In the midst of the bad news and the news of the weird is a bit of good news. Polls are simply data points at the end of the day. Numbers don’t lie by themselves, but people often lie about the numbers. However, it is impossible to look at the current poll data from 538 and think anything good is happening for Ron DeSantis.

Naturally, a comprehensive study of statistics evolves like peeling an onion. We could point out that he was polling near 40 percent at the beginning of the year and has dipped to nearly 20 percent now. That much is easy to see when looking at the graphic. The question of why is a lot more interesting and important. Obviously there are different theories here. A lot of it has to do with Trump and the weird hold he has over the party. Some of it is simply DeSantis himself.

Ultimately this is good news. 2016 should have taught us a very important lesson. There is a thought in party politics that you should root for the worst candidate to make it through the primary on the other side. After all, it would make it easier for your candidate to win. This was the thought in 2016. Clearly, no one in their right mind would choose Donald Trump, so why worry as he runs roughshod over the Republican primary?

Even as he was gaining access to the White House there was another thought that permeated through some circles on the left. Some people thought “how much damage could he really do?” and “maybe this will wake people up and they will finally support more progressive candidates.” We obviously found out on both counts. You never assume a jackass will lose. You never assume a jackass can’t cause immense damage. You never allow a jackass to go any further once he or she has shown themselves to be a jackass.

Ron DeSantis is a jackass. Boil it down and diffuse the vestiges of ideology and he’s just a jackass. Whether one buys into woke or not or even wants to engage in any kind of conversation of what that even is, DeSantis just seems intent on punishing people. He is actively making lives in Florida worse and the purpose seems lost on most people. At any rate, the more and more people hear about him the more and more they are turned off.

This is not about ideology anymore. We need people in government that aren’t jackasses. Maybe there should be a Hippocratic Oath for politicians. Whether you buy into anything you should first do no harm. Maybe there are enough sane people in the universe to expel the jackasses from our midst. Obviously, there are still a number of people that our jackasses. Hopefully, these poll numbers might be a sign that there are more of us than there are of them.

t’s happened again. I guarantee that it happens on a nearly annual basis. An enterprising legislator will put forth a bill to separate Texas from the union. This time it’s Bryan Slaton to the rescue.

https://twitter.com/BryanforHD2/status/1632807777759313921

 

We are at the looking glass and the reflection staring back at us is our own idiocy. The civil war of the 21st century isn’t over slavery, race relations, the haves and have nots, or even any kind of coherent policy. It’s wokeness. This is where GOP frontrunner Ron DeSantis has planted his flag. This is the battle ground of a new generation.

What does wokeness mean? They really can’t tell you. They really don’t want to tell you. It’s better if they just leave it up to your worst imagination. You can see the signs around town, “The Church Awake and not Woke.” Sure. Obviously, a true believer cannot be woke. Except if we apply the meaning of woke we realize how mind numbingly stupid this sounds.

The modern dictionary defines wokeness as “the quality of being alert and concerned about social injustice and discrimination.” Yup. We don’t want to be a part of any country that has anything to do with that. We don’t want Christianity to be mixed up with any of that mumbo jumbo. That’s just crazy talk.

Davy Crockett famously said that everyone else could go to hell and he would go to Texas. Who knew that they might end up being one in the same. Who knew that those of us that might even casually worry about the welfare of their fellow people would be held hostage by a mob of idiots. After all, it’s a lot easier to say you are anti-woke then to say you are against equality and human decency.

I’m obviously late to the party with this one. As everyone knows, Governor Greg Abbott sent his own version of a Christmas gift to Kamala Harris when he sent upwards of 50 migrants in a bus to her Washington D.C. residence. I can easily go in any number of directions here and most of them are visceral emotional reactions to the story. Most of these visceral responses are the kind of responses that MAGA folks want us to say. It’s almost like a Pavlovian response. They do something outrageous and we respond with outrage, Mission accomplished.

So, where I choose to go from here is to a place where I am going to assume that one or more of them might stumble to this place and actually read these words. The regular readers already know this stuff, so you can treat this as more of a tutorial for other people. However, it is something I feel I need to say because I’ve seen the responses from both sides. Progressives respond with outrage as I suppose they should. Conservatives usually say something to the effect that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden need to solve the problem.

Let’s start with the outrage. All of us know about trolls. Essentially, mainstream conservatives are becoming an endangered species. In their place are what I lovingly call performance artists. If you think back to the scandals concerning the National Endowment for the Arts you will remember the different exhibits that caused so much consternation. There were sculptures of Jesus made out of dung or Jesus being submerged in human urine. These were all designed to create a visceral reaction. All forms of art are created to elicit a reaction. So, these maneuvers by Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are created to elicit an emotional response. Again, mission accomplished.

Performance artists aren’t interested in solving any problems. Problems exist to be exploited. They exist for fund raising. They exist for sound bytes. They exist so that you can frighten your base by expanding and distorting the truth. Greg Abbott has no issue in solving immigration. He has no interest in helping migrants. He has no interest in adjusting policies so that the strain on our institutions and budget are alleviated. Of course, it could be credibly claimed that many progressive politicians aren’t interested in solving the problem either. They can fundraise against Abbott and DeSantis as easily as those two can fundraise themselves.

This brings us to the second point. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can’t solve this issue on their own. It’s a problem with the low information voters. This is an issue that must be addressed in Congress. So, you can send these people to the White House or to Kamala Harris’ private residence, but the stunt doesn’t provide them any additional incentive to solve the problem. Harris literally has very little real power to do anything beyond helping those exact people. This is where you call or write letters to your elected representative asking them to work with other members of Congress to actually pass comprehensive changes to our immigration policy.

Whether one considers this just performance art or an act of cruelty, the end result is just the same. Someone decided that jerking these people around was better than actually helping them. At this point, I’m not going to judge if someone decides they can’t help them. I understand. We can’t help literally everyone that needs help and it can be hard to decide where that cut off should be. They are human beings. They deserve better than this. If we can’t help them then the least we can do is not hurt them. It’s one thing to have a sculpture made out of dung to enrage the masses. It is something else entirely to use actual living and breathing human beings for your performance art.

There can be no greater separation between whatever we call progressives and whatever we call conservatives than the feelings about billion dollar corporations. Conservatives fought to give those corporations rights to free speech where progressives normally view those corporations with some level of skepticism or scorn. At the very least, there is a constant battle to get those corporations to pay their fair share in taxes.

This is why the battle over Disney is such a unique battle. No single quote has had a greater impact on the past forty years of politics than Ronald Reagan’s quote from his first inaugural address. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” No other line quite captures the sentiment of conservatism. That quote gets magnified when we deal with corporations the size of Disney.

Disney has been given all kinds of perks and favors over the years. The idea is that Disney creates more for the economy and stimulates more growth than the government ever could. So, the best thing a government can do is take a back seat and let Disney do their thing. Naturally, we will ignore that while Disney is a fine place to visit (our family has been there three times in the past six years) and they have stimulated the economy in general, as an employer their spoils aren’t exactly distributed equitably.

Such is the nature of these things. A good progressive will take the Reagan quote and insert the word corporations for the word government. It’s not that we don’t want them to exist. It’s that we want them to be tempered and regulated so that their excesses can be reined in. We want workers treated fairly. We want consumers to be protected. We want the effects of the greed that happens naturally to be limited.

What gets lost for the current crop of conservatives is that corporations have no moral compass. They can’t. As much as Citizens United wants us to believe that they are people we know they are not. They are about pure profit motive. They want to sell my daughter a “pride donut” while also seemingly catering to “family values.” They want all of our money.

So, I’m not sure what Desantis and the other movement conservatives were thinking when they came out against LGTBQ+ individuals. When they passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill what exactly did they think would happen? Did they think Disney would purposely cut off a sizable portion of it’s customer base? Disney has made its billions by being all things to all people. It can appear to be wholesome and family friendly and also friendly to people of all lifestyle choices. They’ve made their way through that mine field. They are incredibly successful because they have done this.

So, now conservatives are going against their core beliefs. They are punishing a corporation for taking a stand. It puts progressives into the uncomfortable position of supporting a corporation like Disney. In the end, corporations are the same. They are all things to all people. They are signs of the ultimate greed and avarice driving a wedge through our society and environment. They are welcoming to all people because all currency spends the same no matter who it comes from. Corporations can and will be both. They can because they can’t afford not to be. At least the successful ones like Disney can’t.

The race for the nominations of the two major parties are moving closer and closer. Normally, when the midterm elections end then the two sides come out swinging at each other. Governors, prominent senators, and cults of personality collide on stage and on the roads of Iowa and New Hampshire. One often wonders why those particular states get such a prominent position, but we can set that down for the moment.

The Democratic side has some intrigue. Joe Biden will be 80 before the campaign for the nomination is over. One can’t help but wonder whether he has the energy to do this again. Obviously, the right would like nothing more than to see him step aside. It opens the door to Kamela Harris and other potentially more progressive candidates.

If we assume norms for a moment (I know, I know) we would assume that past presidents will move on into the sunset (or an eight by ten room with bars) then the Republican side has a handful of challengers that would seem to be ready to run. Most of them are governors, so we should probably take a moment to look at the latest.

The headliner just might be Ron DeSantis from Florida. It’s a populous state and he finds himself in the news often enough. We can go with the free version or the pay wall version. It’s the same basic story. Recent data has them third in current COVID cases. Being behind California and Texas is par for the course. They are bigger states. The fact that they are ahead of New York and Illinois is perhaps more telling.

In all fairness, that was the past. Newer data would seem to indicate that they are not the most egregious offenders in the past month. Great. They still have had more than 70,000 people die from COVID-19. That number could become 80,000 by the time campaign season gets here.

Not to be outdone, Greg Abbott in Texas has been at the helm when nearly 90,000 Texans have died from COVID. He will be one of the other major contenders for the nomination. Of course, Abbott is an equal opportunity to killer. If he doesn’t get you with lax regulations and mind-numbingly stupid belligerence then perhaps he will freeze you to death.

Both DeSantis and Abbott have postured their way into the former guy’s good graces. I’m sure the hope there will be that he will step aside (or step inside) and will tab one of them as the heir apparent. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. In this case, freedom could lead to the loss of more life.

South Dakota governor Kristi Noem should not be forgotten. Her track record is a double edged sword. She set marks for positive COVID cases per capita, but was also part of a response that turned the tide. I’ll just let the charts do the talking.

I’m sure the usual suspects like Lyndsay Graham and Ted Cruz will throw their hat into the ring. Why vote for a senator who may lead thousands of people to their death when you can elect someone that’s actually done it? Let freedom ring all the way to the cemetery.