The DeSantis Variant: A Psychological Profile - Part II

The Dangerous Case of the DeSantis Variant - Sam Ray © 2021-2023

What funny words could be inserted into CNI’s DeSantis rainbow meme?

This is the second feature in a four-part series. Click here to read the first article.

The next step in unraveling the mystery of where Gov. Ron DeSantis is on the narcissism spectrum was finding his patterns and modus operandi.

While it is widely reported that DeSantis loves data and reads a lot of reports, this is expected of an Ivy League lawyer. However, from everything I have seen him say and do with all those statistics and reports, his pattern is not trying to learn or give useful information. He is shopping for evidence to serve his political narrative, as he buries the media in empty statistics, platitudes and clichés.

In fact, I saw zero indication that he has any interest in facts or data that don’t support his single-minded goal of authoritarian power. To my ear, most of what I heard from him was an arrogant, aggressive, verbally abusive prosecutor demanding his version of the truth is the only truth, and anyone who questions him needs to be “held accountable.”

If you have ever known anyone who responds to honest questions with toxic abuse to hide their guilt, or because the truth makes them look like a horrible human being, you now know the essence of every DeSantis Variant press conference I observed.

Listen closely and you will hear his pattern of using self-serving statistics and a lot of lawyerly clichés, assertions and accusations without anything of substance to back them up except more of his own selective data he defends as gospel. When his favorable statistics get questioned, his pattern is to hide behind more high-quality clichés.

Certainly as a lawyer and Fox News politician, DeSantis is well trained, practiced and skilled at spinning legalese and repeating the best political and evasive clichés. I suspect he has a long list of highly researched catchphrases that he and his TV host wife practice and workshop, for maximum normal-sounding manipulative effectiveness, and leading people to hear what they want to hear.

Clichés like: “As governor I will represent all the people and everyone will get a fair shake.” “It’s a totally false partisan narrative.” “I’m not going to bow to the altar of political correctness.” “We’re not shutting down.” “We’re going to go forward.” “Get those trends back in better direction.” “I would like to see some validity to what they say, not something I’m going to accept at face value.” “You know we work collaboratively with a bottom-up approach.” “Bottom-up from each community.”

Until Delta, DeSantis has been easily getting by and riding high denying reality with his COVID-19 victory lap clichés like, “We’ve had tremendous success,” “Really good numbers,” and arrogantly declaring “The failure of so many places outside of Florida to open schools at the beginning of the school year will go down as one of the biggest policy blunders of our time.”

This “winning” attitude is the kind of red meat that conservative media and the Republican base cannot get enough of. Unfortunately, as many of us have learned the hard way, most trump conservatives would rather go further into denial than accept new facts or realities from outside their echo chambers.

Seen through this mindset, it is completely understandable that when the COVID-19 “doom and gloom” liberals predicted didn’t seem to materialize, frustrated people were all too eager to throw off their masks. They believed it when some in the media declared, “DeSantis has won the pandemic.”

Day by day, DeSantis kept aggressively piling on his COVID-19 victory laps by repeatedly stating that Florida is an “Oasis of freedom” and “Open for business.” Who needs those pesky masks or vaccine passports in the libertarian “Free State of Florida,” where everyone is free to be as irresponsible and ignorant as they want to be with COVID-19?

Contrast this with DeSantis’ use of the law to try to force Florida schools to teach the white southern confederate view of American history (the opposite of critical race theory). Or with his response when Black Lives Matter wants to protest police killing unarmed black men. He regularly threatens to bring out the goon squad and to look for any provocation to send black protestors to Florida prisons, when they are just asking for fair and equal protection under the law.

No matter the reasonableness of the questions, he continues to belittle anyone discussing public safety, mask mandates, or vaccine passports or those who have valid questions and concerns about his unsafe opening of schools and the Florida economy. Again, no one could really pin him down before Delta because Florida didn’t appear to be doing dramatically worse than states that tried to follow the science of safety from COVID-19 — so his image as trump’s smarter, stronger, successful and more popular heir-apparent kept building unabated until …

How quickly things can change in politics. And then the DeSantis Variant exposed holes in his empty stats, clichés and imaginary reality.

It was actually DeSantis himself who exposed his conservative ideology of a “bottom-up approach” as a total lie. He overruled local officials and school districts on basic public health measures when he issued an executive order banning schools from mandating masks, which was the only protection those under 12 years old had. This stance also exposed an uncaring person.

His own hypocrisy and tone-deafness reached the point of ridiculousness when he called COVID-19 precautions “medical authoritarianism” but also took personal credit for ending lockdowns and school closures, and trying to ban cruise ships and other private businesses from having mask or vaccine mandates. His own medical authoritarianism repeatedly proves he will mercilessly endanger his constituents if he sees a political advantage.

Making masks a political issue has also exposed DeSantis’ shameless authoritarian nature, because if he has no moral problem risking the lives of children and teachers for the sake of following a delusional, right-wing, anti-science agenda to stay popular, he will sacrifice anyone, at any time, for anything. The hollowness of Casey DeSantis saying her focus as First Lady would be helping children has also been exposed as she claps along with her husband’s cruel policies, like withholding money from schools mandating masks.

Clearly to DeSantis, like most trump Republicans, reality doesn’t matter. All that seems to matter is to look like a tough guy standing up for some twisted far-right fever dream — where their fantasies are truth and science and facts are merely fictions — Satan tricks us non-conservatives with. Doesn’t sound all that far from QAnon, does it?

A simple reality to anyone with common sense is you cannot be anti-mask and anti-vaccine and be pro-business, or even pro-life. It just doesn’t add up in any way, no matter how much DeSatan demands it does.

Defunding education and educators because they won’t follow DeSatan’s anti-science leadership to the graveyard of so many Floridians, so he can talk tough, is yet another self-inflicted epic fail.

But thanks to enough Floridians voting for DeSantis’ empty “bottom-up,” “freedom and liberty” clichés, Floridians risk his vendetta as they try to protect their children, students, employees, and customers with mask or vaccine requirements.

With the DeSantis Variant form of government, everyone has the “freedom and liberty” to do whatever they want. But if you did get sick and need hospital care, COVID-19 left few ICU beds open so hospitals needed to take liberties with your treatment. Some might even call those forced life and death choices of who got an ICU bed a “death panel.”

Certainly some reality is catching up with DeSantis. Polls show his approval rating has dropped from 66% in March to the low 40s, likely because Floridians have been seeing a lot of COVID-19 deaths lately. Reality has made his whole utopian “freedom and liberty” anti-masks and vaccines tough guy routine seem all the more irresponsible, insane and evil. There is just no way to spin sick kids and worn-out parents getting zero help from DeSantis to keep their kids safe.

Delta has also exposed why DeSatan has been hiding in the right-wing media shadows. His devious idea was that voters only see the superficial image of an attractive family and an intelligent, articulate husband-and-wife team who complement each other and have amazing backstories. Instead, voters are getting a glimpse of DeSantis’ dark psychological rabbit hole. 

This rabbit hole hides behind a false image of wholesomeness, just like DeSantis hides behind statistics, clichés, his uniform, wife, children, or anything else that humanizes him as he pushes to implement more inhumane policies.

Indeed until the Delta variant, for most of us ignorant of Florida politics, it sure seems like the plan to disguise the DeSantis Variant coming for our democracy was working. We can’t let that happen anymore.

End Part I and II (The Political Lens). Please Subscribe, Like and Support CNI to help accelerate the release of the bottom of DeSantis’ deep and dark psychological rabbithole in Parts III and IV (The Psychological Lens).

While working on a new Psychology of Woke piece, it was hard to not have DeSantis keep creeping in. I did not want to rush or conflate what should be very powerful, profound and revealing psychological analysis, so it made sense to put out the previously published first two parts of my 2021 DemCast psychological profile to help organize, guide and separate the “war on woke” analysis from parts 3 and 4 of the upcoming, much darker psychological portion of The Dangerous Case of the DeSantis Variant.

The DeSantis Variant did indeed have 4 parts back in 2021. My thought back then was to delay until closer to the 2022 Florida governor’s election for maximum effect in revealing his hidden toxic psychological dangers, but in late 2021, Casey DeSantis announced she had "cancer" just as trump started attacking her husband.

The sympathy they received got both of us to back off any “attacks” because even trump comprehended how horrible he would look attacking a family dealing with cancer. The funny thing is, I knew narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths often fake illnesses when cornered, and it often works in deflecting attacks, just like how her now "cured" cancer worked in protecting them. Coincidence?

In early March as the Florida campaign started heating up, DeSantis announced his wife was cancer free thanks to chemotherapy. Who knows what really happened but it was strange that the timing of her cancer and cure were very politically useful and effective in gaining sympathy, protecting DeSantis from trump, evading deeper scrutiny and giving them an opportunity to portray him as having a modicum of humanity.

At that point, it seemed wise to put it out 6-8 weeks before the election for maximum effect in Florida, but when he was 10 points up on Crist with 6-8 weeks to go, it seemed my brutal yet fair psychological profile of DeSantis would just be lost in the aftermath and dismissed as sour grapes after his victory. Again, it seemed much wiser to keep my powder dry for when it could make a real difference, like in the near future when he is officially running for President, because that has always been his dark plan.

Lastly, in thinking about DeSantis’ extreme response to Covid precautions, science, Democrats, MSM, POC, LGBTQ, and Disney (Florida’s largest employer), and how he has focused on demonizing them all via anti-wokeness,” his 2021 psychological profile makes it crystal clear that his authoritarian nature and behavior has only kept escalating into a dictator’s dark fever dream. Indeed his escalating patterns of attack, behavior and modus operandi are perfectly summed up by German Lutheran pastor Francis Niemöller’s famous poem, “First They Came.” 

The various versions all share Niemöller’s powerful regret about how his own silence helped the Nazis slowly boil the German frog into fascism as they escalated their deadly intolerance, and how in the end, there was no one left to stand up when lastly the Nazis came for him. Time to speak up non-authoritarian Republicans because icymi, DeSantis has had you on a similar racist, bigoted and fascist slow boil for years now.

First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me