April 27, 2023

DeSantis tries out a tv and movie bully trope and it backfires big time

 

Hal Brown's Blog

This is a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and other subjects. My posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky. I'm a retired MSW clinical social worker/psychotherapist and mental health center director who was also a cranberry farmer. Scroll archives on bottom of page to see previous blog stories. There are new ones added almost every day, although if I don't have anything original to say I try not to say anything at all.

Click this and other images to enlarge

If DeSantis wants to run for president he has one rival in the GOP primary, a formidable foe, who he can only attack for being too old. This might not sit well in the state which is second only to California in the number of senior citizens.

He's also boxed in when it comes to going after Trump because he can't alienate hard-core Trump supporters by running as the younger and smarter version of the greatest president in American history. All he can say is "vote for me I'm the second best" which is hardly a good idea when the best is running against him.

DeSantis, like Trump, is a grievance obsessed person who thrives on hate and resentment so it isn't any surprise that he campaigns on what and who he's against, not what he's for. All he is saying is that he's for what he's against.

He, not Trump, demonized the group of beliefs in social justice called woke. This is a term added to the Merriam-Websters dictionary in September of 2017 though the word was used back in the 1930's. DeSantis wanted to puff out his barrel chest and plaster an anti-woke label on it to wear on his version of Trump's Superman outfit. 

I asked ChatGPT to make an image of him wearing an anti-woke Superman style costume and this is the result:

I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot create visual images. However, I can provide you with a written description of Ron DeSantis wearing an anti-woke Superman-style costume.

Ron DeSantis stands tall, clad in a bright blue and red costume reminiscent of the iconic superhero Superman. The costume is emblazoned with the phrase "Anti-Woke" in bold white letters across his chest. The suit is form-fitting and muscular, accentuating DeSantis' physique.

The blue material of the costume is covered in stars, representing the American flag, and the red cape flowing behind him in the breeze. DeSantis wears a pair of blue tights and red boots that reach up to his knees. His face is stern and focused, with a determined expression.

As he stands with his fists on his hips, a symbol of strength and confidence, the people around him look on in awe. With his Anti-Woke Superman-style costume, DeSantis is ready to fight against the forces of political correctness and cultural Marxism that threaten the values of the American people.

Trump and other Republicans pay lip service to being anti-woke but aren't obsessed with ranting about it.

You've seen the television shows and movies about fighting bullies. There are two versions. In the first, a kid moves and has to start gong to a new school where right off he's picked on by a bully. His father or someone else explains that the way to handle this is to take out the bully in no uncertain terms.

From Ranker: Wherever there's a young outsider or a bumbling protagonist, there's a bully. Bullies help our downtrodden teen/pre-teen become a hero; help them make the speech or the punch that inspires the slow clap from their peers, and forces them to learn to kick standing on one leg like a crane. There are a lot of memorable movies and TV shows that feature some of the most memorable bullies in pop culture. Those who have seen any of the Back to the Future movies can attest that anyone from the Tannen family, Biff, Griff or Buford "Mad Dog," are great examples of memorable bullies. 

Bullies can come in any size or form. Wayne Arnold from The Wonder Years and Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver are two very different, yet menacing bullies who at one point were considered the biggest bullies on TV.

  See Ranker for who are the favorite bullies on TV and in the movies.

The other example involves the tired old story about someone being sent to prison for the first time. You know how that one goes. He or she figures out who the biggest and baddest bully is and they take them out quick and dirty.

Now we have the malignantly narcissistic Ron DeSantis who rather that trying to take out a bully - bear with me the metaphor isn't perfect - he goes after the largest and most powerful corporation in Florida. 

His first mistake was trying to make them evil incarnate because he wants them to represent a lifestyle he supposedly - who knows what he really believes - thinks is dangerous to the sweet children of Florida. He wants Floridians to think Disney endorses a perverted lifestyle which will turn the children of Florida into wicked heathen members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Of course Disney isn't a bully, but Disney is big, and beloved by the woke community, so they have a bullseye on them as far as DeDSantis is concerned.

What better way to prove his mettle than kick them in the cojones?

This just backfired big time. Here's my version of yesterday's lead story illustration from HUFFPOST which explains what I mean:

Click above to enlarge

As my top illustration shows, guess who got kicked in the cojones by the most famous and adored mouse in the entire world.

 Move over Mighty Mouse...
Wikipedia Commons
... there's a new superhero in town.


----------Addendum----------

I made the illustrations and wrote most of this last night. This morning when I made my coffee and turned on MSNBC as I always do to watch "Morning Joe" as I work on my blog the discussion was about the DeSantis war against Disney.

Joe Scarbough said Mickey Mouse has brass knuckles and made DeSantis look like a fool — again which I would put as that Mickey has been doing well well with his white gloved fist and might answer "I need brass knuckles, thank you very much."

Click above and below to enlarge

Updates:

You have to scroll down the liberal Raw Story website passing at least 15 stories about Donald Trump to get to the first one about Ron DeSantis:
Excerpt:
"Look, I mean, this is really emblematic of the way Ron DeSantis appears to have decided to run for president," said (political analyst Ron) Brownstein. "You know, the video, God made me a fighter, he'll fight every fight that Donald Trump does but he will not bring all of the baggage that he has. I am Trumpism without Trump. And that is his pitch to Republican voters. There is an audience for it in the Republican Party. But you have to ask yourself, is he kind of losing sight of the bigger picture here?"
My speech bubble added. Click above to read article.

CLICK ABOVE TO READ

Excerpt:

“Maybe the governor knows better than to get between voters and their beer,” said another top Republican, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “Or perhaps he’s realizing that these retaliatory and vindictive acts by a supposedly free market Republican government isn’t making Florida look very free. Pro-business Republicans and members of the legislature are already grumbling privately.”


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