'Make America Florida': Columnist paints bleak vision of US under President DeSantis

A grim vision of an America under a President Ron DeSantis was painted by a Salon columnist Monday – and it describes a nightmare.

“Ron DeSantis has turned Florida into a laboratory for fascist cruelty and authoritarian oppression,” wrote Chauncey Devega. “He hopes to take this experiment nationwide.”

Explaining the rationale for creating his bleak description, he said, “The news media's primary responsibility is to speak truth to power by explaining, in clear and direct terms, how a given policy or a decision by a political actor will affect the daily lives of real people.

“So what will it mean if Ron DeSantis gets his way and is able to ‘Make America Florida’?”'

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Firstly, he said, women across the country will lose their reproductive rights.

He added that the LGBTQ community will be “terrorized on a national scale. …Nowhere in America will be safe for LGBTQ people.”

Voter suppression and intimidation will be rife with prosecutions for “voter fraud,” which will particularly affect Black communities, he said.

“Florida’s Orwellian thought-crime laws” will expand across the country, banning certain topics from being discussed and fining and imprisoning teachers, librarians and other educators who fall foul of the rules, he wrote.

Balanced education will be replaced by “patriotic” indoctrination, resulting in a population less capable of critical thought.

Gun laws will become even more relaxed, and the number of shooting-related deaths will rise, DeVega said.

The social safety net will be weakened.

And right-wing extremists will become emboldened through his promise to pardon many Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

“Ron DeSantis has been terrible for the people and state of Florida — even if many people in that state don't yet understand that — and he will be even worse for America as a whole,” Devega wrote.

“That's the story. If the American news media were acting as real guardians of democracy, they would be explaining that reality to their audience on a daily basis.”