Red State Governor’s Dream
His Own Private Military Force
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a wannabe, self-proclaimed smarter and smoother but no less evil reincarnation of trump, is pushing for Florida to create his very own, civilian military force. It’s not the wishful fantasy of some right wing, conspiracist and it is making its way through the Sunshine State’s Legislature. Well maybe it is a creation of a right wing, conspiracist, and his name is DeSantis, otherwise known as Trump II. We don’t know the color of the new military force’s shirts, maybe brown.
It sounds less like an honest effort to make Floridians safer and more like the continuing dogwhistle of GOP, red-state hostility toward what Republicans consider overreach and unfair laws imposed by the Democratic Congress and Democratic President Joe Biden.
The proposed, Florida State Guard could be activated by the governor if the National Guard was busy responding to other emergencies or otherwise unavailable. So fear not because DeSantis promises that this won’t turn into a personal, paramilitary vigilante force to do the governor’s political bidding. DeSantis said that he only wants the new group created so the state can quickly respond to natural emergencies, like hurricanes, natural disasters and other “state-specific” emergencies. And Santa Claus is coming to town.
Unlike the National Guard, which is under the U.S. Defense Department, the Florida State Guard would answer solely to the Governor, could not be deployed on federal missions and would involve no federal funding. I don’t trust that DeSantis will keep the State Guard’s mission narrow because I cannot trust a politician who has fought to stop mandated, COVID-19 protections, has lead the push to deny sex education in school, in a direct slap at the LGBTQ community and is the loudest voice in keeping any discussion about the history of racism out of the school classrooms. And the pandering goes on.
State Guards are designed to respond to natural disasters but don’t tell that to one of DeSantis’ blood brothers, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbot, who, in 2015, called out the Texas State Guard to monitor federal military exercises in his state, responding to a then, fast-growing conspiracy theory that the federal government was using Walmart parking lots to prepare for a future state of martial law. Abbott said the state guards were just collecting information to keep Texans safe during the multi-week exercises. It involved the Jade Helm 15 military training exercises held on April 28, 2015, in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Utah. The exercise, which involved 1,200 personnel from four of the five branches of the U.S. military, was designed to train around 1,200 soldiers in skills needed to operate in overseas combat environments, including maneuvering through civilian populations.
Conspiracists said the operation was really set up in advance of a military take-over to get people used to seeing military on the streets, to seize people’s guns, round up dissidents and to stockpile supplies at closed WalMarts for Chinese troops who will arrive to disarm Americans. Conspiracy theorist and Texas radio host Alex Jones said that “helm” was an acronym for “Homeland Eradication of Local Militants.” And conspiracists on the far right of the far right thought Jade Helm 15 was created to coincide with an apocalypse caused by a comet that was going to hit earth.
On April 28, Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor the Jade Helm 15 operation because “it is important that Texans know [that] their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed.”
Not to be out-wingnutted, on May 2, 2015, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told the South Carolina Republican Party’s annual convention that he had “reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise.” And that same day, wacky Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, said that his “office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise” with concerns that the U.S. Army is preparing for “modern-day martial law.”
Then there was “Operation Gotham Shield,” a readiness exercise coordinated from April 23–27, 2017, by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). The operation involved the hypothetical ground burst of a nuclear device at the New Jersey-side entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, resulting in “hundreds of thousands” of killed and injured persons and 4.5 million refugees from the initial blast and subsequent fallout. But conspiracists said it was really a “false flag” designed to cover up a planned, actual nuclear weapons attack against the New York metropolitan area, or to distract from a planned U.S. nuclear weapons attack against North Korea. Republican Chris Christie was governor at the time and fortunately, surprisingly, he did not create panic by sending out the National Guard.
Florida’s proposal authorizes the governor to maintain a defense force as “necessary to assist the civil authorities in maintaining law and order” even in the event of fantastic fears like Operation Gotham Shield and Jade Helm 15.
DeSantis could use the personal force to respond to what he deemed unrest as when DeSantis sent the the Florida National Guard to major cities in May 2020 after largely peaceful protests and some violence broke out in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. DeSantis also sent Florida National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border “to deal with an unusually high influx of migrants” and deployed them to Washington, D.C., to help protect the U.S. Capitol during President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Would DeSantis extend the new force to deal with civil protests by anti-DeSantis types? I would think so. Do you think he might respond to a Jade Helm 15-like or Gotham Shield-like event in the same crazed ways that Abbott and Gohmert did? You think?
Last year, DeSantis proposed an “anti-riot” bill meant to criminalize free speech even in peaceful protests. A federal judge struck down the plan last year as an unconstitutional infringement on the first amendment of the constitution which says “Congress shall make no law… abridging freedom of speech.” Never to accept a good, rational reason, DeSantis is appealing the ruling.
State Guards flourished from 1941 to 1945 in Florida and in other states to respond to emergencies while National Guardsmen were deployed to combat in World War II. Florida deactivated its State Guard after the war, as did most states, when the organizations were no longer needed. If DeSantis gets his way, Florida would become the 23rd active state guard in the country. Nearly every state has laws authorizing state defense forces, but there are currently just 22 active state defense forces in Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Alaska, California, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington State.
The Florida State Guard would enlist 400 troops and six, full-time civilian workers, with a proposed, annual budget of $10 million. Members would have to pass a medical exam, background check, have no felony convictions and would not be subject to the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The plan was made public in February after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned National Guard members around the nation who refuse to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 would have their pay withheld and barred from training. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, had requested an exemption for guard members in his state, which Austin denied.
Notable members of other State Guards include Lauren Guzman, who was crowned Miss Texas USA in 2014, and is a member of the Texas State Guard; Cooper Hefner, son of Hugh Hefner, is a member of the California State Military Reserve; the fabled hero and World War I veteran, Alvin C. York, served in the Tennessee State Guard; and former heavyweight champion boxer Jack Dempsey served in the New York Guard. Who knows, maybe DeSantis would appoint trump himself to the Florida State Guard, promoting him to Gen. Bone Spurs.