by BJW Nashe
“I don’t reckon I’ll ever go back to Florida…”
— Johnny Cash
Florida is not ranking high on the destination list for many Americans right now. The state may be headed for apocalypse.
California used to be the place the rest of the country looked to for signs that the end was near. The state’s high crime rates, drug-addled celebrities, doomsday cults, mass murderers, meth labs, porn stars, and police scandals once seemed to lead the way. California was the place to be, if you yearned for the apocalypse.
At this point in time, however, the honor must be conceded to Florida. Recent events there have put the “Sunshine State” far ahead of the pack. The presidential election debacle in 2000 was a clear warning sign. And recent elections in Florida — hopelessly marred by chaos and disorganization — prove that the “dangling chads” fiasco was not some fluke. Eight hour voting lines are now the norm in districts populated by non-white citizens. And who knows whether your vote will even be counted?
Likewise, deranged crime seems to be taken for granted in Florida. The nude cannibal attack in Miami in May, 2012 was deeply significant in this regard. As noted crime writer and journalist Carl Hiaasen noted in his trenchant column for the Miami Herald, the most remarkable thing about this episode wasn’t the fact that someone abandoned their car on the side of the highway, stripped off all of their clothes, and then attacked a random homeless guy, chewing off most of his face and gouging out his eyes, until the cops finally arrived to halt the attack in a hail of gunfire. No, the amazing part of the story was the way in which the whole incident was just shrugged off in the region. “Nude face-eating cannibal? Oh yeah… Well, that’s Miami for you.” Apparently in some parts of Florida, nothing’s shocking anymore.
This past January the nation marveled at the insane exploits of a carnival worker named Gregory Matthew Bruni. Bruni was discovered naked on the roof of a North Fort Myers couple’s house. He leaped down and assaulted the husband, then raced inside and began trashing the home. He dodged bullets fired from the wife’s gun, then defecated on the floor in two places, and masturbated in the living room. The couple called 9-1-1. While they waited for authorities to arrive, Bruni emptied the contents of a vacuum cleaner and began stuffing them in his mouth. He was eventually arrested and taken to a hospital for evaluation.
These scandalous crimes are not isolated incidents. You don’t have to look too hard to figure this out. Simply visit the Florida Weird Crime page on the Huffington Post web site. The headlines scream “bad craziness.” Man uses Bible to set car on fire. Convicted rapist masturbates in public. Human skull parts found in luggage at Fort Lauderdale airport. Man chokes teenager for giving him the finger. Man robs store after applying for job. Man returns used enemas to pharmacy. Mother-daughter porn duo aims to be filthy rich. Man stabs brother over missing mac-and-cheese. Doll mutilator claims his goal is “pure evil.” Man attacks disabled neighbor, threatens to burn his kids. Shoplifting suspect tosses baby at cops.
It goes on and on. That’s just the current news. By next week, there will be a whole new slew of equally bizarre crime stories.
No doubt, all states have their share of weird crime. Yet Florida seems to have more of it right now. And the crimes tend to have a distinct flavor of terminal madness. Together, they form a nightmare mosaic reminiscent of the freak show paintings of Joe Coleman — the Hieronymous Bosch of modern American art — or the shrieking mayhem of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson, whose musical style and attitude were clearly nurtured in the fertile context of all those weird headlines. It’s no accident that Manson’s band was formed deep in the cultural bowels of Fort Lauderdale. Songs such as “Sweet Dreams,” “Beautiful People,” and “Dope Show” provide the most suitable soundtrack for what’s going on down in Tampa, Tallahassee, and Jacksonville.
There’s certainly no shortage of gun violence in the Gunshine State. What’s remarkable is that there aren’t even more shootings. Guns are very popular in Florida. The fact that well over a million concealed weapon permits have been issued in Florida, however, is only a symptom of a far larger problem — which is probably best described as a form of extreme socio-cultural degradation. Perhaps its bad karma stems from the cocaine boom years of the 1980s. During that period, the state’s rapid growth, especially in Miami, was largely funded by the flood of cash 
from the rampant drug trade. The film Scarface remains an iconic artifact from the “cocaine cowboy” era. The Tony Montana character — the ultimate psychopathic drug dealer — has become synonymous with Miami lawlessness and violence. With the passing of time, the film has become a dark comedy of sorts. It is so ludicrous and over-the-top that we struggle to take it seriously — except that we know how deadly serious the situation down there actually is. The reality is far worse than any film by Brian DePalma will ever be.
One of Florida’s most jarring characteristics is the sharp contrast between the decadent glitz and glamour of the urban areas and resorts, on the one hand, and the Deep South, Bible Belt fundamentalism of more rural areas. American culture in general is sharply divided by urban vs. rural, science vs. religion, and liberal vs. conservative. In Florida, these divisions have blossomed into a kind of full-fledged paranoid schizophrenia.
It all adds up to a melting pot of incompatible interests and desires. Florida is a place where you can conceivably go on a coke binge with exotic hookers in Miami, or drink yourself into a stupor in Tampa’s strip clubs, and then drive a few miles down the road to seek repentance in a good old-fashioned holy-roller revivalist church — the kind of place where snake-handling and speaking-in-tongues is still in vogue. After you get your old-time religion groove on, you can head over to a gun show and stock up on enough fire power to give the 101st Airborne Division a run for their money. No background checks, no worries. Then why not zip over to Disneyworld in Orlando to escape from reality altogether. Who knows? Maybe Glenn Beck will decide to locate his proposed right-wing theme park, “Independence USA,” somewhere in the Orlando area. It makes perfect sense. Then this too will be a suitable place to retreat into pure fantasy and absolute denial.
Tune in tomorrow for Florida Apocalypse, Part Two: The End May Be Near