Authoritarian In Waiting
The Florida Governor is Making Trump Look Like Bob Dole
Florida’s Governor Ron Desantis is making Donald Trump look old school and not up for a redo. Trump’s big stumble? Covid19 in short, the former president urged audiences on numerous occasions to get vaccinated. Not good. True capitalists are a brave lot and embrace death with great flare. Desantis is also cornering Trump on white supremacy.
Left to his own devices, Desantis in the White House would declare BLM terrorists, hire Kyle Rittenhouse as Homeland Security czar, and order the roundup of all BLM protestors, their families, ancestors, and supporters of all walks of life, to be jailed and interrogated in the most “humane” ways possible.
Desantis, 42, pugnacious, obnoxious, outlandish, and a whiter supremacist than Trump.
It is difficult to fathom but let me explain with the help of reporters at The Root, who have been on to Desantis for a long time now.
Desantis is out-trumping Donald in the response to Covid19, even though by both politicians may have received a Covid19 vaccination. We only know that former President Donald Trump contracted Covid19 and was treated at Walter Reed. Desantis also keeps up with Trump when it comes to dishing out lies to the Florida and national press. Whether Desantis has or has not been infected with Covid19 is undiscoverable.
What we do know is that he celebrates the infectious virus like it is nobody’s business. The Root has covered Desantis incessant and reckless efforts to stop people in the state from getting Covid19 vaccination shots.
Desantis, called Gov. DeVirus by his detractors, has sought to fine city and county governments who required their staff to get the Covid19 vaccination. Desantis did not leave children and public school teachers out of his sights either, he encourages infected children to go to school and threatens to fire teachers and administrators who seeks to enforce mask-mandates, social distancing, and help students get vaccinated. Later he would seek to strip funding from all schools that sought to enforce masks and social distancing in schools.
The Root’s Stephen A. Crockett Jr. in must-read fashion explained it so:
The state is preparing to begin enforcing the law … because Gov. DeAllY’allBoutToGetCOVID doesn’t give a fuck about the people of Florida, and he’s claiming that the city of Gainesville as well as Orange and Leon counties requiring that workers must be vaccinated or risk getting fired ‘should alarm Floridians, and raises important questions.’
Beyond trying to kill off his constituents, like a rabid capitalist, Desantis is also outmaneuvering Trump on defending and advancing white supremacy.
For instance, Desantis is taking on Critical Race Theory in the most whitey way possible. He is pushing a bill to ban schools and private business from teaching The 1619 Project or any work from Critical Race Theory writers.
“Florida Gov. Ron Desantis has a particular itch to combat Critical Race Theory. Something that even he may not be sure that’s being taught in school K-12. As a matter of fact, it’s a concept taught in law schools exploring how race factors into dealing with legal institutions. According to Forbes, Desantis took that progressive paranoia up a notch introducing the ‘Stop W.O.K.E. Act.’ It’s the enforcement arm of a law banning CRT being taught in classrooms earlier this year. taking on BLM, critical race theory, advancing white supremacy, police overreach, religious theocracy too … ,” Murjani Rawls writes for The Root.
Desantis’s obsession with CRT is part of his hatred of BLM and groups who argue for reform of policing, such as cutting funding to police departments. He uses the BLM and CRT with great flair too rile up a whitey base and drive division in an already hateful and deeply divided state.
At a Desantis press conference this year, the governor showed off, flexing his toughie attitude. The Guardian reported:
A planned press briefing in Jacksonville was abruptly postponed after the unseemly spectacle of a peaceful, disabled Black community activist led away in handcuffs and cited for trespass after asking to speak with Desantis about his coronavirus policies.
‘No, this isn’t from 1955. This is from an hour ago. At the Governor’s press conference,’ Democratic state congresswoman Michele Rayner tweeted, noting that Ben Frazier, founder of Jacksonville’s Northside Coalition, was also denied use of his electric scooter.
So what’s to be done on the national level to confront yet another authoritarian in waiting?
One would hope for a robust defense of Covid19 safety measures in the public square and businesses, and real efforts to redo outlandish police forces and their “unions” from coast-to-coast for starters.
Joe Biden made lots of progressive sounding promises on the campaign trail and once in office declared his administration would be more progressive than FDR’s. A year of Biden’s presidency is gone, and it was waste of time.
Biden’s administration is stuffed with the likes of Neera Tanden and Rahm Emanuel, both fierce critics of the Left and socialists, and both particularly hate universal health care. The administration bickered and fumbled its way through 2021, with no campaign promises kept.
In New York City you have Eric Adams, a former NYC cop and an obnoxious opponent of police reform, labor organizing, and with no interest in helping people mired in poverty.
In California, where San Francisco has long ignored and walked over people in poverty, the new media darling Mayor London Breed says she wants no “lectures” from progressives. Really? She can close her eyes and ears, because reporters have noticed how absent of mayor she is.
Jacobin’s Meagan Day called out Breed for abandoning San Francisco’s “homeless” during the Covid19 pandemic. In that piece Day wrote:
Whatever Breed’s motivation, her inaction is directly endangering thousands of unhoused residents. And the danger doesn’t stop at the shelter walls, or the perimeter of the tent encampment, or even the border of the city.
It might be a dreary outlook, but Biden and his administration are to blame. Time is of the essence and Biden fiddled away 2021. It was a pathetic and dangerous start to his presidency. Biden’s team of neoliberals is not fit for the time.
With the Left so hated by old school Democrats and the Right itching for another authoritarian, things appear bleak.
For the next authoritarian president will have both chambers of Congress controlled by the Republican Party and a Supreme Court stuffed with right-wing and gutless centrist justices. That authoritarian is in waiting, he’s Florida’s Gov. Ron Desantis.
Can the Left do anything about this mess. It did mount serious presidential efforts against HRC and Biden, and Buffalo recently elected a socialist mayor.
Polling shows collectivist policy, such as universal health care, is popular. Even deep-red state West Virginia constituents favored Biden’s somewhat expensive “Build Back America” legislation, which could have created jobs in the dirt-poor state.
Perhaps most encouraging are essential workers, derided by some as “low-skill” workers, embracing unionization.
Some have taken remarkable steps, such as a union forming at a Starbucks, and workers by the thousands agitating for better pay and safety protections at Kroger-owned grocery stores in Colorado. In Alabama workers have launched a union drive at Amazon, a corporation known for its hatred of unions and its shoddy treatment of workers, especially those in its infamous warehouses.
It does not appear that the ground-level unionization efforts are going away anytime soon and have great potential to spread. This is good news, along with BLM and Critical Race Theory, there is always hope for a different and surprising outcome.
