90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, March 4, 2022

DeSantis's Time Will Come, but Trump Has Unfinished Business to Attend to First

Trump loyalists get it about Gov. Ron DeSantis. You can be foursquare committed to a candidate and still understand the prudence of having good potential prospects in the wings.

The Florida governor guided his state through COVID-19 with the kind of resolute leadership and anti-propagandist wisdom that left the Democrats floundering in their baldly partisan display of crisis-conserving overreach. Though they are loathe to admit it, the Blue State firmament now grasps how fully their pandemic ploy is exposed; DeSantis stands as a leader who got the response to COVID right.

DeSantis may have come in a distant second in the CPAC poll, but he was second. He routinely shows evidence of the kind of good-sense decision-making and political savvy that could someday secure the White House for Republicans. His admonition to “stop the mask theater” — addressed to schoolchildren but aimed squarely at the “adults” in the room — was an off-the-cuff, spontaneous public relations masterstroke.

Free the children from this madness. Trump loyalists must wonder if, in the same set of circumstances, even 45 would have done that.

So, appoint Gov. DeSantis as heir apparent. While he is definitely his own man, crown him the successor to Trump’s America First movement. It is already happening.

And yet as much as some in the GOP wish the era of Trump to be gone — some with personal grievance issues and some with valid concerns about Trump and the future of the party — there’s a much-too-compelling storyline surrounding the former president and a deep-seated sense of the need for political justice.
Even if you concede that Biden fairly won the election (a stretch of Herculean proportions), there was nonetheless a concerted and extralegal effort to undo Trump’s presidency, a collusive plot that reached to the highest levels of government. No matter the sterling credentials of Ron DeSantis or any other worthy contender, it is going to be hard, probably impossible, for the Trump Troops to let that go without a fight to the finish. Unless Trump declines to run, a prospect which seems less likely with each news cycle, he will get his chance to avenge what was done to him and his millions of supporters.

A 2024 rematch is the stuff of legend, of myth. Trump’s ascendance is already enshrined as one of the most singular developments in...

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #271

Is your toddler 'forming' racist 'attitudes'? This professor says talk to your kids before it's too late.

'Just because you haven’t heard your child say anything prejudiced does not mean that those attitudes are not forming,' Perry argues.

A Northwestern University psychology professor is pushing for parents to talk to their children about systemic racism as early as preschool, criticizing the “colorblind” approach to teaching kids that race does not matter.

Professor Sylvia Perry told Northwestern Now that parents need to be having conversations about race with their children as soon as “your child can have a conversation with you.”

“Just because you haven’t heard your child say anything prejudiced does not mean that those attitudes are not forming," Perry alleges.

Instead of taking a “passive approach,” on race Perry says, parents need to be “talking to their children about the history of and existence of racism within this country, the social construction of race, and the systemic biases that contribute to racial inequality.”

Through her research, Perry advocates for parents no longer teaching their kids about race by using a “colorblind approach- in which they emphasize a belief that race does not matter” but instead taking a “color conscious approach- in which they acknowledge race-related issues.”

“White parents have the potential to be agents of change that socialize color-conscious beliefs in their children, but many are reinforcing the current system of color-blind indifference to...

In the end it doesn’t matter whether Biden was deluded or diabolical. Come November, Americans will rightfully blame him for willfully damaging their lives.

The Democrats will suffer historic losses in the November midterms.

This disaster for their party will come about not just because of the Afghanistan debacle, an appeased Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the destruction of the southern border, the supply chain mess, or their support for critical race theory demagoguery.

The culprit for the political wipeout will be out-of-control inflation—and for several reasons.

First, the Biden Administration is in such denial of inflation that it sounds to Americans simply callous and indifferent to the misery it has unleashed.

Biden officials have scoffed at price spikes as “transitory.” Or they have preposterously claimed spiraling costs are a concern only to the elite. They blame the Ukraine crisis. Or they fault the out-of-office bogeyman, Donald Trump.

The administration assures us that consumer prices are only rising at an annualized rate of 7.5 percent—as if the steepest increase in 40 years actually is not all that bad.

Yet the middle class knows that inflation is far worse when it comes to the stuff of life: buying a house, car, gas, meat, or lumber.

Second, inflation is an equal opportunity destroyer of dreams. It undermines rich and poor, Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. It unites all tribes, all ideologies, all politics against those who are perceived to have birthed the monstrous octopus that squeezes everything and everyone it touches.

The conservative passbook holder sees his meager life savings eaten away. The liberal teacher’s car payments stretch from six to 10 years.

The prospective Republican home buyer sees his hard-earned potential down payment eaten away each month. The Democratic carpenter feels his new higher wages buy even less.

Third, inflation is ubiquitous, inescapable, omnipotent—and humiliating. It destroys personal dignity. And its toxicity is insidious, sort of like seeping, odorless, colorless, but nevertheless lethal carbon monoxide.

Unlike now-unpopular critical race theory, it cannot be avoided for a day. You cannot tune it out like one does the mess in Afghanistan or the now nonexistent southern border. Inflation attacks everyone in 24/7, 360-degree fashion.

It belittles you at the gas station. It downsizes you at the food market. It humiliates you in the obscene real estate market. It makes you look stupid when you are paying for a new car. It ridicules you when you buy lumber. Suddenly you apologize that you really cannot afford your child’s braces.

Fourth, inflation undermines a civil and ordered society. It unleashes a selfish “every man for himself” mentality, the Hobbesian cruelty of a “war of all against all.”

Inflation is the economic and emotional equivalent of smash-and-grab or carjacking. It is a brazen robber in broad daylight that so infuriates Americans by its boldness. It convinces them their very civilization is...