Leer en Español
Hell broke loose this week when the GOP governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, announced the resurrection of the Florida State Guard, a force that’s been inactive since 1947. DeSantis asked for the Florida Legislature to provide appropriate funding for around 200 volunteers. The Guard would respond solely to the governor and it would not receive any kind of federal funding.
Of course, the insanely disproportionate reactions came quick, especially from Democrats.
Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell compared the force to the Venezuelan Colectivos of Nicolás Maduro, well-known for murdering students in peaceful protests.
The official Latino account of the Nikki Fried campaign for the governorship of Florida said something between the same lines, claiming that “millions of Floridians know what’s to live under regimes like this.”
MSNBC host Joy Reid compared the force to Fidel Castro’s. As did Florida Congresswoman and gubernatorial hopeful (and when I say hopeful, I mean that only a miracle lead her to win), Annette Tadeo.
I could go on all day long, but these examples are more than enough. As it happens constantly, DeSantis does something completely normal and the liberal media turns it into a scandal and tries to make him look like a crooked dictator. However, they certainly hit a sensitive vein in many Floridians this time. Many of them went to the Sunny State, fleeing communism, civil wars, and authoritarianism. Comparing a volunteer force to the Contras, the Cuban armed forces, or the Venezuelan Colectivos is, to say the least, deeply offensive.
But let’s start with the facts.
The Florida State Guard isn’t anything new
Twenty-two other states, including New York, Oregon, and California, have state guards. Does that mean that Gavin Newsom has its own personal militia ready to end his political opponents? After all, it makes sense that the woke activist who threw an egg to Larry Elder’s face while wearing a monkey mask would be on Gavin Newsom’s payroll. Who knows?
DeSantis asked for a $3.5 million budget to train 200 civilian volunteers to “to be trained in the best emergency response techniques.” So, even though the force is technically a military force, its role will mostly consist of responding to emergencies, which is essential in a state like Florida that has hurricanes almost every year.
Due to this particular circumstance, Florida Politics reporter Jason Delgado showed that the Florida National Guard is both undersized and overworked, “They’ve devoted more than 2.9 million federal work days between 2016 and 2021, but only 834,000 on state missions — per the approximate totals they shared with lawmakers in October.”
Yes, it is much ado about nothing.
Stop stupid political comparisons
Yet, although it might seem a trivial situation and nothing new as DeSantis might as well be used to the constant fake news of his political opponents and the liberal media, trying to score political points over the corpses and trauma of those who fled communism and civil wars is, to say the least, despicable.
Nikki Fried, Joy Reid, Annette Tadeo, and Charlie Crist are not stupid. They know they’re lying. They know that the Florida State Guard is not remotely comparable to the Venezuelan Colectivos, the Sandinistas, the FARC, the Contras, and the Cuban regime.
Will the Florida State Guard go in the middle of the night knocking doors on poor neighborhoods killing people randomly as the FAES does in my country, Venezuela? Will they rape college students like the National Guard does? Will they shoot civilians point-blank in the head in broad daylight as the Colectivos do?
Will the Florida State Guard kidnap, rape, and murder religious sisters (who were American citizens) as the Contras did in El Salvador?
Will they carry out bombings downtown, kidnap children, murder politicians and civilians without mercy, and kill their hostages like the FARC in Colombia?
And don’t make me get started with comparing it to Cuba.
If the answer is that they think they will, they might be pathological liars or lack gray mass in the brain.
Trying to score political points over the graves of Colombian, Cuban, Venezuelan, and Central American people, and even American citizens, and on the traumas of millions of people who’ve been tortured and raped and lost their families, their jobs, and their countries in the hands of psychopathic degenerates is a new level of low. However, can we be surprised? This is today’s Democratic Party, which is hellbent on turning Florida as red as Alabama.
Edgar is political scientist and philosopher. He defends the Catholic intellectual tradition. Edgar writes about religion, ideology, culture, US politics, abortion, and the Supreme Court. Twitter: @edgarjbb_ // Edgar es politólogo y filósofo. Defiende la tradición intelectual católica. Edgar escribe sobre religión, ideología, cultura, política doméstica, aborto y la Corte Suprema. Twitter: @edgarjbb_