In his effort to out-crazy Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis is attacking the sole piece of OK legislation to come from the Trump era: the First Step Act, which instituted reforms like a ban on shackling women giving birth. The Act led to early release in some cases and, citing 0 evidence or examples, DeSantis recently claimed that multiple people released under Trump have committed violent crimes. He promises to overturn the act on day one. I asked the DeSantis War room for examples of people committing violent crimes after release under the First Step Act on Twitter. They didn’t reply, but for like three days incel trolls dug up my online photos and called me ugly and stupid on Twitter, which was fun.
Liberals are still shellshocked from 4 years of Trump Hell. I had a job writing breaking news and I swear it gave me the world’s dorkiest PTSD: I’d be sitting in a sunny Brooklyn office shaking in outrage or horror at my keyboard. Every day I poured 8 hours of cable news into my brain for work: anchors crying about child separation, analysts predicting nuclear war, fucking “Mueller Time,” the liberal wet dream that never delivered the release it promised.
But for Heaven’s sake let’s not get stuck in the Never Trump spiral that leads to a President DeSantis, because that fucker is twisted.
Much has been written about DeSantis trying to outflank Trump by turning Florida into a wing nut lab: the books bans, the trans bans, etc. Less has been about an absolutely horrifying—like Black Mirror horrifying—death penalty law the legislature passed at his urging.
The law would allow for a 8-4 majority in capital cases. Currently, only Alabama has a similar law, but even their ratio is 10-2.
So picture yourself in that jury pool. If prosecutors suss out that you oppose the death penalty no matter what—as I do—you’d get struck from the jury pool. You’re also likely to be struck if you are Black. Due to their familiarity with the criminal justice system, and higher rates of religiosity, Black people are not enthusiastically greeted by prosecutors seeking the death penalty.
Now imagine being someone—let’s say an old white lady—who thinks the death penalty should exist for the most horrific crimes. But, you know, you’d like to make sure a defendant is guilty before sending them to the gas chamber (Or, probably gallows given current blood-thirst and the lack of death penalty drugs).
You have doubts. Maybe the jail house informant who got a reduced sentence after testifying the defendant confessed to the crime wasn’t very convincing. Maybe an alleged co-conspirator was the actual killer, as in the case of Richard Gossip (Check out my friend Liliana Segura’s unparalleled reporting on the Glossip case and other death penalty cases). So you conclude that you can’t ethically vote for capital punishment. Now, in Florida, if you now can’t convince 8 people to vote against the death penalty as well, you have to live with the fact that an innocent person will be put to death. Humans are good at justifying their actions (“At least I did the right thing”) but capital cases are hard to shake. Especially (obviously) cases where the man put to death was more likely than not innocent. Troy Davis. Cameron Todd Willingham. There’s a special place in Hell for everyone who let a grieving father go to his death thinking the whole world assumed he’d burned his children alive.
A lot has been written about the mental health struggles of corrections officers who work on death row. As humans, they might bond with the victim (yes victims. You’re a victim of psychological and physical torture if you’re on death row no matter what you did). Since executions occur decades after the fact, brash young men and women have likely aged into some wisdom. Thanks to DeSantis’s frantic, Gollum-like thirst for power, the trauma will likely extend to future jurors.
I’m going for it: even though another Trump presidency will be like having hot lava poured into all our brains, DeSantis would be worse. Trump, whose attention span is that of a fruit fly and could be manipulated into doing good, such as his clemency of Alice Marie Johnson. But DeSantis is ruthless and smart and his hot wife can put together semi-intelligent thoughts. It just seems so obvious to be DeSantis would use his “war on woke” to institute a — yes, a fascist agenda—and that he’s willing to throw anyone under the bus for power. That means that, much like under Trump, immigrants, women, people behind bars—will get totally screwed.
DeSantis is a smarter Trump, which is what’s really scary. We lucked out with Trump in that while he is a fascist, he’s an incompetent one who struggles to coordinate a trip to the bathroom, never mind a coup. The last thing we need is a smarter Trump.
You make good points on policy, but I still beg to disagree for precisely that reason:
DeSantis enacts policy through the existing system in Florida. So far, he has not exhibited a tendency to dispense with representative government altogether in favor of a fascist personality cult. Indeed, in Florida it's not just DeSantis but the legislature and others in government working in concert with him. It's a team effort there. There is no evidence DeSantis would orchestrate another January 6. That means we can use the system to fight DeSantis because he can only work within it.
Trump, by contrast, has no policy. He has no belief system other than self-aggrandizement. He will destroy anything and everything, including our entire government and even humanity itself, to feed his insatiable narcissism.
DeSantis is incapable of a personality cult. Trump is a master at it, and his cultish appeal means he can work outside the system. That was the lesson of January 6. For this reason, Trump is an absolutely unique danger. DeSantis is just an asshole who will never get Trump's devoted following.