1). “Florida is officially a laboratory for fascism in the U.S.: There is a very specific reason why Gov. Ron DeSantis targeted African-American history for erasure”, Feb 7, 2023., Chauncey DeVega Senior Writer, COMMENTARY Salon, at <https://www.salon.com/2023/02/07/florida-is-officially-a-laboratory-for-fascism-in-the-us/>
2). “Mocking Marjorie Taylor Greene's threats of "national divorce" won't save us from civil war”, Mar 2, 2023, Chauncey DeVega, Senior Writer, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2023/03/02/stop-mocking-marjorie-taylor-greene/ >
3). “America finally facing politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness and willingness to see people die”, Feb 02, 2023, Thom Hartmann, Raw Story, at < https://www.rawstory.com/amp/american-mussolini-2659366661 >
Introduction by dmorista: The threat of the widespread establishment of some native American form of fascism continues to grow. Florida is the poster child state for Native American Fascism, but Texas, Georgia and a host of other “Red States” are not far behind. Ron DeSantis is clearly a leading figure in the growth of American Fascism. He has adroitly used the legal and coercive powers of Governor of Florida to push an extremely aggressive reactionary / fascist regime in the Sunshine State. But let’s make no mistake, while Ron DeSantis is the leading candidate for the advocates of Fascism in the U.S. there are a number of others, nearly all of them educated in Ivy League Universities and Law Schools. These include Josh Hawley (whose wife is lead counsel in the right-wing lawsuit heard by an ultra-reactionary U.S. District Judge appointed by Trump, that will undoubtedly result in a ruling in favor of the fraudulent claim that Mifepristone is a dangerous drug that endangers women), Tom Cotton, Rick Scott (also from Florida, and the CEO of a Florida insurance company that was convicted of Medicare Fraud and fined $200 million during his tenure).
Fascism, and proto-Fascism is growing as a political method used by a variety of Ruling Classes in response to their inability to manage economies in a way that assures domestic peace and tranquility. The authors of these three articles emphasize the role of racism by American Whites (while acknowledging that the White Ruling Class uses racism to keep the majority of American Whites suffering from a variety of socio-economic injustices). When we look around the world, however, we can see a wide variety of fascist political movements. The largest in terms of population is in India, where the politicians mobilize their adherents on the basis of Hindu Supremacy. In the Philippines Dutarte used a Street Crime theme to empower his movement to kill thousands of small-time drug dealers. Orban in Hungary used resentment and resistance to immigration (largely caused by people fleeing Wars the U.S. / NATO and Israel waged against the people of Eurasia and Africa) The situation in the U.S. is that economic status is closely correlated with race and ethnic status. There is a fairly obvious economic hierarchy in the U.S. Of course there is a small cadre of extremely rich the ethnic and racial composition of which is not available to me. Occupying the next tiers of upper middle class professionals and the like are Asians of various types (mostly South Asians and Chinese) and Jews, next are White Americans, then Hispanics, and at the bottom we see African Americans. The huge population of American poor is primarily composed of Whites, Hispanics, and African-Americans. There are some poor Asians and Jews of course, but they are very much under-represented, and while there are plenty of prosperous Whites, they are conversely under-represented among the upper middle class professional income levels. Their relative high status of Jews and Asians, makes them the perfect targets for political attacks by figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene, in some of her endless publicity grabbing comments.
The leading place on Earth where an influential fascist movement is battling against the well-being of the majority of the population is in Ukraine, where the U.S. Government has allied with private interests from the U.S. to strip the Ukrainian population of their socioeconomic rights and property (the famous black-earth of the wheat growing zone, and many minerals and ores). Under the cover of a smoldering low-intensity war, beginning after the U.S. / NATO sponsored and supported Coup in 2014 and growing more intense after the Russian invasion in 2022, the fascist organizations and their supporters among the Ukrainian and foreign oligarchs the Finance Capitalists have thoroughly looted Ukraine. A telling consequence of event there is that the web is full of advertisements for Ukrainian Women for sale as Sexual Products.
Unfortunately the American Left and much of the alternative media has been hoodwinked into supporting the “Official Story of the Evil Putin and an Expansionist Russia”. And Thom Hartmann (author of one of the articles I am posting today), one of the few successful AM radio progressive talk-show hosts, has been a particularly noticeable propagandist for the Official Story. He uses typical radio host methods to dismiss callers to his show who express doubts about the Official Story. Let’s make no mistake, Vladimir Putin is clearly an authoritarian figure, but like Russia overall, he is a defensive strategist who just wants to continue business-as-usual. And one very important issue for Putin and the Russian ruling class is to live without the U.S. / NATO basing hypersonic nuclear armed missiles 500 miles closer to Moscow than they are now. Predictably China is now considering providing Russia with some weapons and ammunition (already produced for the Chinese military that obtained weaponry from the U.S.S.R. and later Russia). The U.S. ruling class has only themselves to blame for helping China become so powerful, or for pushing Russia away from the West and into the waiting arms of China.
Human history is full of struggles and change. We can certainly expect to see more of those here in the U.S. We must remember that if we on the Left do not take action the far-right is clearly ready and is working to produce a nightmarish future for us, our children, and our grandchildren.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The text of the three articles is posted here below.
1). “Florida is officially a laboratory for fascism in the U.S.: There is a very specific reason why Gov. Ron DeSantis targeted African-American history for erasure”, Feb 7, 2023., Chauncey DeVega, Senior Writer, COMMENTARY, Salon, at <https://www.salon.com/2023/02/07/florida-is-officially-a-laboratory-for-fascism-in-the-us/>
Florida is officially a laboratory for fascism in the U.S.
Ron DeSantis is not a "mini-Trump" or some other diminutive. He is much more dangerous. Donald Trump has no "ideology" beyond megalomania and a deep desire to be an American god king. By comparison, DeSantis is far more intelligent and devious; he is an ideological fascist and racial authoritarian.
Historians and political observers have been predicting that America would get our very own Mussolini ever since the days of Barry Goldwater. And there's been no shortage of candidates: bribe-taking Nixon; Central American fascist-loving Reagan; Gitmo torturing and war-lying Bush; and, of course, Trump.
But with Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini's guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.
DeSantis and other Republican fascists have proclaimed Florida to be a bastion of "freedom" and "liberty." In reality, Florida is now a laboratory for fascism. As part of his authoritarian project, DeSantis is enforcing thought crime laws that forbid the teaching of AP African-American studies in high school and other courses and programs across Florida's school system (including at the college and university level) that examine questions of power, race and systemic inequality. DeSantis and his agents recently declared that the AP African-American studies course was inappropriate and will not be taught in Florida's schools because it has "no educational value" and is "indoctrinating" (white) young people. DeSantis and his regime's thought crime attacks on African-American studies are Orwell's "1984" meets "Birth of a Nation."
Racism and white supremacy are a choice.
The purpose of DeSantis' thought crime laws is to intimidate and terrorize all teachers, educators, librarians, and others who are committed to education, critical thinking, and the truth in Florida (and beyond). In DeSantis' Florida — and soon to be across "red state" America if he and the other fascist Republicans get their way — there will be censors who review books and other material for thought crimes and other "dangerous" ideas that are contrary to the interests of conservatives. These censors and party officials and their designated agents will also rewrite history – and reality itself – to fit the demands of the regime. The public will no longer be able to discern truth from lies and fantasies from facts and fiction. The subversion and destruction of reality, facts, and the truth are a precondition for, and one of the primary ways that fascist and other authoritarian regimes obtain and keep power.
DeSantis' goal is to make America into a new Jim Crow Christofascist plutocracy. Donald Trump and Trumpism were just intermediate stops on that evil journey.
This is the power of censorship: people quickly learn to police their own behavior and that of their family, friends, neighbors, and yes, strangers. The public's intellectual, creative, ethical, and moral lives quickly become impoverished. The result is the ideal fascist authoritarian subject: a compliant person who does not resist.
Here is a partial list of the dozens of scholars, authors, and other public thinkers whose work has now been declared "illegal" and a "thought crime" by DeSantis and his agents and subsequently marked for removal from the AP African-American Studies course:
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Angela Davis
bell hooks
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Nell Irvin Painter
Manning Marable
Cathy Cohen
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
James Cone
Nikki Giovanni
Barbara Fields
These are not just names on a banned books list. These are real human beings who are committed to helping the public and their students be engaged and responsible members of a larger community and to develop critical thinking skills that they can use to challenge and interrogate Power with the goal of making a better, more just, and truly democratic society.
DeSantis and his regime's thought crime attacks on African-American studies are Orwell's "1984" meets "Birth of a Nation."
I personally have interviewed, been in dialogue with, enjoyed the company of, had meals with, or otherwise interacted with a good many of these "banned" authors and scholars. I and many others have greatly benefitted from their scholarship, wisdom, time, and concern.
Why are DeSantis and his agents (in Florida and across the country) targeting African-American studies and other such programs?
There are many reasons.
The Black Freedom Struggle is one of the most successful pro-democracy resistance movements in American (and world) history. DeSantis and the other Republican-fascists and their forces do not want these lessons to be known, learned, or otherwise disseminated. DeSantis is working to create a type of "regime of knowledge" where Black, brown and other marginalized people's triumphs and experiences are outright erased and/or grossly distorted as a way of literally removing their personhood and existence. History has repeatedly shown that "thought crimes," banned books and other forms of intellectual violence are precursors to and do the work of interpersonal and intergroup violence on a large scale by the State, and those empowered to act in its name, against those deemed to be "the enemy."
In all, Power intersects with and is an extension of knowledge production. And knowledge is not "neutral." Philosopher Michel Foucault explained as much. "There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations." Foucault also explained that "Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it."
DeSantis attended Yale for his undergraduate degree. In all likelihood, he encountered the work of Foucault during his studies there. Now DeSantis is putting Foucault's powerful insights to work in ways contrary to their original intent.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
In a recent interview at The New Yorker, contributing writer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor spoke with historian Robin D.G. Kelley about DeSantis' thought crimes regime and the targeting of African-American studies. Both Professor Taylor's and Professor Kelley's work was purged from the Advanced Placement African-American studies course. Kelley's comments merit being quoted at length:
There's two levels. One is that it's about Ron DeSantis possibly running for President. I think that's the most important thing, because, no matter what we think about DeSantis and his policies, we know he went to Yale University, and majored in history and political science with a 3.7 G.P.A., which means that he was at one of the premier institutions for history. That's why I get frustrated when people say he needs to take a class. He took the class. He knows better. He knows that the culture wars actually win votes. He's trying to get the Trump constituency.
So I think this is about Ron DeSantis wanting to run for President. But I also think that the focus on Florida occludes a bigger story. As you know, this goes back to the Trump years—well before Trump, but let's just talk about the Trump years—the attack on the 1619 Project, Chris Rufo's strategy of turning critical race theory into an epithet by denying it any meaning whatsoever. And creating a buzzword. That's actually a strategy that has nothing to do with the field of African American studies; it has everything to do with vilifying a field—attacking the whole concept of racial justice and equity. So, to me, if DeSantis never banned the class, we would still be in this situation. And although it is true that a number of states did accept the pilot program for the A.P. class, some of those same states have passed, or are about to pass, laws that are banning or limiting what they're calling critical race theory. So there is a general assault on knowledge, but specifically knowledge that interrogates issues of race, sex, gender, and even class.
It's an ongoing struggle to roll back anything that's perceived as diminishing white power. They want to convince white working people—the same white working people who have very little access to good health care and housing, whose lives are actually really precarious, as they move from union jobs to part-time, concierge labor to make ends meet—that somehow, if they can get control of the narrative inside classrooms, their lives would be better. Racism actually damages all of our prospects and futures.
I don't think it's an accident that the people who are targeted are you, Angela Davis, myself, bell hooks. To say that we're not radical would be a lie. What does radical actually mean? What it means, what Black studies is about, is trying to understand how the system works and recognizing that the way the system works now benefits a few at the expense of the many. It's easy to allow someone to come in, in the name of Black studies, and say, "We're going to talk about ancient Africa, and the great achievements of the Kush of ancient Egypt." That's not a threat—not as much as the idea of critical race theory saying that, no matter what policies and procedures and legislation are implemented, the structure of racism, embedded in a capitalist system, embedded in a system of patriarchy, continues to create wealth for some and make the rest of our lives precarious. Precarious in terms of money, precarious in terms of police violence, precarious in terms of environmental catastrophe, precarious in many, many ways. And I think people could agree with me that that's why we do this scholarship: because we're trying to figure out a way to make a better future. You know, that's the whole point. And if that's subversive, then say it, but it's definitely not indoctrination, because indoctrination is a state that bans books.....
[T]he subject of African American studies, even before it was called that, has been not just the condition of Black people but the condition of the country. And not just narrating that oppression and understanding it, and not just trying to think about ways to move beyond it—to transcend it, to come up with strategies to try to live—but also understanding what's wrong with this country, with the system.
We're not just interrogating our lives, we're interrogating knowledge production itself.
Dangerous thinking is a good thing and those with power want to socialize us into learned helplessness so that we will not see (and achieve) the radical possibilities of a true social democracy.
Years ago, when I was in high school and then college, I was lucky enough to have very generous teachers who took me on trips to conferences and other events at leading universities and institutions such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In fact, I was very lucky to have attended several conferences where Yosef Ben-Jochannan ("Dr. Ben"), who was one of the founders of African Studies, was the featured speaker. Those years that saw the Million Man March(es), debates about the merits of multiculturalism, diversity and "affirmative action" at America's colleges and universities, boiling ethnic, racial and class tensions in Los Angeles and New York's Crown Heights and Howard Beach neighborhoods (among others), the golden age of Hip Hop Music and Culture, and so many other political and cultural formations and events. It would be an understatement to say that those years were quite an exhilarating time to be a young black politically engaged person in America.
In so many ways, I am very much a product of that time period.
I learned that I have no taste for racial chauvinism; such beliefs are the mind killer. I also came to the conclusion that American and Western society is profoundly sick with white supremacy and racism. Those forces will likely bring the ultimate destruction of American society and its so-called democracy.
A more humane and good society are possible if we want it badly enough on both sides of the color line. Racism and white supremacy are a choice. America is structured around such forces and too many white Americans and others are deeply invested in such an arrangement of things -- even if it causes them great harm. DeSantis and the larger white right are using thought crimes and other tools of censorship and intimidation as weapons to limit how we conceptualize freedom, democracy, justice, and the boundaries of the possible. DeSantis and those of his ilk wouldn't be trying to ban books and authors (and by implication whole groups of people) if they were not deeply afraid of them – and the possibilities of achieving a more democratic and free and humane society.
2). “Mocking Marjorie Taylor Greene's threats of "national divorce" won't save us from civil war”, Mar 2, 2023, Chauncey DeVega, Senior Writer, Salon, at < https://www.salon.com/2023/03/02/stop-mocking-marjorie-taylor-greene/ >
US Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yells as US President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, February 7, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Stop mocking Marjorie Taylor Greene
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants you to laugh at her. In fact, your laughter and mocking are among the Georgia Republican's greatest weapons.
Laughter is a type of dismissive behavior. Moreover, many people laugh when they are scared, hysterical or in denial. To laugh at someone is to not take them seriously. Laughter is also a way of gratifying one's ego and asserting some type of superiority. When one laughs or mocks a person they generally assume that the other person cares or is somehow vulnerable to such acts.
Marjorie Taylor Greene wore a white dress to Biden's State of the Union address in an attempt to look like "the Chinese spy balloon". People laughed at her. She heckled President Biden during his State of the Union address. People laughed at and condemned her tacky and crass behavior.
Marjorie Taylor Greene does not care.
Her fans in MAGAland do not care about such laughter and condemnation – in fact, they view such behavior as validation and encouragement. The laughter is kin to the "liberal tears" they love to drink until they soil themselves.
Related
Greene has shown herself to be a white supremacist, a white Christian nationalist, and a white victimologist. She is also an antisemitic conspiracist who believes in "Jewish space lasers", "globalists" and QAnon (which is just an updated version of blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The laughter and mocking have not dissuaded her from such beliefs and behavior.
Republicans, for their part, have rewarded her antics. With the GOP takeover of the House of Representatives, Greene is now a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and one of the most powerful members of Congress. The laughter did not stop her rise to power.
He who laughs last laughs loudest. The laughter of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other American fascists will be very deafening indeed.
The laughter did not stop her seditious machinations and coup plotting. Greene is an insurrectionist who supported Jan. 6, and in total is an enemy of democracy who, per the Constitution, should be removed from office.
Greene is now threatening a second Civil War (what she and other Republicans have euphemistically described as a "national divorce").
None of this is funny.
Greene is claiming that she was misunderstood and that she is the real "victim". Such a tactic is textbook stochastic terrorism: the threat is made and then denials are issued after the message is circulated and received by the members of the public who are being radicalized into political violence and terrorism. It follows a much larger pattern of right-wing threats of political violence and a second civil.
As part of her threats of a second Civil War, Greene also threatened to take away the civil rights of people from "blue states" who dare to move to "red state" America, in essence treating them as potential enemies and a fifth column, who should not be allowed to vote for 5 years until they demonstrate their loyalty to the new order.
Destroying the Union and creating a 21st-century Confederacy has long been a fantasy, threat, and goal of white supremacists, neo confederates and other members of the white right and those who are allied with them.
[I]f Republicans call Greene out, they will offer only gentle rebukes. Mostly, they'll want to ignore her comments, change the topic, and try to redirect attention to Democrats. During the past half a dozen years, Republicans have perfected whataboutism.
What the rest of us learned during the Trump era is that a party led by craven men and women—some of them cynical, others true believers, almost all afraid to speak out—will end up normalizing the transgressive, unethical, and moronic.
As Wehner notes, the mainstream pundit class largely rejected and mocked Greene's threats of a second Civil War. Several "traditional" Republicans even issued their obligatory condemnations. In keeping with the constant (and irresponsible) churn of the 24/7 news cycle, most of the political class and chattering class have moved on from her most recent "controversy." Collectively, the response to Greene was dismissive. Some observers tried to rebut Greene by showing how the logistics of a second Civil War and secession are unworkable. The lazy mainstream media types defaulted to their usual horserace journalism, polls, and catch-all "culture war" framework. In all, Greene's civil war threats were treated by the mainstream news media and political class as just another moment, the traffic-generating and clickbait outrage of the day instead of as something far more serious.
To simply move on from Marjorie Taylor Greene's threats is emblematic of a much larger failure by the mainstream news media – the centrists especially – and the larger political class with their slavish commitment to normal politics and empirical reality to accept and understand that the neofascists and other right-wing authoritarians and fake populists are engaged in a political project that emphasizes ideas, emotions, and dreams in service to a radically destructive revolutionary project to remake American and Western society. Such forces reject the consensus reality that the liberal democratic tradition and its adherents are wedded to. And while liberals and democrats and traditional conservatives appeal to public policy and material reality the neofascists and their forces only care about corrupt power and wield emotions in a battle over culture and identity.
Time is malleable in this vision as well; History is to be broken and rewritten and remade in service to the neofascist dream. In the book Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate, historian Alexandra Minna Stern explains:
If examples of the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s are mentioned, it is to reproach them as conjurers of the falsehood that diversity is good and racial equality is an achievable and desirable goal. To upstream a white national future, alt-right writers somehow must downstream the past, one that is not in sync with mainstream, let alone progressive renditions of American history.
Alt-righters employ nonlinear conceptions of time when interpreting political events and the viability of white nationalism going forward…The obsession with time is a crucial dimension of the alt-right imagination. As the temporal horizon closes in and speeds up, white nationalists want to push a primordial past and a techno-utopian future into a present they feel is both slipping out of their hands and perhaps within close reach.
So what is the world that Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans want to (re)create in the 21st century?
The Confederacy.
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
America's native form of fascism, the Confederacy offered a white supremacist terror and surveillance society where white "Christian" men rule over all others uncontested and ordained by "God's" will. The 21st-century Confederacy, like the original, would also be a plutocracy where the white rich and monied classes would control society without restrictions or limits. Black people, other non-whites, women, gays and lesbians, and any people deemed the Other and "inferior" to "real Americans" would have their human and civil rights taken away.
The neo-confederate ideology is rooted in a fantasy-lie of what is known as the Lost Cause where the evils of the American slaveocracy and its horrible violence and the South's traitorous secession to defend that ignoble institution is imagined as something good and noble and whose defenders were heroic instead of as agents of an antihuman white supremacist terror regime.
At its foundation, Greene's endorsement of a "national divorce" and second Civil War is a threat of white supremacist violence –the first civil war killed some 750,000 Americans – against Black people and others who would be targeted for death, re-enslavement, and misery on a massive scale.
Related
We have just experienced a nightmare here in America (and the world) where what many "centrists" and "mainstream" political thinkers and voices said was impossible came true. If someone in 2015 or 2016 had told you that a professional wrestling heel, fake billionaire, willful ignoramus, white supremacist cult leader and TV host, a man credibly accused of rape many times, a failed casino owner and real estate developer, con artist would become president of the United States, make choices in response to a pandemic that would kill at least a million Americans, bring the country and its democracy to a breaking point, attempt a coup, surrender America's interests to its enemies such as Russia, commit an endless number of serious crimes while in office, be impeached twice and almost win reelection, and then announce a second presidential candidacy all the while not being held responsible for his crimes many people would – and did — mock any person willing to say such a thing. They labeled it "Trump derangement" syndrome. We all know what happened next.
Public opinion polls and other research show that a majority of Republicans believe in the white supremacist great replacement conspiracy theory. A version of fears about "white extinction" and "Black domination" were common across White America during the antebellum era and were a driving force behind the South's secession and then the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim and Jane Crow.
Other polls show not insignificant levels of support among Republicans for the Confederacy and a belief that secession was justified. Political scientists and other researchers have repeatedly shown that a plurality, if not outright majority of Republican voters, support Trump's coup attempt on Jan 6 and the terrorist attack on the Capitol. That research also shows that many millions of Trumpists and Republicans and right-wing independents support using political violence to remove President Biden and the Democrats from office in order to restore Trump's regime.
On Jan. 6 Trump's shock troops overran the Capitol and they carried the Confederate flag -- which is a symbol of white supremacy -- while doing so. During the first Civil War, the Confederates never achieved such a thing, but their descendants did so only two years ago.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other Republican fascists and the larger white right and their allies are very dangerous. Your laughter does not change that fact. Your laughter will not save you from them or the new American nightmare they are forcing into being. He who laughs last laughs loudest. The laughter of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other American fascists will be very deafening indeed.
3). “America finally facing politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness and willingness to see people die”, Feb 02, 2023, Thom Hartmann, Raw Story, at < https://www.rawstory.com/am...
America finally facing politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness and willingness to see people die
Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark.
During the pandemic, Congress appropriated billions to help states expand their Medicaid programs. That money is coming to an end this year, meaning Florida — which refused to expand Medicaid with the federal subsides offered by the Affordable Care Act — is set to throw another 2 million or so residents off their only possible source of health insurance.
Still, Ron DeSantis refuses to expand Medicaid, even though 93 percent of the cost is covered with money from Washington, DC. It’s the principle of the thing, apparently: he’s one of 11 red state governors who believes that working poor people simply shouldn’t get health coverage. After all, they didn’t have the good sense to be born into a wealthy family!
Michael, 30, lives in Orlando and has asthma, but running his little business buying and selling used furniture hasn’t earned him enough to cover his medical bills and to pay rent. He recently got an eviction notice, telling the Florida Health Justice Project:
“I was given a list of homeless shelters to choose from but I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark.
Violence, hate, bigotry, and cruelty are the four cardinal points of fascism. Compassion and concern for the greater good, for the poor and weak, for the victims of fate and accident have no place in the fascist world.
Historians and political observers have been predicting that America would get our very own Mussolini ever since the days of Barry Goldwater. And there’s been no shortage of candidates: bribe-taking Nixon; Central American fascist-loving Reagan; Gitmo torturing and war-lying Bush; and, of course, Trump.
But with Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.
Mussolini was a famously short man who strutted with his muscular chest pushed out and his chin jutted forward, just like DeSantis, who Trump says is musclebound, likes to do.
Both men were socially awkward, craved power, lacked empathy, displayed casual cruelty, sucked up to the wealthiest men in the nation, and demonized opposition politicians — literally calling or implying their fellow citizens are “the enemy” (a favorite trick of Hitler and Orbán, as well) — to encourage their followers to support them or entertain the rhetoric of violence and threats of violence to achieve political ends.
Miriam, a single parent of two young children, discovered a lump in her breast but postponed visiting the doctor for months because she had no health insurance with her job as a housekeeper.
Finally, she realized the potential gravity of her situation.
“I needed to live to be there for my children,” she said.
She got treatment through the charity ward of a hospital, but even that treatment came with a cost of $2,183. She slipped behind in the $200 monthly payments when her job vanished with the pandemic and now she’s struggling to pay the $1783 she still owes in co-payments from her treatments. She’s been sent to collection and is living in fear of what’s next when the court finally comes after her.
Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark.
George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned us of the possible rise of politicians like DeSantis who would suggest other Americans are enemies of the nation’s values, who would exaggerate policy differences in war-like terms, and who would ascribe the most evil of motives and intentions to simple political opponents.
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”
But it wasn’t just that calling other politicians enemies or attributing evil motivations to them produced dissension and could tear a society apart, although those concerns were at the top of Washington’s mind.
He also knew that such rhetoric was the platform from which a literal strongman could arise in America, destroying the democracy he’d fought the Revolutionary War to create:
“But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism,” he told the nation. “The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
Such a warlike approach to politics, Washington said, could only lead in one direction:
“It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”
Such rhetoric, Washington argued, produces:
“A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”
It’s been 225 years since George Washington uttered those words. And now we’re here.
Hipolito, the father of four, is worried about his life’s partner, the mother of their children.
“My wife has been in pain for weeks now but we can’t afford to find out why,” Hipolito told the Florida Health Justice Project. “I swear, I’m very afraid. She is pale and suffering every day.”
He notes that his wife hasn’t visited the doctor because their family can’t afford the expense when they must also house, feed, and clothe their kids on his job as a cook.
Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark.
Arresting black men for voting, terrifying them and ruining their lives while making sure they all get paraded in chains before the cameras.
Threatening public school teachers with prison for simply teaching history.
Lying about medical science regarding vaccines to suck up to the Trump base, resulting in fewer Floridians being protected from a disease that is killing literally hundreds of Americans every day.
Using rhetoric that feeds bigotry and hate against gay, lesbian, and trans people.
Intimidating the college board so they strip the Black Lives Matter movement out of their advanced placement African-American Studies curriculum.
Lying to asylum-seekers to get them on a plane to Martha’s Vineyard as a stunt to elevate his own political fortunes.
Ron DeSantis is just fine with all of this. Cruelty is his trademark.
Ignoring the health and safety of his state’s citizens, DeSantis led Florida into a veritable Covid Armageddon, letting (as of January 16th) 84,176 of his citizens die from the disease. As former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CBS’ Face The Nation:
“They let the virus spread largely unchecked in terms of personal mitigation. People weren't wearing masks. They weren't encouraged to wear masks. Vaccination was encouraged for the elderly population, but not widely… So they made policy choices, and the consequence was an infection that largely engulfed most parts of the state.”
After this orgy of death and disease, at the end of 2021 about 12 percent of Florida’s population — almost 2.6 million — still lacked any form of medical insurance because of DeSantis’ refusal to expand Medicaid for low-income people.
And now as many as 2 million more Floridians will join the ranks of the uninsured in the coming months.
Ron DeSantis is just fine with this. Cruelty is his trademark.
No comments:
Post a Comment