Can Florida’s Deranged DeSantis Outlast Trump on National Stage
If White Supremacist Grandaddy Donald Trump Survives Legal Troubles, He’ll Be on Strong Ground to Dispatch Ron DeSantis
For inexplicable reasons fueled by hurt, struggle, and a take-charge partner, I found myself in Pensacola, Florida for almost two years from early 2021 until fall of 2022, and outside of a few beach trips and daily visits by a gaggle of feral cats it was white-hot hell in Redneckville, U.S.A.
During my brief hellish sojourn in Florida, Ron DeSantis was the state’s governor running for a second term. DeSantis in easy fashion won reelection on a record of thwarting federal covid-19 protocols, which allowed death to run rampant through his own voters, demonizing and terrorizing Black people, and doing the same to LGBTQ people.
For a bit of time, DeSantis made former white supremacist president Donald Trump look like Bob Dole, a fumbling, old-school Republican popular for seconds in 1996. And even now DeSantis enjoys a large list of legislative victories targeting Black people’s well-being.
Gov. DeSantis with the help of a legislative branch controlled by his party has banned college diversity programs, erased George Floyd’s police brutality death and the Black Lives Matter protests from school books, and is working to remove racial history and discussion from school books via the ridiculous “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.”
DeSantis’ high-profile and vitriolic attack on Black people’s history and their place in American education has spurred litigation and calls from civil rights leaders and groups for Black people to avoid travelling to the state let alone moving there.
For Black people not imprisoned in Florida, the NAACP’s travel advisory should be taken to heart. And as The Root puts it:
Can we be honest? The only reason to visit Florida is for the theme parks and maybe the beach for spring break, but even that is becoming tired. Gov. Ron DeSantis has been signing bills left and right for the past two years that could convince any Black person not to move there unless they were fine with their kids being barred access to books like it’s Fahrenheit 451. Given the restrictions of anti-racist learning, the NAACP Miami-Dade branch voted this month to ask the national NAACP to advise Black folks to avoid the Sunshine state completely.
It does not stop with whitesplanning and demonizing Black people in education, DeSantis and his gerrymandered legislature have banned abortion health care, which will disproportionally harm Black women, and created through law “election cops” to ensure Black people stuck in the state will find it even more difficult to vote.
DeSantis’ election cops and his high-profile campaign to make Disneyland conform to his racist and anti-LGBTQ values have also added to the towering amount of national media attention the Florida governor has garnered during more than three years in office. Having the love the U.S.’s noxious and overexposed billionaire racist manboy Elon Musk doesn’t hurt either but it might embarrass.
DeSantis in the White House might be much worse than Trump’s first go-around if — and this is a big if — he has a compliant U.S. House and Senate. There is strong reason to believe that will not happen. The U.S.’s election setup is worn out and does not make voting easy, but the entire nation is not gerrymandered in the way Florida, Ohio, or even Wisconsin is.
Moreover, if Trump can survive his high-profile legal problems (and a big one is coming from Georgia), he appears ready to “rat-f_ck” DeSantis and take the Republican presidential nomination, setting up another campaign against unpopular and Hillary Clinton-like Joe Biden.
For those who believe presidential elections are worthy of dumping hard-earned money into you may want to wait several months before losing money into anti-DeSantis campaigns. If Trump remains viable, he is likely the white supremacist progressives will need to beat again.
