The performative sadism of Ron DeSantis

The Republican Party — under the leadership of Donald Trump and perhaps soon under his likely successor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis — has quickly become a party focused on torturing and humiliating the weak.

In the influence of sadists, Republicans are testing whether a celebration of cruelty can be the driving force of an American political party. But this experiment in rooting the GOP’s identity on the veneration of willful mischief, while obviously immoral, may also be a political mistake.

as such Sociology teaches, many people have a disturbing level of tolerance for the suffering of others, but they also do not like to admit it; They prefer to see themselves as victims, forced to bear (or perhaps even cause) harm to others.

By contrast, sadists openly enjoy punishing the weak. So it remains questionable whether most Republicans – not to mention a majority of voters – are willing to openly identify themselves as people who enjoy inflicting agony.

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DeSantis has shown himself to be a very uncreative politician. He systematically copied everything that happened to be the far-right phishing strategy of the moment, and then cemented it. And at every point during his tenure, the governor has been looking anxiously back to see if any competitor (including Trump) has outdone him.

… DeSantis predicted that Vineyard residents would hold back on desperate asylum seekers, allowing Fox News viewers to savor both the suffering of immigrants and seeing ‘libs’ exposed as hypocritical…

What distinguished DeSantis from others in the Republican Party was not his political stances, but rather the extent to which cruelty and humiliation were central to his rule and political activities.

The Florida Surgeon General ostentatiously refused to wear a mask while in the office of a state legislator with cancer, with the support of his boss, while DeSantis himself publicly berated high school students for daring to wear masks in his presence. and he object to his nose Doctors and nurses in hospitals are overwhelmed by COVID patients and are calling for help. But Martha’s Vineyard stunt was DeSantis’ nationalist party prominent as a political sadist, and it gained him unexpected attention, far from his usual range of Fox News viewers and donors.

Last December, DeSantis publicly laughed about what he calledtongue in cheekThe idea: put some asylum seekers on planes and leave them in ‘Delaware’ (President Joe Biden’s home state) or ‘Martha’s Vineyard’ (a Massachusetts vacation spot known to be favored by wealthy African Americans, including former President Barack Obama). Last week, after Texas Governor Greg Abbott began throwing immigrants, including at least one infant, on the doorstep of Vice President Kamala Harris’ home, DeSantis was quick to make his “pranking” a reality.

Students from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School AP Spanish help deliver food to St. Andrews Episcopal Church.

Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty

DeSantis hired a mysterious group of contractors to find asylum seekers in Texas who could quickly ship them to Martha’s Vineyard. Reports indicate that at least some migrants have been tricked into “voluntarily” boarding planes with false promises of jobs, housing or a trip to a location near their next court appearance. While DeSantis chose not to report his maneuver to authorities in Massachusetts, he gave Fox News an “exclusive” and sent his film crew on at least one trip.

Apparently, DeSantis expected the residents of Vineyard to back down from the desperate asylum seekers, allowing Fox News viewers to taste both the suffering of immigrants and seeing the “libs” exposed as hypocritical, expecting them to be as ruthless as DeSantis encourages him. to be their followers.

It didn’t work out that way. Karam residents responded to the unexpected presence of the fiercely victimized asylum seekers with sympathy and help. Government officials then moved the migrants a short distance to main Cape Cod, which had facilities and resources available to assist them.

The sadistic ploy has left DeSantis, at least for a moment, politically unbalanced.

While He initially promised to harm the weakest without justification after immigrants At least one law enforcement investigation into the scheme has been publishedAnd the DeSantis tried to distance himself From a trip to Delaware reported. The notoriously thin-skinned ruler has also retreated to the confines of the right-wing media, even as many of the broader public have – precisely – presented him as an expendable business with maximum damage to the most vulnerable.

This is not surprising, given that aside from the pleasure of causing pain, DeSantis knows only one way to respond to the error: to double it. He appears determined to do so, despite the fact that he is on the verge of facing a general election in which performative cruelty may not prove a winner. Indeed, DeSantis is already receiving a backlash from the Venezuelan community in Florida, given that many of the immigrants he tried to harm have traveled thousands of miles to escape this country, which has fallen victim to the failed socialist system.

But it’s also worth noting that many other GOP “leaders” have refused to criticize DeSantis and Abbott’s performative sadism, seemingly believing that in the continuing Republican Trump era, enjoying the suffering of the weak is actually a winning political strategy.

For example, Mark Short, political advisor to former “pro-life” Vice President Mike Pence, rejected Abbott’s criticism of dumping a one-month-old baby on the streets of the Capitol.highlighting hypocrisy(It doesn’t matter that he’s had a demon time explaining what hypocrisy is.) And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – who was a Trump critic at one point – said he believed dumping immigrants on Martha’s VineyardIt was a good idea. “

A mother and her child outside St. Andrew’s Parish home, where immigrants were having lunch with food donated from the local community on Martha’s Vineyard.

Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty

GOP weathermen like these seem to believe that the lesson of the Trump era is that sadism wins elections.

However, there is evidence to the contrary. When it was revealed that Trump – in a palpable lustful celebration of cruelty – snatched young children from their mothers and then caged them. collectivelyIt was a defining moment in his political decline. Likewise, Trump’s open calls for police violence during the summer of 2020 failed to win the election. The revelation of his personal involvement in the events leading up to the January 6 riots at the Capitol made some Republicans publicly wish he would not run again.

Excessive cruelty is not always the winning hand

History similarly shows that open appeals to sadism are far from politically intelligent. The revelation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was a signaling moment in the downfall of the George W. Bush administration. Images of civil rights defenders being beaten with batons and dogs during the 1964 civil rights campaign known as Freedom Summer demonstrated the violent aesthetic of Jim Crow, thus leading to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which apartheid advocates had long bottled up. . in Congress.

Given this historical background, it may seem baffling that a notorious open-ended sadist like DeSantis has become the obvious choice for Trump’s replacement for many Republican kingmakers (who gave him a horrific war chest), and even informed Republicans are afraid to criticize DeSantis’ performance. cruelty.

But if there is one thing the past several years have made clear, it is that the Republican Party’s “leadership” is not only strikingly immoral, but also often politically unwise.

After all, this is a party that has long restricted itself to the worst kind of loser – someone who can’t admit they lost and will burn down the house to prove it. Republicans have yet to find a way to separate themselves from Trump, even as he openly attracts a smaller cadre of neo-fascists.

In fact, it seems that the one lesson that Republican Party leaders have drawn from the past several years has been completely wrong: that most voters are like participants in Trump rallies, enjoying the same impeccable pleasure from hurting others as Trump and DeSantis do.

Now, many in the Republican Party are seeking to “bypass Trump” by replacing him with a deeply unattractive and totally unacceptable figure who appears to come to life while devising new ways to humiliate and harm the weak. Therefore, it appears that the Republican Party is about to conduct an experiment in political science with great risks: testing whether sadism can become the basis of political success.

If they’re wrong, the Republican Party may be headed toward a political abyss. If they’re right, the country is going there.



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