With his campaign flailing and poll numbers plummeting, Florida’s tarnished golden boy, Ron DeSantis, must find some magic to reverse his political death spiral. He does not have the cojones to go toe-to-toe with the MAGA godhead, so his strategy has been to steal some of Trump’s macho applause-line policies to try and convince people he is a “real man” — the kind right-wingers swoon over.
Today Ron was at yet another one of conservatism’s circle jerks, “The Gathering 2023” (which sounds like a B-horror movie sequel). He told the host, Erick Erickson, he had a sure-fire strategy for tacking America’s drug habit, which he monotonically announced involved extra-judicial executions. He explained his plan to the audience (the syntax is all his):
“I’m going to send military down there will build a wall. Will do remain in Mexico, stop the invasion. We’ll do all that. But when you have cartels operating the way they are, they’re operating as akin to foreign terrorist organizations because they’re killing our people. They’re poisoning our people. So we are going to authorize the use of deadly force against the cartels.”
He added, “If you have somebody coming in with the fentanyl on there and the backpack, they even break through the border wall where there is wall. If they’re doing that, that’s the last thing they they’re going to be able to do because we’re going to leave them stone cold dead at the border. We’re not putting up with that anymore.”
Exciting stuff. But Ron was fuzzy on some of the details. If a US border agent sees a person with a backpack breaking through the wall, a rational observer will agree it is reasonable to believe the person is a lawbreaker — and not someone just taking a shortcut. But can the agent reasonably assume there are narcotics in the backpack?
Is it not possible that the wall breaker has packed water, food, and a change of clothes?
Doesn’t common sense, compassion, and Jesus-style Christianity demand that the border patrol allow the miscreant to prove he is not a drug smuggler — and not just shoot them on sight? Or is Ron suggesting we adopt the old East German philosophy of simply killing anyone trying to scale the Berlin Wall?
Let us assume that the American border authorities should have a higher respect for life than the Stasi. Under that moral standard, the border-hopper will have the time to show the contents of their backpack. This consideration raises a question. If drugs are present, does DeSantis intend that the agent shoot the smuggler in the head on the spot?
If so, is there a minimum amount that warrants this death sentence? Or is any quantity of fentanyl enough? Does the agent have to test the suspect substance to prove it is fentanyl? Or is a guess — no matter how poorly informed — enough? What if the putative smuggler looks youngish? Does the agent still shoot the youth, possibly violating the Supreme Court’s ruling that you cannot execute minors?
What if there are two people but only one backpack — should the border guard kill them both? There are other questions, but the situation is already beyond absurd.
This profession of macho madness is not the first time the Ivy League-educated DeSantis has decided to sound like a moron in pursuing the GOP nomination. He has repeatedly promoted the assassination of suspected drug smugglers. He also advocates invading our second-largest trading partner, a country we are not at war with.
Last week, in Iowa, he told a voter and then NBC News:
“We will absolutely reserve the right if they’re invading our country and killing our people,” DeSantis said when a voter asked whether he would be willing to use drones against the cartels.
Asked later by NBC News to clarify, DeSantis said: “I said I would use whatever force we need to defend the country. We’d be willing to lean in against them, and we reserve the right to defend our country.”
I wonder how many innocent Mexican dead are acceptable under DeSantis’s plan? I know his rationale would be, they are killing ours we will kill theirs. But is there a limit? Or is carpet bombing a Mexican city suspected of being a cartel hub an option?
What if the US does go to war with Mexico? Would that insanity even stop the drug trade? In Germany after WWII, with the Nazis defeated, their top leadership hanged, jailed, or absconded, and their military disarmed, the Black Market thrived in the defeated nation. Because where there is demand, there is supply — as the abject failure of the 53-year war on drugs proves.
Further, for the sake of argument, I will postulate that contrary to the lessons of history, America manages to reduce the quantity of drugs coming overland from Mexico to zero. America has thousands of miles of coastline and a northern border. What is the plan to stop the drugs coming in on ships? Search every freighter?
And if the drug routes head North, would DeSantis and his fellow armchair warriors recommend we invade Canada? Have they thought this through? Is there no limit to their madness?