Excerpts from “Mother Jones” DeSantis Article
(“Laboratory of Autocracy” by Pema Levy)
The following are some quotes from the “Mother Jones” article by Pema Levy, the July and August (2023) issue. It is important to learn these things about the second most popular Republican nominee, especially since the leader of that pack is Donald J. Trump, who was arraigned on 37 felony charges today in Miami. (No, that is not a joke.)
“DeSantis has demonstrated a path to power based on circumventing the democratic process and preying on fear of minorities—a template that is already being adopted by GOP legislatures around the country. If DeSantis becomes president in 2 years, critics warn, his brand of authoritarianism could take hold from Washington, D.C. ‘If you’re uncomfortable with the book banning, imagine giving him the keys to the U.S. Department of Education. If you’re uncomfortable with the migrant flights dumping people in a deserted parking lot somewhere, imagine giving him the keys to Border Patrol and ICE. If you’re uncomfortable with the way he goes after voting rights, imagine the same conversation that Donald Trump was having with Georgia election officials, demanding they “find” votes he needed, but it’s Ron DeSantis on a call that’s not being recorded. DeSantis would finish what Trump started, which is wrecking our democracy.”
That was the closing statement of this article, but the evidence in the article demonstrates that “his governing style is the logical evolution of Trumpism, from a chaotic politics of reprisal to a calculated system of repression and power-grabbing.” Florida Watch’s Anders Croy says, “This really is what’s coming to the country. Florida, essentially, is a laboratory of authoritarianism right now.”
Early on, DeSantis won a fight to take over the power to dictate maps for voting, and dismantled 2 majority Black districts. He appeared at the Villages, the massive retirement community and Republican stronghold that covers 32 square miles of central Florida and touted his “Freedom First Budget.” He bragged about his cuts, his latest show of power. “While the governor’s office defends the cuts as fiscally responsible decisions, critics believe that DeSantis was making an example out of them for opposing his redistricting takeover.” As one observer (a Democrat who served in the state House until last November) said, “I’ve never seen a group of people so willing to give a governor a blank check.” The GOP super majority retroactively authorized DeSantis’ Fox-ready stunt of flying asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. They also gave DeSantis the power to appoint the board that would oversee municipal affairs at Disney World. This is all part of Disney’s escalating feud over DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Many have commented on DeSantis’ lack of charm. He is not a back slapper and does not seem comfortable trying to become one. Therefore, “the only way that he’s going to be able to move his agenda is through fear and intimidation.” The former agricultural commissioner who served alongside DeSantis in the Florida Cabinet said DeSantis never joined in when other fellow members bantered about their families or exchanged pleasantries. In 2019 when on a trade mission to Israel DeSantis always stood apart from the 3 other members and never rode in a vehicle with them. He wouldn’t engage in friendly chit chat in the elevator, either.
As the article describes, authoritarian personalities are not always charismatic. Putin is an example. Turkey’s Erdogan, likewise. As a New York University historian (author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present”) said, “People who come from the realm of bureaucracy don’t necessarily have to be charismatic because they want to be feared and not loved. Now, somebody like Trump needs to be loved as well as feared, but DeSantis just wants to be feared. His remoteness is actually a shield which helps him to be ruthless and dominant.”
A baseball player and fraternity brother at Yale recalls DeSantis as “so charmless.” After he graduated from Harvard Law School he served as a Navy attorney at Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. In 2008, back in Florida, he took an assignment as a federal prosecutor and ran for Congress in 2012. He spent 3 House terms as “a loner” and a “backbencher.” When the opportunity to run for Governor arose, he sucked up to Trump on Fox News for his primary endorsement.
Trump gets by mostly by saying stuff, not doing stuff. DJT talks much more than he throws punches. He throws more punches than he lands. Says this former colleague, “DeSantis can’t win that way. He has to do stuff. DeSantis has hollowed out state government, filling out key posts with loyalists, which is similar to DJT. The academic term is “autocratic capture.” During his first term in office, DeSantis installed 75% more donors in senior government roles than his predecessor Rick Scott had done in the same time span. These sorts of power grabs are “a cornerstone of authoritarianism” and certainly we saw it with Trump in office.
DeSantis in 2021
FROM WIKIPEDIA: DeSantis signed a 2013 “No Climate Tax Pledge” against any tax hikes to fight global warming.[50] He voted in favor of H.R. 45, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act in 2013.[51] DeSantis introduced a bill in 2014 that would have required the Justice Department to report to Congress whenever any federal agency refrains from enforcing laws.[52][53][54] In 2015, DeSantis was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, a group of congressional conservatives and libertarians.[33][55][56]
DeSantis opposes gun control, and received an A+ rating from the National Rifle Association.[57] He has said, “Very rarely do firearms restrictions affect criminals. They really only affect law-abiding citizens.”[58]
DeSantis was a critic of Obama’s immigration policies, including deferred action legislation (DACA and DAPA), accusing Obama of failing to enforce immigration laws.[59][60] In 2015 he co-sponsored Kate’s Law, which would have increased penalties for aliens who unlawfully reenter the U.S. after being removed.[61] DeSantis encouraged Florida sheriffs to cooperate with the federal government on immigration-related issues.[62]
In 2016, DeSantis introduced the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act, which would have allowed states to create their own accreditation systems. He said this legislation would also give students “access to federal loan money to put towards non-traditional educational opportunities, such as online learning courses, vocational schools, and apprenticeships in skilled trades”.[63]
In 2016, DeSantis received a “0” rating from the Human Rights Campaign on LGBT-related legislation.[64][65] Two years later, he told the Sun-Sentinel that he “doesn’t want any discrimination in Florida, I want people to be able to live their life, whether you’re gay or whether you’re religious.”[66]
DeSantis proposed legislation that would have ended funding by November of that year for the Mueller investigation of President Trump.[68] He said that the May 17, 2017, order that initiated the probe “didn’t identify a crime to be investigated” and was likely to start a fishing expedition.[69][70]
DeSantis’ Books:
DeSantis released a book in February called “The Courage to be Free” in which he said: “American has entered a post-Constitutional order where federal agencies have become an all-powerful 4th branch of government that must be “brought to heel” to restore democracy. This is, in effect, declaring war on our judicial system and our voting system. Says the author Levitsky, “In almost every autocracy, we find one of the first moves is to pack the state—whatever state agencies exist.”
DeSantis championed an Orwellian 2022 law known as the Individual Freedom Act, also referred to as HB 7. It restricted educators’ ability to teach concepts like critical race theory, structural racism, sex discrimination, white or male privilege and affirmative action. The law limits how private employers can discuss such issues. The law is generally referred to as the Stop WOKE Act. There is a threat in college classrooms that students might turn in their teachers. The law was passed by the Republican dominated House in 2021, intending to combat perceived discrimination against campus conservatives by authorizing students to secretly record professors in order to bring lawsuits or report them to school authorities. With that kind of Big Brother Is Watching mentality, it has become more difficult to attract top-notch talent to teach in Florida’s schools and colleges. Students are asked to fill out an annual Intellectual Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity survey as an oversight tool. “These efforts call to mind a surveillance state, where snitching is encouraged, the government keeps enemies lists, and free speech is censored.”
DeSantis orchestrated a take-over of New College, a small Florida liberal arts school. He installed culture war provocateur Chris Rufo on its board. Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska ended up in charge of the University of Florida without any disclosure of the process. A secret search continues at New College for a new president and DeSantis’ handpicked board fired its president, naming the Governor’s former Commissioner of Education as its interim leader. A quote: “They want the hiring process to be about who politically toes the governors’ line.”
As the article says, “DeSantis’ attack on academic freedom has already taken a toll. Despite years of growth in the center’s graduate program, Morse says, this fall enrollment will go down by more than half, as many admitted students declined offers, usually citing Florida’s political climate. And departments without enough enrollment get closed. As long as they just scare people away and make Florida a hostile area for this kind of work, that can achieve the same goal as an outright ban. The onslaught of rules, surveillance, lawsuits, lists, and bans has created an atmosphere of chaos and fear on Florida campuses.
Trump was known for whipping up political mayhem, but on a day-to-day basis he seemed to largely unleash it on his inner circle. DeSantis, by contrast, strategically deploys chaos to advance his political priorities.
In November, Judge Mark Walker blocked the Stop WOKE Act in higher education, writing that “one of the 8 prohibited concepts is mired in obscurity, bordering on the unintelligible and features a rarely seen triple negative, resulting in a cacophony of confusion.”
University of Law Professor Mary Anne Franks says, “DeSantis, we need to remember, is a product of Harvard Law School. His attempts to punish Disney, for instance, his attempts to restrict what private employers are doing—he knows that that violates the First Amendment. What he is trying to figure out is, can he remake the law? Can the new far-right conservative movement, which seems to be a kind of might-makes-right movement, can he put that into effect?”
People are now refusing to communicate in certain ways. The House speaker requested that e-mails be turned over. “By starting with the list-making and searching people’s e-mails, now, people are on edge. Graduates have contacted the program asking to be removed from alumni lists. Everyone is starting to see the possibility for increased surveillance.” Said one Florida department chair, “A few people have come out to me, some of them department chairs, who said, ‘We’re not getting candidates for our searches.’” As the article concludes, “DeSantis is willing to burn this entire system in the fire of his own political ambition. But the mess he’s creating with these attacks on public ed, both K-12 and higher ed, are going to significantly and deeply harm Florida for decades.”
After Disney came out against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the governor responded, “There is a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.” Disney felt that it was “left with no choice but to sue over DeSantis’ targeted campaign of government retaliation.” (Disney World was hosting its first Pride night in June.) “DeSantis’ willingness to bend the power of government to punish Disney for having an opinion always meant that he would be willing to do that to individuals and small businesses, too.” DeSantis has been at the vanguard of the nationwide assault on transgender people and has gone after small businesses that host drag shows.
A University of Michigan sociologist who studies corporate political behavior describes what is happening because of DeSantis as “an existential crisis regarding the future of American democracy.”
DeSantis staged an attack on the voting rights of people with felony convictions. The law had changed 5 years ago to allow most felons who had paid their debt to society to vote, but DeSantis, after taking office, immediately set out to undermine the amendment. The system is impossible to navigate, but DeSantis said that the new voters must first pay all of their legal fines, fees and restitution, but did not make it possible for its citizens to find out if they have any such debts. Ex-felons who were trying to vote were arrested, including Nathan Hart. They had served their time and believed their voting rights had been restored. People convicted of murder or sex felonies were not allowed to vote.
Quote from the article: “He likes to call us the Free State of Florida, but that freedom only applies to people that look like him and that think like him. And if you don’t, then this state is not free at all.”
“After Democrats surpassed Republicans in voting by mail during the 2020 election, DeSantis signed a law that made postal ballots harder to obtain, limited drop boxes, restricted third-party registration efforts, and banned providing food and water to waiting voters. Signing up to vote by mail now requires more forms of identification, and the request must be renewed every two years. The March municipal elections in Broward County fell by half from 2021 and the drop-off is predicted to drop off in 2024.
In conclusion, when I sold my businesses in 2003, my husband asked why I didn’t buy a second vacation home in Florida, rather than investing in a condo in downtown Chicago. I explained that my son and grand daughters and daughter-in-law lived in Chicago, whereas I know no one in Florida. “I would have to buy a ticket to fly to Florida, but I can hop in the car and be in Chicago in 3 hours, so why would I want to buy a place in Florida?” I also would add, “The only way I’d purchase a place in Florida is if I wanted to travel back in time.”
It’s been a semi-busy Friday/Saturday weekend. We had no plans at all until Wednesday or Thursday, when, for the first time in the 30+ years of the Quad City Senior Olympics, I read about it BEFORE it was over. Usually, I have read about the events (usually at Augustana) and thought, “Oh. Wish I had known about that before it was all over.”
So, it was surprising that my husband was announced as the third place finisher, but—hey—it’s all in the family and, this way, we ould each have a medal (a silver and bronze.) It was a kick. Thanks to the organizers, who also provided some soft drinks and bags of chips to the contestants.
Today’s random rant will be about the polar vortex and how it ravaged my kitchen in my absence (Texas).
It appears that a new sub floor is going to need to be put in. The people who removed some of the cabinetry want us to buy all new cabinets, even though the cabinets that currently are in place do not appear to have been harmed much or at all and the bottom parts would never match the top parts (and the Wood Mode cabinets were exorbitantly expensive when put in in 1993). One laborer, who had said he would intercede with the insurance company on our behalf, seemed quite put out that we don’t want to invest huge sums of money in all new cabinetry when the current cabinets appear to be largely okay. One went so far as to say, “They could collapse,” which seems highly improbable. There is talk of signing some sort of waiver that would protect from something like the recent collapse of the Davenport on Main building in Davenport, Iowa.
on a plastic door to enter the kitchen. (We chose to go outside the house and enter through the deck door). The fans were noisy (difficult to hear TV over them) and a heater was employed for a while, which drove the temperature in the room up to 87 degrees. The fans were loud. My spouse told the workmen that I would not have had to run my “wind machine” at night, because the fans were that loud. That would be funny, but not if you’re living in the middle of it 24/7.
When asked about preparation amongst the cast for the film, zoom calls between characters were mentioned, and Clare Cooney said, “I’m allergic to preparation.” The consensus seemed to be that if you do something too many times, spontaneity goes away.
Daughter Evonne (
At one point, the character known as Hekla (which means volcano in Icelandic) is asked to insert a monologue from “The Importance of Being Earnest.” She does so. Why? I’m sure there was a reason for including this, but, to me, it just looked like padding. I didn’t “get” its significance. I would have asked about this from the audience after the showing, but the actress who portrayed Hekla was going on about her delivery (“I was scared about that monologue”) and time ran out. Plus, I had to finish my $9 Diet Coke and settle the Alamo Drafthouse bill.
In the documentary “It’s Quieter in the Twilight” director Billy Miossi includes information on what was once called “Man’s Greatest Modern Adventure.” What was that adventure?
In addition to phenomenal pictures of the rings of Saturn and other facets of the farthest planets, transmitted continuously for 42 years, we learn that active volcanoes were found on Jupiter. The scientific expertise comprised of the engineers behind the project is invaluable. As current Project Leader Suzanne Dodd put it, “They have what you can’t get from paper.”
Tucker’s last segment on Fox was about eating bugs. And then he said he’d be back on Monday (another lie). I had the misfortune to see Tucker “live” in 2008 when he was one of the speakers at the Libertarian convention in Minneapolis (MN), held at the very same time as the GOP convention in St. Paul. He was still in his bow tie phase and looked and acted like a total doofus, but the entire convention ($17 for entry; I was press) was a surreal experience. Alongside Tucker onstage were Ron Paul (Sr.), former Governor of Minnesota Jessie Ventura and Barry Goldwater, Jr., who was the spitting image of his father. It was a totally weird experience, which I will explore in greater depth on my WeeklyWilson blog, because I still marvel that I was there at all.
As for Miep Gies, the focus of this film, she lived to be almost 101. When the Franks were arrested in August of 1944, possibly turned in by neighbors or by the cleaning person at Otto’s business, Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl were not arrested. Miep managed to excuse herself by saying she knew nothing of those in hiding. Miep and two others would rescue Anne’s diary before the Nazis cleared out the hiding place. They would eventually return the papers to Otto Frank. Anne’s father would see that Anne’s diary was published (initially as “Diary of a Young Girl”).
I’m almost caught up from the recently concluded SXSW film festival.