Floriduh Gov. Ron DeathSantis hates you and wants you to die
What to do when your Governor is a homicidal sociopath concerned only with the arc of his political career?
We have turned a corner. Science-believing, vaccine-literate Americans no longer want to tiptoe around the hardcore vaccine refusers for fear of offending them or — mercy me — making them feel disrespected. Republicans who actively try to block responsible conduct are on especially thin ice. The vaccinated want their lives back — without the masks.
A new Axios-Ipsos poll finds: “The vaccinated said their top five targets of blame [for rising covid-19 cases] are the unvaccinated (79%), Trump (36%), conservative media (33%), people from other countries traveling to the U.S. (30%) and Americans traveling internationally (25%).” Well, they have got that right. It is unvaccinated people who have become petri dishes for the delta variant.
I’ve come see the GOP as an unrepentant death cult in my more frustrated moments, which arrive with increasing frequency these days. Yet, how could I NOT view a political party devoted to denying the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the scientific evidence behind the vaccines as anything BUT committed to genocide?
What sort of anti-scientific, monstrous cabal places the arc of their political careers over the safety and well-being of those they (allegedly) serve? While one might look at my questions and see clear evidence of a political agenda, I’m not trying to be overtly political. Instead, I’m trying to discern how thoughtful and compassionate human beings could almost overnight become thoughtless, self-interested sociopaths unconcerned about body counts and abject human suffering?
Unfortunately, while the entire country is suffering from the spread of the Delta variant, the most alarming numbers are found in red states with Far-Right, anti-mask-mandate Governors. That’s not political. That’s the sad, awful truth.
And if you think I’m not so obliquely referring to Texas’ Greg Abbott and Floriduh’s Ron DeSantis, you wouldn’t be wrong. President Joe Biden’s frustration has been pointed and direct:
[W]orst of all, some state officials are passing laws or signing orders that forbid people from doing the right thing…. What are we doing? ... Just two states, Florida and Texas, account for one-third of all new covid-19 cases in the entire country. Just two states. Look, we need leadership from everyone. And if some governors aren’t willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it. I say to these governors, “Please, help.” But if you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.
Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way. Just stop acting so irresponsibly that your decisions and posturing end up killing more of your own citizens.
Or, and here’s a pointed question for both Abbott and DeSantis, is the body count in each of your states merely to be considered the cost of doing business? Have you, in your drive to achieve your political ambitions, lost sight of your responsibility to those who elected you? Have you forgotten what your job is?
The biggest part of the problem is that Governors like Abbott and DeSantis are loathe to be honest with their constituents. Such honesty would raise some very uncomfortable questions about their past performance and questionable leadership. And so they continue whistling past the graveyard as they resist being forthright with their constituents about just how bad things really are…and who’s responsible.
[G]overnors, mayors and business leaders would be wise to insist the unvaccinated bear the burden of their reckless choices. They should not be permitted to endanger or inconvenience the rest of the country. Some vaccinated people are contracting the delta variant, though they remain a small percentage of overall cases. None of the vaccinated should have to worry that they might pick up the disease from those who remain unvaccinated and unmasked. Governors protecting inconsiderate people from the consequences of their conduct should expect to hear an earful, not only from the president but also from the vaccinated Americans who are increasingly fed up.
As President Biden and others have said, we’re now facing a pandemic of the unvaccinated. We are dealing with the consequences stemming from the irresponsibility and callousness of those too selfish and stupid to recognize that rights don’t exist independent of responsibilities.
I’m fully vaccinated because I want to protect myself from contracting COVID-19. I’m fully vaccinated because I also feel a responsibility to do whatever I can not to spread the virus. There’s nothing heroic about that; it should be a baseline expectation of all citizens. Sadly, there are far too many Americans who can’t see past their own self-interest. In places like Florida, people refuse to accept their responsibility because leaders like Governor Ron DeSantis aren’t demanding it.
Leaders lead. Governor DeSantis couldn’t lead a pack of hungry Cub Scouts to a Dairy Queen in Boca Raton.
At the end of July, roughly one in every five new COVID-19 infections occurred in Florida. So when DOES the pandemic become a problem for DeSantis, whose Presidential aspirations aren’t exactly a state secret? Or do his political aspirations take precedence?
As if that question is anything but rhetorical….
The timing on this would seem to be a bit awkward for the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis (R). He’s leaned hard into the idea that he found the perfect balance of coronavirus restrictions and personal freedoms, standing athwart the big-government mandates in favor of the little man. Somewhat awkwardly, his campaign is selling merchandise mocking the federal government’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, whose cautious approach to containing the virus annoyed former president Donald Trump and, by extension, Trump’s base of support….
But before he gets to 2024, he’s got to get through his reelection in 2022. And that means winning votes not only from the Republican base but also the state’s independents and Democrats, after winning in 2018 by less than half a percentage point. He had solid approval ratings earlier this year, but a surge in coronavirus cases certainly seems like the sort of thing that might quickly erode that enthusiasm, particularly given DeSantis’ focus on the issue.
The spike in cases over the past month has been as dramatic as the top-line numbers would suggest. Only two states — Arkansas and Louisiana — are now seeing more new cases per 100,000 residents than Florida. But since Florida’s population is three times that of those two states combined, that means a lot more cases.
Republican pandemic politics being what they are, DeSantis is being challenged by other red-state Governors with Presidential aspirations. They’re competing to see who can apply the least onerous restrictions on their constitutents. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem made it clear early in the pandemic that her state would never impinge on the freedom of her citizens. There would be no mask mandates in South Dakota- even though COVID-19 claimed her own grandmother.
Other red-state Governors have taken similar approaches, but few have been as laissez-faire as DeSantis. His hands-off, personal-freedom-first attitude has led some in the media to refer to him derisively as Governor DeathSantis. When one considers that DeSantis is threatening to cut funding to schools that enforce a mask mandate for students, the Governor’s not-so-flattering nickname begins to make sense.
Instead of seeing the problem for what it is and determining how best to lead Florida out of this crisis, Governor DeSantis has chosen to blame President Biden.
During a stop in Panama City on Wednesday, DeSantis accused Biden of “helping facilitate” COVID-19 by not securing the border with Mexico. He said immigrants crossing the border are spreading variants of the virus.
“You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month,” DeSantis said. “Not only are they letting them through, they’re farming them out all across the country, putting them on planes, putting them on buses. Do you think they’re worrying about COVID for that? Of course not.”
He said the immigrants are crossing the border from all over the world, and “whatever variants there are around the world, they’re coming across that southern border.”
“He’s not shutting down the virus. He’s helping facilitate it,” DeSantis said of Biden.
“Why don’t you get this border secure?” DeSantis added. “Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.”
Now THAT’S leadership, eh? Desperate times call for desperate criticism…and few play the desperation card with a weaker hand than Governor DeSantis.
The problem for DeSantis is that he hitched his star to former President Donald Trump’s wagon. When Trump decided to politicize the pandemic, DeSantis happily played along. Trump’s inept and criminally incompetent handling of the pandemic made DeSantis’ political life increasingly difficult. Once Trump lost the 2020 election and lost all interest in the pandemic, the states were left holding the bag. DeSantis either didn’t recognize the dilemma he faced…or was too dense to recognize his predicament.
Tragically, Republican Governors continued to act as if nothing was amiss. They acted as if things were under control and that COVID-19 was merely a minor inconvenience. The death toll, now well over 600,000, didn’t tell the whole story, they contended, because most of the deaths were among the elderly. The young and healthy shouldn’t be inconvenienced by mask mandates and/or lockdowns and vaccine requirements.
And so they continued to fiddle as Rome burned around them.
The problem, of course, is that Republicans refuse to see the pandemic in anything but political terms. Democrats, not without justification, have been more than happy to see Republicans twisting uncomfortably in the political wind. Unfortunately for everyone, the reality is that the only way out of this mess will be through cooperation and agreement on the truth.
This means recognizing that creating winners and losers will only unnecessarily inflate the already-too-high body count. There may well be a time and place for assessing blame and accountability, but the middle of the pandemic isn’t it.
It also means quelling the spreading of lies, propaganda, and dezinformatziya. We can only hope to save people if they’re armed with truthful and scientifically accurate information. This means that tech companies must be held responsible for allowing inaccurate, dangerous, and deadly misinformation to be spread by bad actors on their platforms.
Red-state Governors must stop thinking of the arc of their political careers first and foremost and begin following CDC guidelines. Saving people (in some cases, from themselves) is possible ONLY if we rely on the available science and those with the expertise to translate it for us.
From where I sit, I don’t think there’s any doubt but that many Republican red-state Governors bear tremendous responsibility for thousands of needless deaths. Once we’ve emerged from this pandemic, creating mechanisms for accountability may be appropriate.
At this moment, however, there’s nothing to be gained by apportioning blame…though Lord knows it seems as if there’s plenty to be spread around. That said, we need to find our way through this morass first. We need to consign COVID-19 to a place where it no longer poses a clear and present danger to millions worldwide.
Until then, we need to find a way to unite in hopes of saving as many of our friends, loved ones, and fellow human beings as we possibly can.
We can either pull together…or we can hang separately. Right now, I’m not altogether certain which path we’re going to travel.