Preaching Freedom, Ron DeSantis Leads By Cracking Down
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has been casting himself as a Trump-like pugilist. But the overall sense you get from reading his new memoir is that of the mechanical try-hard — someone who has expended a lot of effort studying which way the wind is blowing in the Republican Party and is learning how to comport himself accordingly.
Not that he admits any of this, peppering “The Courage to Be Free” with frequent eruptions about “the legacy media” and “runaway wokeness.” But all the culture war Mad Libs can’t distract from the dull coldness at this book’s core. A former military prosecutor, DeSantis is undeniably diligent and disciplined. “The Courage to Be Free” resounds with evidence of his “hard work” (a favorite mantra), showing him poring over Florida’s laws and constitution in order to understand “the various pressure points in the system” and “how to leverage my authority to advance our agenda through that system.” Even the title, with its awkward feint at boldness while clinging to the safety of cliché, suggests the anxiety of an ambitious politician who really, really wants to run for president in 2024 and knows he needs the grievance vote, but is also trying his best to tiptoe around the Trump dragon.
What a difference a dozen years make. Back in 2011, a year before DeSantis first ran for Congress, he published “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers” — an obvious dig at Barack Obama , whom DeSantis lambasted for his “thin résumé” and “egotism” and “immense self-regard.” It was a curious book, full of high-toned musings about “the Framers’ wisdom” and “the Madisonian-designed political apparatus.”
His new book will leave some supporters, who have encouraged DeSantis to “humanize himself” for a national audience, sorely disappointed. In his acknowledgments, he thanks “a hardworking team of literary professionals who were critical to telling the Florida story,” but presumably those professionals could only do so much with the material they were given. For the most part, “The Courage to Be Free” is courageously free of anything that resembles charisma, or a discernible sense of humor. While his first book was weird and esoteric enough to have obviously been written by a human, this one reads like a politician’s memoir churned out by ChatGPT .
DeSantis’s attempts at soaring rhetoric are mostly too leaden to get off the ground. “During times of turmoil,” he intones, “people want leaders who are willing to speak the truth, stand for what is right and demonstrate the courage necessary to lead.” Of his childhood baseball team making the Little League World Series, he says: “What I came to understand about the experience was less about baseball than it was about life. It was proof that hard work can pay off, and that achieving big goals was possible.” You have to imagine that DeSantis, a double-barreled Ivy Leaguer (Yale and Harvard Law School ), put a bit more verve into his admissions essays. At around 250 pages, this isn’t a particularly long book, but it’s padded with such banalities.
Much of it is given over to laying out what he calls “Florida’s blueprint for America’s revival,” or, as he puts it in his generic summary: “Be willing to lead, have the courage of your convictions, deliver for your constituents and reap the political rewards.” What this has meant in practice looks an awful lot like thought policing: outlawing classroom discussion of sexual orientation through the third grade; rejecting math textbooks that run afoul of Florida’s opaque review process; forbidding teachers and companies to discuss race and gender in a way that might make anyone feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress.” Florida also has a ban on abortion after 15 weeks — which DeSantis has indicated he would be willing to tighten to six weeks — with no exceptions for rape and incest .
In this regard, all the bland platitudes do serve a purpose. DeSantis’s blunt-force wielding of executive power might sound like a good time for hard-core social conservatives, but if part of the point of this book is to float a trial balloon for a presidential run, you can see the gears turning as he tries to make his message palatable for the national stage. Take out the gauzy abstraction, the heartwarming clichés, and much of what DeSantis is describing in “The Courage to Be Free” is chilling — unfree and scary.
Of course, DeSantis insists that he’s simply doing his bit to fight “political factionalism” and “indoctrination.” He removed Tampa’s democratically elected prosecutor from office in large part for pledging not to prosecute abortion providers — explaining in the book that he, DeSantis, was just using the powers vested in him by Florida’s state constitution to suspend a “Soros-backed attorney” for “a clear case of incompetence and neglect of duty.” (Last month, a federal judge ruled that DeSantis was in violation of state law .) DeSantis boasts about big-footing companies and local municipalities when he prohibited vaccine mandates and lifted lockdowns. In April 2020, when the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship expressed annoyance at the possibility of dealing with some “jackass mayor,” DeSantis told him not to worry: “I will overrule any mayor that gives you guys a hard time.”
It’s unclear what happened to the DeSantis of a decade ago, a boilerplate libertarian and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus who was mainly preoccupied with fiscal austerity and privatizing Medicare and Social Security . His 2011 book contained numerous tributes to “limited government.” Now, he says, in his typically windy way, anything he does that looks suspiciously intrusive is in fact a cleansing measure, purging public life of excess politicization: “For years, the default conservative posture has been to limit government and then get out of the way. There is, no doubt, much to recommend to this posture — when the institutions in society are healthy. But we have seen institution after institution become thoroughly politicized.”
Fewer than 20 pages later, DeSantis proposes making about 50,000 federal employees — currently apolitical civil servants — into “at-will employees who serve at the pleasure of the president.” By any measure, this would amount to politicization on steroids.
But despite all the dutiful servings of red meat, DeSantis looks so far to be the favored son of the donor class — which is probably the main audience for this book. The message to them seems to be twofold. First, don’t normalize “the woke impulse”: When Disney’s chief executive criticized Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law (officially titled “ Parental Rights in Education ”), DeSantis cracked down accordingly. Second, Republican donors can take assurance from “the Sunshine State’s favorable economic climate” that, when it comes to what truly matters to them, it will be business as usual.
Reading books, even bad ones, can be a goad to thinking, but what DeSantis seems to be doing in “The Courage to Be Free” is to insist that Americans should just stop worrying and let him do all the thinking for them. Any criticism of his policies gets dismissed as “woke” nonsense cooked up by the “corporate media.” (Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and News Corp, which owns the publisher of this book, doubtless don’t count.) “I could withstand seven years of indoctrination in the Ivy League,” DeSantis says, only half in jest.
The bullying sense of superiority is unmistakable, even when he tries to gussy it up in a mantle of freedom. DeSantis is not taking any chances: He may have been able to “withstand” the “indoctrination” of being exposed to ideas he didn’t like, but he doesn’t seem to believe the same could be said for anyone else.
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Soon to be in the $1.99 bin under the title 'GoP Wokeness 4 Dummies'.
propping up windows and holding doors open ...
Starting to see the plethora of anti-DeSantis attacks pop up right now. That can only mean that the [[deleted]] lefties know that DeSantis is gonna sweep the floor with Biden, after he's done beating up [on Trump.] Keep the articles coming boys, always good for a chuckle or several.
Wait until he actually declares. In the meantime keep making predictions.
We're just warming up
I hope the free dumb cockless demand the RNC convention be an open carry event ...
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heh, I remember all of your 2020 predictions...
The cognitively impaired reactionaries find DeSantis appealing. Everyone else knows he's a giant gasbag.
Yep, it’s the Shillary “resist” playbook.
Don’t like the result, must attack it at all cost. Worker drones must attack.
Small minded, graceless people. One and all.
And I remember your 2016 guarantees.
LMAO, the new sheriff doesn't seem to have the balls he brags about.
Seems they slowed down on Haley bashing since she is only 2% in the polls and their misogyny was showing. Now they decided they better divert their attention to the next president, unless they move away from Joe and give the American people a better choice.
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oh please please please!
I'm glad I didn't have a mouthful of water when I read your comment
If Nikki is only at 2% one must wonder which side the 'bashing' is really coming from. It begs the question of why republicans are not enamored by her.
she's not an old white man.
insult, cubed...
And then somebody sets off a long string of firecrackers.........
there's a technique to that, but it's fucking hilarious if done right.
What's an expansive view of executive power? Spending 4% of GDP without congressional approval?
How about forcing vaccines on perfectly healthy individuals that don't need them? Vaccines that were proven to only reduce the symptoms of Covid- not prevent anyone from getting it. Vaccines with health risks.
Forcing children to wear masks when it was proven that they were low risks; and masks didn't work.
What about forced stay at home mandates by Democrats at the state levels that destroyed businesses; and wrecked economies? All the while they were violating their very own mandates by travelling to Florida and other places w/o the mandates they force on those they serve.
Are turtles allowed to sleep on the beach?
Indeed. Why the fuck should people without smallpox have to have been vaccinated for smallpox? I mean there was no guarantee they wouldn't get it anyways even with the vaccine, and the vaccine wouldn't only mitigate symptoms..
And the economy post pandemic is doing just fine.
All lies. Aren't you one who didn't get vaccinated?
We actually allow them to have sex on the beach!
Nothing more intimidating than a drunk 100 lb. sea turtle.
They're faster than they look!
Any politician that can spout his kind of nonsense is not for limiting government then getting out of the way. Yeah, he's all for limiting government to the point where he's the only governmental figure left and he tells everyone what to do and think.
He's a scary dude.
You are catching on. The gop has gone bad...
Delusional! Deplorable! Detestable! DeSantis...
Religious! Regressive! Repressive! Republican!
less government, more freedom*
*unless you're a woman, a minority, poor, non-religious, non-republican, or a member of the LGBTQ community...
Is that a new bumper sticker you are trying to promote?
A little long for a bumper sticker.
However, DDDDRRRR would make a good campaign slogan.
Looks like roll call for a bipartisan committee. 4 D's and 4 R's
Heaven forbid
It takes a lot of courage to be free. I guess. According to DeSantis.
None the less a quote from another in another time also seems apt to anything concerning DeSantis which would be, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." J. Joplin & Big Brother And The holding Company.
Sad that America went through a bloody civil war just to find itself in another.
Far right-wing fascism (Trump, DeSantis, MTG, Boebert) is the antithesis of freedom.
Seems the cold war is still on and I only have a couple of cases of MREs left. /s
Bottom line is that folk with sub 90 IQs are at war with smarter folk who can think.
Really, are you serious?
Opinions do vary ..... but don’t forget to throw some ketchup in the bag for the fries.
Much appreciated
DeSantis version of free speech, freedom of thought, and academic freedom is simple. "Think what you want, as long as I agree with it. If not, well the government hammer will bring you in line."
But fuck China and everything they do. Totally not borrowing from the commie playbook or anything.
Fascism is fascism no matter the origin.
He is just like the communists in China, what is hilarious is that he nor his fans realize it.
but, but, but ron made all the trains at disney world run on time...
That describes nearly every progressive libtard here and elsewhere.
Desantis? Not so much.
Fuckin a ..... better dead than red ...... forever!
that's my mantra for 2024.
Much of DeSantis's claimed ''victories'' are BS. Take the Disney case with his ''new sheriff in town''...There is little change to Disney's special tax district. It ''was not deleted it is still the special district'' Desantis and the republican legislature changed their tune a few weeks ago when it became apparent that in l etting the district dissolve would require taxpayers in Orange and Osceola counties – which are adjacent to the theme parks – to begin paying for the firefighting, police and road maintenance services that Disney had been paying. And the counties’ taxpayers would also have to cover the Disney tax district’s debt of $1bn or so.
Little has changed except that DeSantis put his cronies on the board. The same happened to the school board in Sarasota when he changed out the board and fired the President and put in his cronies with the new president making double what the old president made.
For someone that claims ''Freedom,'' he is taking the freedoms away.
In the meantime, Florida is short thousands of teachers and LEO's. No extended medicare to help residents with medical coverage. Yup, the new sheriff is in town. /s
MAGA Populism is an empty promise against what they perceive as culture wars. They can't work within the framework of current law so they are trying to change the laws. Except, as we see here with DeSantis, it's an empty win. The one change they did win - the overturn of Roe - energized the left and cost them the midterms.
Mr. Courage strikes again...LMAO
That's not going to win him any votes in a primary. HA!
I saw that on TV last night. governor meatball sends a security guard out to threaten the trumpsters with calling the police on them if they didn't leave. what a gutless wimp.
Let the blood letting begin.
I love it when they eat their own.
as amped up and divided as rwnj's are, we'll be hearing gunshots between them by this time in 2024.
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Florida Republicans are getting more bizarre by the day, this is their latest nutty adventure.
Florida Republican wants any blogger writing about Ron DeSantis to 'register with the state'
DeSantis is going to self-implode. Americans dont want his crap on a nation wide basis.
DeSantis looked the fool when asked by a reporter how he would handle the war Ukraine. His response was pretty much, ''ask me another question''.