Ron DeSantis Wants Us to Know That He Is a Big, Tough Beef Boy

He'd rather own the libs than be conservative

Ron DeSantis (right, non-pumped) at a campaign event in Iowa last year.

Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign did not go well. He won zero states and spent $6,832 per vote, which is probably worse than how a horse with a sign hanging around its neck that says “I will give you $6,832” would have done. He was humiliated when he seemed to be wearing lifts in his boots, which — as far as Republican primary voters are concerned — is about 2/3 of the way to moonlighting as a drag queen named Rhonda Scandalous.¹ Even Vivek Ramaswamy mocked his manliness, which is a bit like having Larry Nassar write an open letter to the New England Journal of Medicine questioning your ethics.

Maybe that’s why last week, DeSantis showed everyone that he is a big, burly, rough-and-tumble steak stud by banning the production or sale of lab grown meat in Florida. You see, lab grown meat is a product that may exist one day. If it ever does, it could be cheaper and better for the environment than regular meat, plus we wouldn’t have to blast Zuckerman’s Famous Pig’s brains against the wall with a bolt pistol. This first-in-the-nation law ensures that any change in our 10,000 year-old meat production system won’t happen in Florida. Florida’s main exports will continue to be C-plus meth and airbrushed t-shirts with alligators on them, and hopefully the people of Florida are okay with that.

You may notice that this law violates about 20-30 nominal conservative principles. DeSantis is stifling innovation, getting the government involved in free market, and “picking winners and losers” by protecting ranchers. Plus, even though DeSantis and other Republicans have spent the past two years complaining so much about food prices that an 18th century French peasant would probably say “tone it down”, DeSantis is outlawing a product that people might one day want to buy. This is a heavy handed, anti-free market, anti-conservative move, significantly more severe than Michael Bloomberg’s effort to reduce soda sizes in New York, which Republicans reacted to as if Bloomberg had implemented Prohibition times a hundred.

DeSantis explained his decision by saying: “Florida is fighting back against the global elite’s plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs to achieve their authoritarian goals.” So, if you were wondering whether there’s some hidden element that makes this not totally stupid: There isn’t. The bugs thing, for what it’s worth, comes from the fact that some people think that humans should eat more bugs. Importantly, though: No-one is forcing people to eat bugs, except — as always — third grade bullies and prankster chefs. No-one will ever make you eat bugs or lab-grown meat because this is America, and you have the right to eat whatever garbage you want until you die of heart disease at 55. Unless you want to eat lab-grown meat in Florida: Ron DeSantis says that you’re not allowed.

Red meat has become a symbol of manliness on the right. Right-wing figures like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan — who, as the former host of Fear Factor is one of the only people alive who actually has forced people to eat bugs — have touted an all-meat “caveman diet”. Yes: all meat, nothing else. Which seems to be based on a perception of cavemen gleaned from Geico ads and Hanna-Barbera cartoons, because obviously cavemen ate any fucking food they could get their hairy, newly-thumb-having hands on. But all-meat diets are often touted on the type of podcasts that push testosterone supplements, erectile dysfunction medicines, and other products for men who are 100 percent not having a masculinity crisis why on Earth would you even think that?

In July, DeSantis was photographed standing in front of more slabs of beef than a Chippendale’s review (see photo at top). Now, he’s is striking down potential competitors for factory farms because, hey, the guy loves meat (but not in a gay way)! Personally, I can’t help but feel that DeSantis’ nanny state-ism is largely an effort to make him look like a big, burly manly man. But I wish he would have tried to look butch some other way, perhaps:

• Buy a motorcycle and also one of those leather vests that nominally says “Sons of Satan” or “Grim Reapers”, but which actually says “I’m middle-aged and not coping with it well”;

• Wrestle and/or fuck a bear;

• Be filmed walking away from an explosion with a look on your face that says: “What? I walk away from explosions all the time. Not even worth turning around.”

• Seduce Jill Biden and then ghost her;

• Run with the bulls, but upstream;

• Buy truck nuts, lawnmower nuts, chair nuts, tea kettle nuts, and hand-painted miniature of the 250 year-old Wilhelmsbad Park carousel in Germany nuts;

• Kill a deer, but not in the woods: Marry the deer, take out a life insurance policy, and then poison the deer so slowly that the police never suspect a thing. Because that’s cold.

DeSantis was joined in his war on meat that doesn’t exist yet by fellow political manly man John Fetterman. The Pennsylvania Democrat supported DeSantis on Twitter, saying “I would never feed this slop to my kids.” And he shouldn’t have to! I will never tell John Fetterman what to feed his kids. Unfortunately, he feels comfortable telling me what to feed my kids. Because if — in five or ten years — I can buy low-cost, ethically sourced meat with a low carbon footprint, then yes: I will absolutely feed that to my kids. Though if I’m living in Pennsylvania — and you never know, things could go really, really badly for me and I could end up in Pennsylvania — people like John Fetterman might make that illegal. Fetterman doesn’t seem to realize that one person’s choices should not be forced on everyone else. For example: I wouldn’t walk on the Senate floor dressed like a pot dealer in a Kevin Smith movie, but that’s my choice, and I shouldn’t force it on John Fetterman.

The fact that DeSantis and some Republican-led legislatures have decided that they’d rather own the libs than be conservative doesn’t surprise me one bit. As I’ve written before: The Republican Party is no longer a conservative party. It’s a MAGA party that’s pretty good at virtue signaling but very bad at governing. The dark irony is that moderate liberals like me conceded long ago that conservatives are basically right about markets: They drive innovation and should mostly be left alone. Now, the GOP has changed its mind on the one issue where they were more right than wrong. If lab-grown meat takes off, then DeSantis could end up looking very silly. But in the meantime, he gets to look like Mister Macho Meat Man, which is probably all he really wanted.

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1. Alt from my wife: Pam Handle. Because Florida.