Now, Everything is Political

Our politics vacillate between money and culture.

The inimitable Tom Waits once observed that a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the accordion, but doesn’t. The I-wish-they-were-a-Vaudeville-team-but-aren’t pair of Southern governors, Abbott and DeSantis, are, by any definition, not gentlemen.

To highlight the plight of border cities and states that are being overrun by record numbers of immigrants from Mexico, Central, and South America, they hatched a heartless and cynical plan to dump migrants on northern states that proclaim their love for immigrants but admittedly don’t have to deal with the crisis every day.

Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the obvious: we have a huge immigration problem. It is the result, or really the lack thereof, of years and years of kicking the can down the road. The problem seems intractable. We lost our last, best hope in the aughts when George W. Bush proposed a completely workable and humanitarian solution that addressed the border, the so-called dreamers—those who were brought here as children and know no other home—and the rest of the at-the-time 10 million or so migrants living and working here. It had bipartisan support, and nearly crossed the legislative finish line, only to be stopped by ultra-conservatives who became the Tea Party, and now are the Congressional Freedom Caucus.

In the Twentieth Century, politics was about money. Remember James Carville’s words: “It’s the economy, stupid”? Now, politics is about culture. This represents a sea change. Scholars are calling it “dematerialization,” but as a hater of jargon, I’m sticking with “sea change.” I used to like jargon, because when you speak a secret language, jargon keeps your ego afloat as you recognize that you’re fluent in an exclusive realm. I think it was the crop of Nineties MBA’s that put me off of jargon for good. When “visibility” went from how far a pilot can see to whether a CEO could see into a profit and loss statement, I’d had enough. “Dematerialization” just sounds like something from Star Trek to me. It’s Scotty’s problem, not mine. But, I digress.

Cultural politics by its very nature is everyone’s problem. Florida is an interesting and disheartening study in contrasts. Governor DeSantis has adopted an ironically untrue descriptor: “Free Florida.” Some think it’s intended as a plea, but it’s a statement of pride. A phrase that tells the world, in Florida, you’re free.

It’s ironic, because in Florida, while you’re free not to wear a mask to protect your health or others’, you are not free to say “gay” in a classroom, or talk about anything regarding sex or gender. So, not so free. And if you have the temerity to renounce Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law as the Walt Disney Company did a few months ago, you’re free to have your fifty-year old special tax district deal revoked.

Ever interested in “owning the libs,” in another of his signature mean-spirited moves, DeSantis has taken to using taxpayer money to reach halfway across the country to Texas to put Venezuelan immigrants on planes and buses bound for liberal places like New York and Massachusetts.

Abbott of Texas and DeSantis are engaged in a bit of political theatre that is not new. In 1962, segregationists in Arkansas chartered a Greyhound bus to send Blacks to Hyannis Port, MA, where they were dropped off in front of President Kennedy’s family compound. The clear meaning was, if you love the Blacks so much, you take them. 

Historical documentarian, Ken Burns, notes that DeSantis has devalued these migrants by making them "political pawns" in his "authoritarian game," and added that DeSantis’s actions, including his war on The Walt Disney Company, come "straight out of the authoritarian playbook."

“It’s the abstraction of human life. It’s basically saying that you can use a human life that is as valuable as yours or mine, and put it in a position of becoming a political pawn in somebody’s authoritarian game,” he told CNN.

“Owning the libs” is big business when you are perpetually fundraising. You fuel the fire with outrage.

Like Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Mars) and Lauren Boebert (R-Open Carry Colorado), DeSantis is one-eighth politician and seven-eighths performance artist. The performative is more fun than the governing for which at least some of their constituents hired them.

In the midst of our historic heatwave, I saw a woman post a picture of a thermostat set on seventy-two degrees, with the caption, “Gavin can kiss my thermostass.” A nice play on words, but a shot at the wrong authority; the governor didn’t make the emergency request for Californians to raise thermostats and prevent a blackout, the utility company did.

Our politics have become the battleground of endless culture wars. Devoid of humanity and even common sense, leaving us to fiddle as Los Angeles literally burns.

©2022 Jon Sinton