole, suspending a place in time much like lava flowing from Mount Vesuvius forever fixed Pompeii in 79 AD.

Of course, Pompeiians only had a volcano and the occasional Visigoth invasion threatening their equanimity. Archaeological evidence dug out of Tallahassee establishes that the autocratic rulers of 2024 Florida, right up until the end, were obsessed with an extraordinary array of imaginary threats.

Like the non-existent cocaine-crazed bears that state Rep. Jason Shoaf claims are terrorizing his Panhandle constituents. Shoaf, a Port St. Joe Republican, insists that Florida needs a wildlife equivalent of the state’s infamous Stand Your Ground self-defense law, allowing Floridians to blast away at black bears and face no more legal jeopardy than if they had merely shot a bothersome human.

We’re not talking about those “cute and cuddly” overgrown Teddy bears, Shoaf assured his fellow legislators, lest Paddington, Winnie-the-Pooh and Gentle Ben file defamation suits.

Shoaf then delivered the most delusional quote you’ll read this year: “We’re talking about the ones that are on crack. They break your door down and they’re standing in your living room growling and tearing your house apart.”

I’m pretty sure that Florida media would not have ignored reports of a rampaging coke-fiend bear, yet the furry brutes never made the news. Perhaps Shoaf was confused by “Cocaine Bear,” the 2022 comedic horror film about a doped-up bear on a bloody killing spree. The movie, directed by actor, filmmaker and “Press Your Luck” host Elizabeth Banks, was vaguely based on a 1985 news report out of Georgia about a black bear dying of an overdose after discovering a smuggler’s stash of cocaine. That’s it. One dead bear. No home invasion. No mauled humans. Not in Georgia. Not in Florida.

But the movie version is a better fit for the Florida Legislature of the 2020s, where bill after gratuitous bill has been proffered as the very juju needed to ward off fabricated fears, much the way ancient seers dealt with evil spirits.

Judging by their legislative proposals, Florida’s lawmakers consider drag queens as much a menace to society as crackhead bears. The very sight of a rainbow flag sets off a panic in Tallahassee. TikTok haunts their nightmares.

Transexual children trigger a collective phobia. Lawmakers’ fear of vaccines outweighs the risk of disease. They’re afraid school teachers and librarians intend to corrupt school children.

Legislators think the words inclusion, equity and diversity spoken aloud are incantations of black magic. The urban homeless are so menacing, lawmakers want them shanghaied and relocated in government-built tent cities.

They fret that public service unions will lead a peasants’ revolt. They worry that classic children’s literature will turn school kids into sexual deviants.

They want unsettling chapters of Black history rewritten to include the rosier aspects of slavery. They perceive Mickey Mouse as a killer rodent the size of Godzilla. They worry police oversight commissions might disapprove of unnecessary police violence.

They’ve excised eight mentions of the very scary term “climate change” from state legislation covering energy policy. They worry that meat grown in a lab will turn them into liberals.

They’re oh-so-afraid that Florida’s historic structures and preservation lands will impede their developer buddies. Lawmakers are perpetually anxious that local government officials might not recognize that they must kowtow to their betters in Tallahassee.

They’re so anxious about commies infiltrating Florida institutions that they’re requiring that tiny kindergarteners be taught the flaws of communism. Their nightmares are populated by immigrants and Ivy League intellectuals.

They’re really, really afraid that too many voters will vote.

Admittedly, some issues in Florida don’t frighten lawmakers. They love guns, confederate memorials, Moms for Liberty (their liberty not yours), utility lobbyists, carbon fuels and book bans. They’re happy to award their pugnacious governor his very own paramilitary State Guard, in case he decides to invade California.

But the far future archaeological mission, sifting through the detritus of a divisive time, will judge contemporary Floridians by their weird preoccupation with invented threats and fake fear-mongering legislation. Except Florida politicians’ fearful regard of a certain aged grump in Palm Beach is hardly imaginary.

The archaeologists might have trouble working out the vindictive ex-president’s actual function in our society, given that the only surviving historical evidence of his existence will be ancient recordings of him insulting, disparaging, humiliating and threatening any politician who dared to cross him.

It won’t take them long to discover, perhaps by carbon-dating, that at the time of the great disaster, the raving Man from MAGA was the scariest threat, real or imagined, in all of Florida.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred.