!Out Of State Leftists Cheer DeSantis As Florida ICUs Fill Up, Red State Slides Into Living HELL!

[Jon Ichabod]

[For Trumpists, Death is Freedom!]




Opinion
Krugman: ‘Freedom’ Florida and the Delta variant disaster
DeSantis has helped create a state of mind in which vaccine skepticism
flourishes and refusal to take precautions is normalized



Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, isn’t stupid. He is, however, ambitious
and supremely cynical. So when he says things that sound stupid, it’s
worth asking why. And his recent statements on COVID-19 help us understand
why so many Americans are still dying or getting severely ill from the
disease.

The background here is Florida’s unfolding public health catastrophe.

We now have highly effective vaccines freely available to every American
who is at least 12 years old. There has been a lot of hype about
“breakthrough” infections associated with the delta variant, but they
remain rare, and serious illness among the vaccinated is rarer still.
There is no good reason we should still be suffering severely from this
pandemic.

But Florida is in the grip of a COVID surge worse than it experienced
before the vaccines. More than 10,000 Floridians are hospitalized, around
10 times the number in New York, which has about as many residents; an
average of 58 Florida residents are dying each day, compared with six in
New York. And the Florida hospital system is under extreme stress.

There’s no mystery about why this has happened. At every stage of the
pandemic DeSantis has effectively acted as an ally of the coronavirus, for
example by issuing orders blocking businesses from requiring that their
patrons show proof of vaccination and schools from requiring masks. More
generally, he has helped create a state of mind in which vaccine
skepticism flourishes and refusal to take precautions is normalized.

So, given these grim developments, one might have expected or at least
hoped that DeSantis would reconsider his position. In fact, he has been
making excuses — it’s all about the air-conditioning! He has been claiming
that any new restrictions would have unacceptable costs for the economy.

Above all, he has been playing the liberal-conspiracy-theory card, with
fundraising letters declaring that the “radical left” is “coming for your
freedom.”

So let’s talk about what the right means when it talks about “freedom.”
Since the pandemic began, many conservatives have insisted that actions to
limit the death toll — social distancing, wearing a mask and now getting
vaccinated — should be matters of personal choice. Does that position make
any sense?

Well, driving drunk is also a personal choice. But almost everyone
understands that it’s a personal choice that endangers others; 97% of the
public considers driving while impaired by alcohol a serious problem. Why
don’t we have the same kind of unanimity on refusing to get vaccinated, a
choice that helps perpetuate the pandemic and puts others at risk?

My answer is that when people on the right talk about “freedom” what they
actually mean is closer to “defense of privilege” — specifically the right
of certain people (generally white male Christians) to do whatever they
want.

Not incidentally, if you go back to the roots of modern conservatism, you
find people like Barry Goldwater defending the right of businesses to
discriminate against Black Americans. In the name of freedom, of course. A
lot, though not all, of the recent panic about “cancel culture” is about
protecting the right of powerful men to mistreat women. And so on.

Once you understand that the rhetoric of freedom is actually about
privilege, things that look on the surface like gross inconsistency and
hypocrisy start to make sense.

Why, for example, are conservatives so insistent on the right of
businesses to make their own decisions, free from regulation — but quick
to stop them from denying service to customers who refuse to wear masks or
show proof of vaccination? It’s all about whose privilege is being
protected.

Anyway, as you watch DeSantis invoke “freedom” to escape responsibility
for his COVID catastrophe, remember, when he says it, that word does not
mean what you think it means.

Paul Krugman is a New York Times columnist.

[Jon Ichabod]