When former Florida governor and current U.S. Senator Rick Scott was CEO of the healthcare network Columbia/HCA, he was accused of overseeing an organization that was eventually fined $1.7 billion for criminal fraud in Medicare reimbursements, such as for fake or unnecessary tests. As they say, the “buck” stopped with him, but neither Scott nor anyone else was charged and imprisoned, and as Matt Stieb observed in New York Magazine in 2019, you can’t imprison a corporation because it is not a “person”—which I suspect he meant in sarcasm, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that a corporation was legally a “person.”
Of course the bigger question was why Florida voters would overlook Scott’s crimes and vote for him twice for governor and then again for the U.S. Senate, albeit by narrow margins. Don’t Republican voters pride themselves on being allegedly more “moral” and “religious” than “liberals” and “socialists”? Well, some of them do I suppose, but mainly those who don’t like any change in the “status quo”—meaning not having to be bothered with thinking about their own moral shortcomings. Of course the other voting sector is comprised of those who need other people to hate on to vent out their frustrations for their own miserable lives.
Frankly I have trouble distinguishing Scott…
...from Pluto in the Wes Craven film The Hills Have Eyes…
…and that isn’t just because of Scott’s organized crime past, but because of the horrifying “future” he intends for the country as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Scott has already received attention for a tax plan that reads more like a another bailout for the rich, only this time to be paid for by taxing the poor. But Scott also has a bizarre 11-point plan in which he hopes will be the path to retaking Congress in 2022; others say that it might actually help Democrats retain control of Congress if more people are aware of it. People who think this is a free country are apparently the main obstacles to “rescuing America” and whatever inspires the far-right’s paranoid fantasies:
We will inspire patriotism and stop teaching the revisionist history of the radical left; our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers. Public schools will focus on the 3 R’s, not indoctrinate children with critical race theory or any other political ideology.
No, only with the political ideology of the right, which of course entails the discouragement of critical thinking, historical truth (such as how the “founding fathers” justified slavery in the Constitution), and insuring the bigoted beliefs of parents are not under threat. Next is
We are going to eliminate racial politics in America. No government policy will be based on race. People “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We are all made in the image of God; to judge a person on the color of their epidermis is immoral.
What planet does this guy live on? Not the one most of us do. Racial politics is here whether people like or not. When I was in college, a blonde, very pale white female student just blurted out in class that she wasn’t a “racist,” but she just would never marry a black man before again reiterating the “fact” that she wasn’t a racist; even in a deep south school like UTK, this declaration baffled the whole class—but not because it was clear that there is a fine line between racism and the recognition of the social differences that race imposes, but why the obvious needed to be spoken of at all. It just is.
Then there is the “tough on crime” business, mainly “moral” people turning the other cheek concerning police abuses, and of building the wall for this despicable bit of ignorant racist hypocrisy:
We welcome those who want to join us in building the American dream, immigrants who want to be Americans, not change America. We are a stronger nation because we are a nation of immigrants, but immigration without assimilation makes us weaker.
Yeah, right. Hispanics don’t want to “assimilate,” and the increasing number of immigrants from east and south Asia won’t “change America”—just look at the vast over-representation of these groups in colleges and universities at the expense of whites (who of course would rather blame underrepresented minorities). The truth is, of course, is that white America has a problem with “assimilation.” When we see all those communities like the International District/Chinatown in Seattle that are proudly unassimilated, tell me how much you actually care.
Then there is the two-fisted punch in the public gut:
Socialism is un-American and always leads to poverty and oppression. We will stop it. We will shrink the federal government, reduce the government workforce by 25% in 5 years, sell government buildings and assets, and get rid of the old, slow, closed, top-down, government-run-everything system we have today.
Note that any public assistance or anti-poverty program—and that includes Social Security and Medicare—is considered a “socialist” program by the far-right. If Scott and his ilk had their way, poverty would increase in this country by multiple factors. I mean, even working people who vote for buttholes like Scott hope he isn’t serious about this.
Of course there is the Trump nonsense about election fraud, and the way to “fix” it is to follow Florida and Texas’ lead and pass laws making sure that only Republican voters have the “right” to vote as much as possible, and only Republicans have the right to declare “fraud.” But doesn’t every citizen has the right to vote, as long as they do so in their place of residence (unlike, say. Mark Meadows)? Republicans choose to put up as many roadblocks to doing so as possible; “swing” states and those threatened by demographic change, like Texas, Arizona and Georgia, are engaged in passing laws that insure that more people are denied their constitutional right to have their voices heard in opposition to a fascist state.
Today’s Democrat Party is trying to rig elections and pack the courts because they have given up on Democracy. They don’t believe they can win based on their ideas, so they want to game the system and legalize voter fraud to stay in power. In true Orwellian fashion, Democrats refer to their election rigging plans as “voting rights”. We won’t allow the radical left to destroy our democracy by institutionalizing dishonesty and fraud.
Well, we know who the real “Orwellian” is, who thinks he can brainwash foolish people with lies into voting away their rights, whether the right to vote or the right to privacy. Then there is the usual unenforceable promotion of “culture”: family, gender identity, prolife, etc. Of course in Scott's country, everyone will have the right to express at least their religious “freedom of speech” and get into your face about their so-called faith (perhaps excluding Muslims) in any venue they desire without fear of being “canceled.”
Scott’s plan ends with Trump’s foolish “America First” foreign policy which has only been proven to be a disaster and has left the U.S. and its natural allies scrambling to make the world safe for democracy.
Scott’s plan actually sounds more like a recipe for a religious fundamentalist regime like Iran with a touch of Putin’s Orwellian propaganda which dehumanizes political opponents and makes them targets of oppression and suppression. It is not mere hot air, because as Mitch McConnell apparently realizes, Scott’s “plan” can burn when it is blown back. Still, let’s be cognizant of the fact that after Trump’s election defeat, anti-democratic state legislatures and governors who behave like authoritarian dictatorships have worked to ensure that defeat will not be an “acceptable” outcome--and nor will opposition to far-right "groupthink".
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