Florida Governor Rick DeSantis is not Satan. He is a human man.
When he was a Member of the US House of Representatives in 2013, he did try to deny federal disaster relief to victims of Superstorm Sandy here in New York and New Jersey. Because he wanted to pretend he’s a fiscal conservative? Because we tend to vote for Democrats? Because he believes there is no “we, the people” so everyone is responsible for their own hardships?
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian he is insisting that it was a “500-year storm.” Why? It is definitely the strongest to hit Florida in the last four years, since Michael in 2018, which came with 160 mph winds and killed 50. Does he want us to think it’s a statistical freak instead of the utterly predictable result of human-caused global warming? Does he want to justify his request for federal relief for Florida, but not for New Jersey and New York? Does he want to pretend that there won’t be another, maybe even during this hurricane season?
He is also defending the decision of officials in Lee County, the hardest-hit area, not to evacuate before the storm. Does he really think this should be an individual decision, placing the lives and safety of first responders at the whim of the folks they will be forced to rescue (or recover)? Is he so dependent on the political support of county officials who made a bad call that he can’t antagonize them? Does he simply not care about the people who lost their lives?
And then there are the Venezuelan refugees he kidnapped from Texas and flew to Massachusetts as a political stunt. The original plan was apparently to fly migrants from Florida but there were political costs to that idea. So he sent agents 700 miles and four states away, with false promises of jobs and homes, to lure desperate people out from under the eye of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott is DeSantis’s rival to be the Republican Presidential candidate in 2024, and he has been stunting with migrants, too... although with buses, not airplanes; and with major Northern cities, not resort islands. I don’t even have to speculate about motives: DeSantis clearly believes that his political ambitions outweigh both the humanity of the people he kidnapped and the Florida law that set aside funds for him to transport migrants out of Florida, not random other states. He clearly resented Greg Abbott’s access to people whose humanity neither of them recognize.
So, back to Satan. No, Rick DeSantis is not him. But Rick DeSantis willingly volunteers - again and again and again - to do his work.
