PLASTIC PATRIOTISM
I went down to Miami for a week recently to check out the vibe; spend some time in the political media market and get a sense of the ads being run on both sides. I was shocked to see the manipulative, propagandistic ads for DeSantis playing up his military service. DeSantis was a Navy JAG but the tone of his campaign commercials treated him as if he had stormed the beaches at Normandy or piloted some sort of stealth aircraft at the height of the Cold War.
I traveled to Florida in the days after Hurricane Ian when it was apparent DeSantis would use the record-setting (both in it’s financial and environmental destructive impact) catastrophe - made so much worse by the warming oceans, largely caused by DeSantis’s donors in the oil & gas industry, including Koch Industries- for political gain.
A politician like Ron DeSantis paints himself as leading the charge against ‘liberalism’ in all things, including public education.
He’s literally trying to dumb down his electorate to increase his hold on power - a text book despot move - which is especially rich for a guy who went from public high school to Yale & Harvard Law. (I have a joke in my set saying DeSantis had all the alarm clocks removed from Florida’s hotel rooms because he doesn’t want anyone one being ‘woke’).
Toxically patriotic iconography festoons the giant pickup trucks I saw all over the highways of Miami-Dade County. (Must be all the snow and ranches down there). Bumper stickers proselytizing guns, ‘freedom’ and ‘FJB’ appeared alongside ‘DeSantis Country’ ones on pristine and shiny tailgates as they drove down the highway, the drivers wasting fuel and making their children's futures that much darker, in their ignorant and activistic bubbles.
I even saw a MAGA/Trump/DeSantis flag swap meet on a sunny Saturday morning in Key Largo.
An hour before, I sat at the water’s edge in a state park and saw more microplastics mixed into the organic flotsam than I had ever seen in my life (and I have been paying attention since my childhood toes first touched the waters of the Chesapeake; back then it was mostly styrofoam and pop tops - the single-use detritus now looks like candy sprinkles, broken down after decades in the spin cycle of our oceans but nearly as deadly to wildlife and humans as any weapon we have forged of steel).
It was horrifying and such an awful contrast to the awe-inspiring natural beauty and vibrant wildlife.
‘Plastic Patriotism’ and unsustainable consumerism have been branded and fused to a reactionary extremism that I have not witnessed before in my years of traveling in the United States. I made my living on the road, touring with bands as a road manager and always felt comfortable checking which way the political winds were blowing.
I remember a tour in 2010, fresh off of President Obama’s first victory, and my own role as a minor player in the talent logistics of his inaugural festivities. (I helped wrangle the talent you saw perform at his inaugural galas).
I remember the first fumes of the Tea Party, it’s flames fanned by dark money from the same billionaire libertarian cabals being given free rein - thanks to the ‘Citizens United’ ruling at SCOTUS and the culmination of Mitch McConnell & Heritage Foundation’s back room dealings for decades - to satisfy their own craven lust for money and a continued lock on power.
I recall how it played with the people, so to speak, when white male backstage security guards were suddenly bitching to me about ‘Obamacare’ as if the ACA was some awful thing that this most likely hourly wage, uninsured worker had taken to complaining about. It was apparent then that the right was creating a culture of racially-tinged resentment (nothing new in the USA admittedly) but this felt like a fresh rebranding, where folks would so vociferously speak out against their own interests.
You can see echoes of this dynamic in the way the right goes after President Biden’s student debt relief initiative. It felt coordinated, like the so-called ‘Brooks Brothers riots’ that ironically played out in Florida as well, and delivered us into a new era where facts and voter protections seemed to take a backseat to whoever lied the loudest and whomever SCOTUS deemed to shower their favor on.
The fate of the free world has never been manipulated by so few. It’s a scary proposition and one that will ultimately fail if it is not attached to the cultural branding and religious fervor of modern ‘Christian’ conservatism and its offspring by birth, MAGA & QAnon.
The less media savvy and decidedly uncharismatic DeSantises of the world need the fascist machinations to prove their efficacy and be less yielding in their brutality and in the political stunts where cruelty is meant as a punchline for snickering frat boys on Fox News (see Jesse Waters & Mike Pompeo on the night of DeSantis’ Martha’s Vineyard stunt for proof of this strategy and it’s effectiveness).
The cruelty drives out the empathy and hardens its intended viewers to their own humanity.
They are courting and grooming a generation of voters inured to human suffering and the parallels to the dangers of this, especially married with the recent rise in anti-Semitic remarks from cultural hucksters like Trump and Kanye West, makes it all the more pressing that we call out the hatred and rise in anti-authoritarianism.
I will have more thoughts later but will leave you with the plea to please make it to the polls, and help others to do so. Volunteer, speak out and call out injustice and voter suppression as you see it, in real time.
The world has never been more connected and we can use that to our advantage - or let it be an instrument of our peril. We may be approaching twilight but it’s not dark yet. Vote Blue. Thanks.
Thank you Noel...! I have been listening to all of your podcasts, (almost caught up now)and heard you say you were here so here I am too.
Good stuff. fan from VA who’s also All-in on diminishing the hate & enlightening with the good. 17 days ‘til critical elections. I believe the people will opt for TRUTH... away from division, venom, & violence. Things are very bad, with threat, hate speech, intimidation, harassment... even from the former Pres.!? The bar must be raised back up. I will look forward to seeing more, Thx