The truth be told, many, if not most, politicians enter public service without giving a damn about public service. Most of them simply love the ego-trip of winning an election, savor the embrace of corporate fat cats who shower them with bribes (oops, I mean donations), and laugh at the suffering and ignorance of the very people who put them, and continue to sheepishly put them, into office.
There is also no doubt that many, if not most, politicians are sociopaths, using their power and authority to serve their own whims and force their insanity to become laws. This sociopathy has intensified since America's premier Nazi, Donald J. Trump, rode a wave of white supremacy and cultish devotion into the White House in 2016.
And with Trump threatening to run for president again in 2024, his potential rivals have decided that the only way to beat him is to out-Nazi him.
And nobody is doing this better than Florida's governor Ron DeSantis.
I've written previously about DeSantis in my article When Tyranny Masquerades As Law and Order (April 22, 2021) and alluded to him in America's Complacent Descent Into Fascism (April 30, 2021).
In both these articles, I discussed the draconian laws that governors, like DeSantis, have passed to stifle, in defiance of the Freedom of Speech and Assembly Clauses of the First Amendment, protests against racism and other forms of social injustice, as well as their attempts to suppress any and all teaching about the history that created this racism.
One might ask how a person like DeSantis could obtain power. The answer is that Florida is in a somewhat unique position politically. A significant portion of its population fled from Castro's Cuba, and thus are inclined to vote for any politician who claims to be Castro's antithesis.
But now the question is beginning to arise that maybe creating a new Batista (the dictator Castro overthrew) in Florida is just as bad.
DeSantis has recently shown that his depravity is beginning to even surpass Trump's. While COVID-19 rages out of control in Florida, and many hospitals are filling to capacity, DeSantis not only praises the unvaccinated, he has also threatened to cut funding to any Florida school that mandates its students wear masks.
It would be easy to ridicule Florida's plight, since its voters are the ones who elected this monster to office, so they are now simply reaping what they've sown. In fact, I would agree that those who create monsters do not deserve mercy or compassion when those monsters destroy them.
Unfortunately, as discussed above, DeSantis has proven he is not only eager to kill children who are too young to vote, and too young to get vaccinated or to do so without parental approval, he is also willing to risk the lives of the over 4,000,000 people in Florida who had the sense not to vote for him.
Yet, believe it or not, DeSantis is allegedly running second only to Trump in who will be the Republican nominee for president in the 2024 election. And given the voting restrictions he, and others of his ilk, have implemented to rig upcoming elections, he might even have a chance to win.
Which means, if COVID-19 persists, or some other pandemic hits within the next few years, more Americans may die for the sake of DeSantis's murderous ego.
A willingness to destroy democracy by suppressing the right to vote; an eagerness to scapegoat and suppress the freedoms of racial minorities for political gain; and a lust to kill men, women, and children in an unhinged and unbridled quest for power. If this doesn't make DeSantis a Nazi, I don't know what does.