Ron DeSantis, George Floyd and the death of empathy
DeSantis' bristling at the idea that Americans should feel bad for Floyd is part of a broader lack of empathy among Republicans.
Ron DeSantis is many things. He’s a valor hound who has used his physical proximity to Navy Seals to make it seem like he was on frontlines in the Middle East. He’s a painfully awkward person whose smile has become the stuff of political internet legend. Most recently he has become a disastrous presidential candidate, primarily because of the second thing on this list. Mostly, Ron DeSantis is a pretty unlikable guy. He’s unlikable because when he tries to show empathy, it comes off as fake. But when he’s showing a lack of empathy, that’s when the real Ron DeSantis shines.
At last night’s bickering match between DeSantis and Nikki Haley, the Florida Governor went after his opponent for, essentially, showing empathy following the murder of George Floyd. More specifically, Haley said at the time that Floyd’s murder was so shocking and horrific that it should have been felt by every American. DeSantis couldn’t stomach that.
“She tweeted during this period of time, that the death of George Floyd should be ‘personal and painful’ for each and every American,” DeSantis said. “But people in Iowa had nothing to do with that, or Florida or South Carolina. She was virtue signaling to the left.”
It was a grotesque moment — DeSantis saying that Americans shouldn’t have had to feel bad about Floyd’s killing. He was right, in the uber-libertarian, free speech absolutist way that no one should be forced to do something against their will, even if no one ever forced Americans to confront the trauma of Floyd’s killing, instead of the society-wide reaction that it was an awful and inexcusable event. He was also right, in a way that is completely devoid of any sense of empathy, responsibility or basic concept of right and wrong. “She was accepting the narrative and she was trying to impress people that were never going to like us,” DeSantis said.
The basic “narrative” at the time was that Floyd had been brutally and wrongfully killed and that it was terrible for anyone, regardless of color, to see a human being suffer that way. The sub-narrative was that law enforcement needed to be held accountable for this act of brutality. In the minds of DeSantis and others on the right, this immediately warped into a “war on police,” which warped into “they’re rioting in all the cities,” which warped into “we back the blue to the hilt,” which is how DeSantis closed out his justification for his lack of empathy about Floyd on Thursday night.
Empathy has had a difficult time in the Republican party for a while now, so it’s no surprise that DeSantis struggles with the concept. His hero, Reagan, also had a penchant for abject cruelty. Of course, Trump is perhaps the most unsympathetic and cruel politician in U.S. history, openly telling people even at last night’s town hall that he likes them only because they like him. Trump would not hesitate to disparage every single person who voted for him if they decided to turn against him.
While DeSantis’ and Republicans’ inability to empathize with suffering — whether it be George Floyd dying on a Minneapolis street or desperate migrants seeking a better life at the southern border — is disturbing, perhaps even more disturbing is that it’s often rooted in a revisionism of reality. When I heard DeSantis mention Floyd, it wasn’t just his lack of empathy that I heard, but a disbelief that what happened to him was even that bad, because it hadn’t even really happened that way. That’s probably because I’m fully aware of the George Floyd trutherism that is rampant on the far right, most explicitly on display in a series of episodes of Tucker Carlson’s new show, where the concept of Floyd’s death even being a murder at all was discussed at length. I’ve heard enough of DeSantis — the “woke” obsession, using terms like “virtue signaling,” the occasional use of “Brandon” for Biden — to know that his mind is just as warped by the online-right as any of the election deniers being radicalized on Facebook that I come across, or their slightly more savvy contemporaries at places like Gab who end up harassing me at the behest of a white supremacist ghoul. DeSantis is as online-right as they come, and his weird tick about Haley telling people they should have felt bad when George Floyd was killed was a tell.
This matters less for presidential politics — DeSantis is quickly approaching also-ran status — than it does for the broader implications of a party not only unhinged from truth, but unable to empathize with the suffering of others. A majority of Republicans don’t even believe the insurrection was actually an insurrection. More to the point, they certainly don’t feel bad about it. The near-complete inability to recognize suffering in their fellow Americans or care about it is what makes this such a dangerous moment. When you can’t empathize, you begin to view others as less than human. Unfortunately, that’s how many Republicans view anyone who disagrees with them.