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DeSantis' New Book Gives Away His Platform

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has a new book out. It is entitled The Courage to Be Free. It is all about the government banning stuff in order for the people to be free. Kind of "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." As a graduate of Yale (magna cum laude, no less) in history, DeSantis is likely to be familiar with George Orwell's 1984, and so is aware of the rather clear parallel.

The book reads like his presidential platform, which makes sense, because that is what it is. Here are some takeaways:

The New York Times' book critic Jennifer Szalai reviewed the book and said it reads like it was written by ChatGPT, in part due to its total lack of charisma or sense of humor. It is strong on platitudes found all over the Internet but weak on new ideas. What is also noteworthy is how DeSantis has changed since he was first elected to Congress. He was then a libertarian and a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus was founded to oppose government power. Now DeSantis thinks that the more power the government has, the better, so he can use it to punish his enemies. For example, he wants to give the president the power to fire about 50,000 top civil servants if the president thinks they are too woke.

The book also rails against the legacy media. Apparently, Fox doesn't count as legacy media, since it gets off unscathed. Maybe the fact that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp owns the publisher of his book played a role here. We dunno. As we have mentioned many times already this year (and will continue to mention for at least another one), DeSantis is smart. For example, he clearly understands that the base loves to see folks they dislike being bullied and he may well try to out-bully Trump. He even tried to bully the Ivy League and to show how strong he is by writing: "I could withstand seven years of indoctrination in the Ivy League," as if that makes him special. It must have slipped his mind that some other famous people also withstood it, like justices Samuel Alito (Yale Law School), Neil Gorsuch (Harvard Law School), Brett Kavanaugh (Yale Law School), John Roberts (Harvard Law School), and Clarence Thomas (Yale Law School). But they don't have the courage to run for president, like he does.

For the sake of completeness, we note a few things that the book omits and which are common in political memoirs written for campaign purposes. There is (next to) nothing about DeSantis' youth, his parents, what values his parents instilled in him, his sister, his friends, his courtship, his wedding, or anything else that might detract from his image as a robot with code to destroy woke built into its ROM (Read Only Memory) that can't be changed. If this is an indication of what's to come, he is going to make Mitt Romney look warm and fuzzy. And he is going to fail the beer test miserably. (V)



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