The Great Dictator

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis
Photo: Gage Skidmore – Wikimedia Commons

In 2018 Ronald Dion DeSantis was elected the 46th Governor of Florida by a small margin: He won 4,076,186 votes to Andrew Gillum’s 4,043,723 votes. This did not keep DeSantis from acting as if he won an electoral landslide and a mandate from the people. Almost four years later, DeSantis is a virtual dictator, the most powerful governor in the history of Florida, not counting the military governors who served during Reconstruction. DeSantis seems poised to be re-elected governor in November, unless his Democratic opponents pull a political rabbit out of their collective hats. But DeSantis is not satisfied with being governor of our third largest state. He hopes to be elected this country’s second Trumper president, that is if Donald Trump does not get in his way.

Backed by an obedient Republican Legislature, and a state Supreme Court that he has packed, DeSantis is pushing an extreme right-wing agenda that befuddles his opponents and provides his MAGA base with tons of red meat. DeSantis assures us that he does all this for our freedom: “Together we have made Florida the freest state in these United States. … Florida has stood strong as the rock of freedom, and upon this rock that we must build Florida’s future,” the governor told us in his recent “State of the State” speech. But DeSantis wants freedom for himself and others like him. For the rest of us, DeSantis proposes, in the words of Richard Luscombe of the Guardian, “a slew of bills … attacking everything from diversity rights, abortion protections and free speech in schools, in addition to a proposal that would legally shield white people from feeling ‘discomfort’ over the state’s racist past. … To hear DeSantis tell it, the ‘freedom state’ of Florida is merely following the will of a populist citizenry in defying the perceived tyranny of the federal government, determined to protect liberty in the face of a deadly pan-demic that has claimed more than 64,000 of their fellow residents, and standing up against the ‘indoctrination’ of children.”

Like Anita Bryant and her successors, Ron DeSantis says he wants to “save the children” and their parents. “Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” the governor said. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all the basic stuff. The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what’s going on in their schools.” DeSantis wants to protect Florida’s children, at least the white ones, from critical race theory and from “woke” education that makes pale faces uncomfortable. His own Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act will give businesses, employees, children, and families the tools to fight back against “woke indoctrination” and critical race theory.

Like other Republican governors, Ron DeSantis claims to champion the right of parents to shape their children’s education. That is the reasoning behind his “Parental Rights in Education” bill, what the rest of us call “Don’t Say Gay.” But the Republican’s agenda is not limited to the schools. Among the GOP’s legislative arsenal are the Transgender Youth Medical Care Bill, which would criminalize doctors who provide gender-affirming care to trans youth and a “religious freedom” bill that would give medical professionals the right to refuse treatment to anyone on moral grounds. Brandon Wolf, LGBTQ activist and spokesperson for Equality Florida, was right when he slammed the Governor for “the way that he has weaponized fear between his constituents to try to curry favor with his base.” In DeSantis’s Florida, Wolf adds, “you are free, but only free to do and say as you are told.”

Ron DeSantis is like Donald Trump, only worse. As Sophia A. Nelson wrote in Yahoo! News, DeSantis, “unlike Trump, does not really engage in the hyperbolic insults, offensive racial talk and animus that Trump does. He is smarter. Smoother. Slicker. He makes jokes. He positions himself as a champion of freedom and individual liberties, while all the while he’s suppressing them.” If he has his way, the Dictator of Florida will become the Dictator of the United States of America. We have our work cut out for us.

Jesse’s Journal
By Jesse Monteagudo