By Chris Satullo
Taking a risk here, but I’m going to open by quoting appreciatively from the oeuvre of…gulp…Woody Allen.
I make no defense of the man’s personal behavior in the intervening years, but in the ’60s and ’70s he made some very funny movies. One of those was Bananas (1971), set in a strife-torn Latin American nation.
The recent behavior of Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis has reminded me of a classic scene in that film, when the guerrilla leader Esposito, after years of fighting from the hills, wins the revolution and becomes the new president of San Marcos. His first speech to his followers in the capital is a doozy:
Esposito: Hear me. I am your new president. From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check. Furthermore, all children under 16 years old are now…16 years old!
Fielding Mellish (Woody Allen’s character): What’s the Spanish word for straitjacket?
Luis (a freedom fighter): Power has driven him mad.
What now strikes me – haunts me – about this scene is that Luis, Esposito’s loyal compadre, recognizes in a nanosecond that his hero has run off the rails and careened into Crazytown.
Yet here we are, two years-plus after Stop the Steal and Jan. 6, and the bulk of the MAGA-fied Republican Party has not yet clocked that their emperor is stark raving naked. And that DeSantis, Trump’s mini-me, is not far behind as he goes to war against Moana and the Mandalorian.
Trump’s recent speech to CPAC, the conservative version of the Star Wars cantina, was as bat-shit crazy as Esposito’s, though the effect was terrifying, not hilarious. As always, our 45th president went on for a loooonnnng time at CPAC, but here’s the money quote:
“Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs. If you put me back in White House, their reign is over. In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
Lunatics and maniacs. Projection, much?
I am your warrior. Sure, you are, Mr. 4-F Heel Spur.
But I shouldn’t just settle for snark here. This stuff was ominous.
I am your retribution. Trump surely is not the first president who dreamed of using the power of the presidency to punish his enemies, but he’s surely the first to make vengeance against fellow Americans his full, explicit campaign platform.
The first trick of the would-be authoritarian is to declare chaos and claim that only his iron hand can tame it. That was Trump in his first (and, please Lord, last) inaugural address. The vision was dark, even at a time when his titanic ego should have been soothed by triumph.
Now, with that ego inflamed by grievance and rage, the rhetoric is even more menacing and apocalyptic.
Enemies … maniacs … reign. The ultimate aim of every demagogue is to convince “his” people that those who oppose him are malignantly powerful, less than sane, indeed less than human, and thus entitled to no rights, no respect, no mercy.
Once the “base” swallows that, what happens next is ugly.
When your only consolation at the prospect of a guy like this regaining power is that he might be too incompetent to pull off the purges and ravishing of the Constitution that he is vowing to conduct, that’s not good. You might be better off as a citizen of San Marcos. Underwear on the outside is preferable to the Bill of Rights in a burn pit.
Meanwhile, DeSantis is engaged in a one-upmanship game of “You want an avenging warrior? Well, watch this!”
A goodly portion of the Republican establishment seems to be rooting for Ron, viewing him as the non-crazy version of a candidate who can keep the MAGA masses happy while still delivering the tax cuts and deregulation the old guard lusts after.
DeSantis’ buttoned-up look and boring rhetorical manner may suggest he’s a garden-variety conservative. But the authoritarian impulse doesn’t always signal its presence with epaulets, villainous mustaches, or crazy mops of orange hair. It can also wear a blue business suit (See: Orban, Viktor.)
By now, it’s clear DeSantis believes that America’s history is only what he says it is and that the First Amendment applies only to people who like him and think in a way he approves.
Now, I’m no huge fan of Walt Disney Co. (My daughter’s main complaint about my parenting was that I refused to take the family to Disney World until she was 17, and then only for two days.) And the special status that the corporation held until recently as the de facto governing entity of the area where Disney World sits near Orlando is certainly open to question.
But what shouldn’t be in question is that DeSantis has veered way out of his lane as a state governor in deciding that his dislike for Disney’s pro-vaccination policies and its opposition to his anti-gay policies entitles him to set up a board peopled with five of his culture-warrior cronies to oversee Disney’s content.
“The corporate kingdom finally comes to an end,” DeSantis said in announcing the move. “There’s a new sheriff in town, and accountability will be the order of the day.”
And just to make clear this really had little to do with local government and tax policy in central Florida, he added, “When you lose your way, you gotta have people that are going to tell you the truth. All these board members very much would like to see the type of entertainment that all families can appreciate.”
Never forget, the premise of DeSantis’ presidential bid is to “bring to America” what he’s doing in Florida. So we could expect him to wield the power of the presidency, and all its administrative departments, to punish and control any business or organization that doesn’t toe his Christian nationalist line.
In one sense, it’s hilarious that the governor of a single state thinks he has the clout to intimidate and censor a global entertainment giant that sells content the world over to audiences brown, yellow, black, and white, gay, straight and queer, liberal, moderate, conservative or otherwise.
But it’s more than a little concerning that he thinks the elected office he holds entitles him to try.
The Florida state representative whose district includes Disney World, Rita Harris, put it well in a tweet: “As a reminder, it’s 100% not normal for a Governor to take over a private business and install his political donors because this business said something he didn’t like.”
DeSantis’ agitation against what he’s pleased to call the “woke agenda” does not stop at decrying some of the very real rhetorical and punitive excesses of the wokest of the woke. He doesn’t even want children of this multiracial, 13% black nation to learn that slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and redlining were core facts of the nation’s first two centuries of existence, with impacts that linger painfully to this day.
For a would-be strongman who thinks the First Amendment is his personal plaything, DeSantis sure has a fragile psyche. Apparently, it can’t cope with a contrary (and correct) opinion from the Magic Kingdom, nor can it handle an obvious truth of American history.
His hair may be less flamboyant than The Donald’s, but his zest for authoritarian maneuvers is just as extreme.
If you don’t hanker to wear your underwear on the outside or to speak Swedish at the DMV, you might want to bone up on DeSantis’ record and prepare to resist him as forcefully as you have DJT.
—
Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia