This piece by JV Last about DeSantis’s latest stunt with the vaccines is excellent:
Short version: DeSantis made a series of announcements this week about how he’s going to go after the Deep Science Big Elites or whatever by:
Seeking a grand jury to potentially prosecute the manufacturers of COVID vaccines.
Investigating “cardiac-related deaths” linked to COVID vaccines.
Standing up a “Public Health Integrity Committee” to oversee the medical establishment.In a minute we’ll talk about the merits of these ideas. But let’s start with the fact that none of these proposals will amount to anything. Which is perfectly in line with the DeSantis modus operandi: big, performative, shit-stirring uses of government power—that are quickly (and quietly) walked back, overturned, or abandoned.
Remember the Stop WOKE Act? It was DeSantis’s big anti-CRT-in-schools legislation. (This was back when CRT was the most important issue facing the republic.) It was stopped by the courts because it is flatly and obviously unconstitutional.
Remember when DeSantis punished Disney for opposing his Don’t Say Gay law by revoking the company’s Reedy Creek special tax district? Yeah, that’s going by the wayside because it wasn’t thought out and would wind up costing Florida taxpayers money. The face-saving climbdown spin seems to be that DeSantis is reconsidering because Disney has changed CEOs and it was the old CEO whom he wanted to punish.1
And how about DeSantis’s mass “voter fraud” arrests, which managed to round up a bunch of people who don’t look like they live in the Villages on trumped-up voter-fraud charges? Yeah, those cases are falling apart in court because they had no basis in law.
Oh—and don’t forget the DeSantis promise to ship immigrants out of Florida after his stunt sending asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard blew up in his face.
This is what he does. And his anti-vaccine programs are no different. No vaccine maker will be prosecuted in Florida. There will be no peer-reviewed research showing that the risks of vaccine side effects were greater than the benefits. A “Public Health Integrity Committee” will not interfere with the practice of medicine in Florida.
And that’s by design.
The impracticability of DeSantis’s abuses of power are a win-win situation for him with Republican voters. They’re the governing version of shitposting.
The MAGA nationalists get stroked by them. And by the time the abuse of power is countered, DeSantis has given them a tease in some other erogenous zone. He’s edging the MAGAs and they are into it.
As for Team Normal, they look at his abuses of power and say,
“See? Nothing ever comes of it. The system holds. The guardrails work. And he probably doesn’t even mean it. He’s just doing this performative stuff for the rubes. If anything, these performances are good because they’re helping him detach the base from Trump!”
Might DeSantis actually mean it? Or, if he doesn’t mean it now, is it possible that humans are mimetic creatures and the principle of fake-it-until-you-make can be true for both good and evil?
These concerns are dismissed out of hand.
Gotta support the team, bruh.
And the COVID stuff? My God: More than a million Americans died from it. People still die from it every day. And DeSantis is playing games with this disease.
Yep. Team Normal is just as culpable. Whether Trump or DeSantis, the team comes first. And the team, my friends, is being coached by right wing loons and fascists.
The point about using the power of the state to shitpost and troll is a good one. It is the fundamental difference between Trump and DeSantis. For the former it’s all personal and he focuses his fire on individuals. They love to yell “lock her up” about the hated Clinton, for instance , or “Prosecute Fauci!” They need a face to hate. It’s Trump’s strength in a battle with DeSantis.
DeSantis uses the power of the state to go after the institutions and ideas that people like Tucker Carlson are targeting. It hasn’t worked out very well so far, but I think it is a portent of the future. This is where Trumpism is going — it’s American Orbanism.
And as Last concludes, it’s particularly odious:
The DeSantis stuff especially grinds my gears because he’s not shitposting on Twitter—he’s using the awesome power of the state to hurt real people. The alleged vote fraudsters? These were actual human beings with jobs and families. The asylum seekers from Venezuela he tricked into going to Martha’s Vineyard? They’re folks who braved unimaginable horrors to escape an ugly dictatorship.
And the COVID stuff? My God: More than a million Americans died from it. People still die from it every day. And DeSantis is playing games with this disease.
And, by the way, this doesn’t exactly help. It gives Team Normal and the members of the GOP who “just want to win” a way to rationalize DeSantis’ grotesque posturing: “see, he doesn’t really mean it.”
It’s Happy Hollandaise time at Hullabaloo! If you’d like to put a little something in the old stocking it would be most appreciated: