W.J. Astore
A Greg Stillson-like Candidate?
Yesterday, Ron DeSantis announced his candidacy for President on Twitter; it didn’t go well due to “technical difficulties.” Something about his butchered announcement is telling. Yet what creeps me out about him isn’t his botched announcement with Elon Musk or even his record in Florida, which is bad enough, but rather his record in the U.S. military.
As a JAG (military lawyer), he seems to have facilitated torture at Gitmo (the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba) and assassinations by Special Forces teams in Iraq. He was also fond of posing like a combat officer in desert camo holding an assault rifle. I doubt DeSantis was ever truly in harm’s way (same with me, by the way, but I never posed like a commando), but he loves to strike a pose. He even made a campaign commercial based on Tom Cruise’s “Maverick” in which DeSantis, of course, is the “Top Gun” of Florida.
Meanwhile, speaking of image-making, according to the New York Times his wife Casey is cultivating a Jackie Kennedy-like image with her fashion choices (as a former TV news anchor, she knows the power of positive visuals). If image is everything, as those old camera commercials claimed, Ron DeSantis is burnishing his as a warrior-dad, which, I suppose, is better than the reality of a Harvard-trained power-hungry lawyer with no scruples.
There is something “off” about DeSantis, something inauthentic and dishonest, even more so than the typical politician. Call it a gut feeling.
But, moving past my “gut,” there’s the stunt DeSantis pulled in shipping immigrants seeking asylum in Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. People are just pawns in his political power game. Again, not that unusual for an ambitious pol, but that doesn’t mean I want this charlatan to have his finger on the nuclear button.
I see him as a proto-Greg Stillson (from Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone”). A dangerous man. Strange as it may sound, Donald Trump strikes me as more authentic and less dangerous than DeSantis. Which, by the way, is no endorsement of Trump.
Bracing Views 
Florida’s dictator Ron. And up and coming dictatorship Florida, only because they are letting him rule by rulings. He should be in irons (tempted to make an “I-Ron” pun, arggh, cough). “We” seem to have few defenses against elected dictators.
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Florida’s “Dictator Ron” didn’t seize power in a coup; he has been put in the Governor’s office TWICE by the voters of Florida.
And the best defense against elected dictators is to not elect them in the first place.
Of course, when virtually every politician running for office would jump at the chance of becoming The Dictator, voters don’t have much of a choice at all.
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TINA – There Is No Alternative
(an experiment in rhymed free verse or, “anti-verse”)
I’ve lately had a nagging thought
of that which greatly matters
in such a season.
When “Change” threatens, some will argue that “if-IS-then-OUGHT,”
a timeless fallacy of dialectics hopelessly fraught
with suggestion that the present situation — in and of itself — proves that it must
be dispositive, ending debate.
So much for deciding our fate,
which tends to go bust
when reason
scatters.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2021
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Underhanded Understudies
(an experiment in rhymed free verse or, “anti-verse”)
My government tells only lies,
as do the daily papers
and TV stations.
Those who deviate from “The Narrative” they call spies
whose prospective career then quickly dies,
Tricky Dick Nixon and Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy having long since shown how this works.
Now the Democrats think it’s their turn
to pillory “Leftists” and learn
from oligarch jerks:
the nation’s
shapers.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2023
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A Drag Queen made her debut in Florida. Her name is Rhonda Santis.
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As a Canadian teen I thought it was necessary to pay close attention to what unfolds in the GOLIATH next to very small CanaDa Nature wedged between the US and Russia, so I paid much closer attention to the unfolding leading indicators in the US than most of the Population.
I don’t know what it’s like in your personal circles, in CanaDa the most common single word on the streets describing the CURRENT State of the World is “CRAZY!”
Long before Trump arrived on the scene, US leading indicators were telling me circumstances are coming together that in the Futurewould cause a flood of Americans to seek Refugee Status in CanaDa to escape crazy homegrown US terrorism.
With 5 Political Parties in Parliament, our Federal election lasts only 6 weeks with Political Ads. It’s not a 2 year event like it is in the US.
In the lead up to 2016 Election, Trump had already showed himself to me to be a Serial Liar, and the most Ego-Centric Narcissist ever to have entered US Public Life, and watching from CanaDa, I could not believe Americans could ever elect such a flawed Character to be President. I was wrong.
He was not elected by the voting majority but by the flawed, undemocratic US Electoral College system.
When he introduced the notion of ‘American Carnage’ in his Inaugural speech, I knew the CRAZY Season was upon us.
It was President Trump who provided the 1st lethal Military aid to Ukraine. It was Trump who applied Economic Sanctions on any Private European NATO Company who dared defy US wishes, and continue working to complete the last few miles in NATO waters of Nordstream II that would join Germany and Russia in a win-win Economic Union.
Despite that Trump history, US Propaganda still portrays him as Putin’s poodle.
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DeSantis hasn’t been on the wrong side of every issue; some stuff he’s gotten right. But his naked posturing and will to power are concerning, to say the least. I default to the paradoxical old saw that everyone who seeks high public office automatically disqualifies themselves in the process.
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“… The corruption begins not with the acquisition of power but with the quest for and claim to absolute power. Ever susceptible to the seductive promise that twenty-first century technology can achieve world control, the superpower can best resist that temptation by recognizing the corruption connected with that illusion.” — Robert Jay Lifton, Superpower Syndrome
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