Although both
Dixon Alan Hays and Ray Pilon have individually done and said plenty of stupid
shit, they’ve been collaborating on silliness in a way that makes it seem apt
to cover them both in a single entry (we don’t fear running out potential
entries anytime soon). In any case: Alan Hays is a dentist and currently supervisor
of elections in Lake County, Florida, since 2017, after having served in the
Florida Senate from 2010 to 2016 and in the Florida House of Representatives
from 2004 to 2010. Ray Pilon, meanwhile, served in the Florida House of
Representatives from 2010 to 2016 representing first the 69th
district and then the 72nd District.
Alan Hays
Hays and
Pilon are both creationists and have fought hard to get creationism taught in Florida public schools.
In 2016, for instance, they were behind House Bill 899 and the identical Senate Bill 1018, which would ostensibly empower taxpayers to object to
specific instructional materials used in public schools, e.g. on the grounds
that they fail to provide “a noninflammatory, objective, and balanced viewpoint on issues.” The bills, which also required schools to provide “[a] thorough presentation and
critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution”, were designed by the
Florida Citizens’ Alliance and Better Collier County Public
Schools as a response to being annyoyed that public schools have been using
e.g. a world history textbook in which “Darwin’s
conclusions [are] presented as fact and the biblical theory as ludicrous … [and which] states
as fact millions of species exist and fossil records document changes over time” and an American history textbook
that is “permeate[d]” by “discussion of climate change.” 
Ray Pilon
Those bills failed in 2016, but an equivalent bill, HB 989, succeeded in 2018, signifying, in many ways, the launch of Florida’s subsequent and ongoing war on education. And yes, it can legitimately be said that Hays and Pilon spearheaded the anti-education movement that groups like Moms for Liberty have later taken on a pan-American run.
And it wasn’t Hays’ first attempt. Back in 2008, when Hays – who is also the kind of guy who compares abortion to the Holocaust – belonged to the group around Ronda Storms, he sponsored an “academic freedom” bill inspired by Ben Stein’s conspiracy movie Expelled, claiming that “I want a balanced policy. I want students taught how to think, not what to think. There are problems with evolution. Have you ever seen a half-monkey, half human?” (No, he does of course no have the faintest clue about what the theory of evolution actually says.) In 2014, Hays also announced his intention to introduce a bill requiring that all Florida public school students in middle or high school watch Dinesh D’Souza’s film America because he liked it.
Pilon, on his side, is probably most famous for his attempts to push plans to rig elections to ascertain that his side wins, using means that have been more or less normalized at present.
Diagnosis: That these insane morons seem almost milquetoast by today’s standards tell you way more about today than it tells you about them. Deranged lunatics, both.
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