With a straight face DeSantis calls Florida "a refuge of sanity in a world gone mad."
Calling Florida a “refuge of sanity” is like recommending Cancun for a ski vacation. The state is the poster child of madness. Anyone who has read the columns of Dave Barry, the novels of Carl Hiaasen, or a newspaper knows that crazy defines the state. But DeSantis is a conservative. To him, truth is what he says it is. He will produce all the “alternative facts” he needs to make his case. This allows him to claim the home of drunks, addicts, pedophiles, racists, religious nutters, and alligator wrestlers is an oasis of mental stability.
Here are some of their stories.
In August, the police arrested Hellmuth Kolb, a 61-year-old registered sex offender for trying to buy a girl at a grocery store. This deluded man thought offering a parent $100,000 out of the blue for their daughter was a reasonable proposition.
Last week, the police arrested a 39-year-old teacher at a Florida Christian school for giving a lap dance and alcohol to a 14-year-old boy at the school prom. The police had previously arrested her for sexting another student with plans to sneak him into the family home while her husband was out.
In Florida, it is legal to stand on the beach and stab sharks in the head — as long as it is not more than one a day and the shark is not on the proscribed list. Shark stabbers are required to pass a Shark-Smart fishing educational course.
Police arrested a Florida man after they found cocaine and methamphetamine wrapped around his penis during a traffic stop. The man denied the drugs were his. He did not say whose they were.
Talking about penises in cars, the Fort Lauderdale Fire Department found two Floridians naked inside an SUV after a crash between the vehicle and a FedEx truck. At the time of the crash, the woman was performing oral sex on the male driver. He suffered “injuries to his private area “.’
And talking about claiming intimately stashed objects are not yours, Wesley Dasher Scott, 40, was busted for smuggling syringes into jail. He claimed they did not belong to him — despite the authorities finding them shoved up his ass. Slip and fall while naked?
Pinellas County Sheriffs arrested Christian Stewart Oscar Nichols, 21, of Oldsmar after he admitted recording himself performing sex acts on his Siberian husky while wearing a dog costume — and posting a video of the event online. The video depicts images of a man dressed in a black and white Husky dog costume, using his penis and multiple penis-shaped sex toys to have inappropriate sexual contact with a Siberian Husky dog.
There are thousands more of these stories. Some are far more serious.
Florida’s infamous ‘stand your ground’ laws allowed George Zimmerman to track down and kill teenager Trayvon Martin after a skittles run.
And they permitted ex-cop Curtis Reeves to gun down Chad Oulson in a movie theater after Oulson threw popcorn at him.
And then there is the racism.
Police charged David Allen Emanuel, 61, on Monday night with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after he threatened Marvin Dunn, a Black historian and professor emeritus of psychology at Florida International University, and a group of people with his pickup truck last week. He tried to run the professor while yelling the ‘N- word’. Emmanuel was guilty of owning property while Black.
Beyond the individual acts of bigotry is organized racism. A report released by the Anti-Defamation League on Monday shows a significant increase in extremist-related attacks on Floridians. The organization said widespread disinformation and conspiracy theories have energized extremists and fueled antisemitism.
Many of these attacks were by white supremacist groups Patriot Front and the New Jersey European Heritage Association. Other hate groups based in or with a presence in Florida include the NSDAP, Sunshine State Nationalists, NatSoc Florida, White Lives Matter, American First/Groyper Movement, Endangered Souls, and Florida Nationalists.
It is not the sea of sanity DeSantis would have his fellow conservatives believe.
DeSantis was inspired to make his observation in his Sunday address to the third National Conservatism Conference. I do not know how many of these ‘who to hate’ gatherings you need, but for conservatives, it is never enough. These folks have so many love-ins it is remarkable they find the time to ramp up the bigotry.
This shindig had 98 speakers besides DeSantis — 19 were women. And by my best estimate (I am going by their pictures) 5 to 7 minorities. The rest (c. 75%) — which included Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, et al. — were the usual white male suspects.
They could not get the current conservative heartthrob, Hungary’s autocratic boss Viktor Orbán, who the CPAC reactionaries treated like a rockstar. But they scored Balázs Orbán (no relation), his political director.
DeSantis started the proceedings by telling the adoring horde "Welcome to America's citadel of freedom: the free state of Florida, proud to be a refuge of sanity in a world gone mad." He tailored his language to set these flinty hearts aflutter, so he knew no one would question his doublethink.
He spoke with pride of his moves to restrict how public schools teach racism and LGBTQ issues and reveled in his war with Disney Company over Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law. He lauded his efforts to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. And celebrated his "law and order" agenda, including the "anti-riot" law enacted amid the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and a new "election integrity" police force, which has become mired in controversy only weeks after its creation.
This is his “refuge of sanity” — a dictatorial state government that denies the existence of anyone not heteronormative. A government that tells teens what medical treatment they can and can not get — and which books they can read — while spoon-feeding them the white conservative version of America’s diverse history.
So successful has DeSantis been at bowdlerizing curriculums and encouraging spurious Koch-based organizations masquerading as ‘concerned parents ‘ to pressurize local school districts to kowtow to extremist thought, that the state ranks #1 on the Heritage Foundation’s “Education Freedom Report Card”.
Make no mistake. This ranking has nothing to do with school quality, how well students do on exams, drop-out rates, or the number of college-bound seniors. No, the Heritage Foundation bases its rankings on how lightly regulated schools are. How easy it is for students to spend tax-payer money on parochial or private education — or even to put the money in their own pocket by homeschooling. And the ease with which outside groups can access public school records.
This is not sanity. It is like calling a state the best for drivers because it does not require prospective drivers to take a test, that cars pass a safety inspection, or that drivers must carry insurance — while at the same time removing all speed limits and traffic lights.
It takes a madman or a Republican to think Florida is a refuge of anything — unless it is tyranny, bigotry, hatred, and child abuse.