Paul Revere earned a place in American folklore with his April 1775 gallop through the New England countryside, warning, “The British are coming, the British are coming!”

Fellow patriots, it’s time we channel Paul Revere to warn our friends and family across America about the evil lizard who has slithered out of the swamps of Florida to spew vitriol and poison across this great land.

That’s right, our pugnacious, snarling governor is crisscrossing the country (and beyond), inciting people to believe the worst in each other, to undermine fundamental tenets of our democracy and to turn back the clock on social progress, all under the banner of a political party that has been highjacked by a far right leaning dangerously toward fascism.

Each one of us should commit to telling our friends and family up north and out west, especially those in swing states who might be inclined to vote for a so-called conservative populist, just how evil this man truly is.

KIDNAPPING FOR HEADLINES

Unless they’ve drunk too much of the MAGA juice, or are just unrepentant racists, your friends and family elsewhere can only be shocked by the kidnapping of immigrants, after lying to them about their destination, as a political stunt to earn a few days of headlines. Never mind those people are God’s children, too. In the eyes of our swamp lizard governor, they’re just fodder to build his political brand.

Tell your friends and family how Governor Swampy has needlessly, but painfully, alienated large slices of Florida’s wonderfully diverse population, including our Black and gay communities. Now his toadies in Tallahassee are continuing those efforts with a slew of new restrictive legislative proposals that would deny dignity and rights to many Floridians.

Warn them about Swampy’s politicization of Florida’s classrooms. Books are banned for the most absurd of reasons. His minions dictate what can and cannot be discussed with students. Teachers are terrified of losing their jobs.

SWAMPY’S SECRET POLICE

Or how Swampy is building his own police force to track down supposedly widespread—but in fact, virtually nonexistent—voting fraud. Seeds for a secret police? It’s a scary thought. (More on this in a subsequent column.)

Or how Swampy has rolled back whatever minuscule progress there has been curtailing the tsunami of gun violence. Want to own a gun without the hassle of getting a permit? In Swampy’s Florida, hey, no problem. Blast away.

The list of Swampy outrages is, sadly, long and growing. Hardly a day goes by during which decent people across our state do not shudder in disgust at this man.

For me, personally, one of more bothersome elements of the Swampy story is that the man is a fraud. The Ivy League-educated Harvard lawyer goes on television and acts like a thug, which has to be an act. Can one really graduate magna cum laude from Yale and cum laude from Harvard Law School and then have an (admittedly) impressive career as a military lawyer by being so crass and impertinent? Swampy knows the core base of troglodyte Republicans, from whom he must dislodge Trump, wants a high-volume, angry apostle of grievance and resentment, no matter how cruel or superfluous. Showman Swampy is feeding that character to them, incessantly, on TV and laptop screens far and wide.

Fellow Floridians, we know the truth about Ron DeSantis. Now it’s time to be modern-day Paul Reveres and warn the countryside.

John Buckman ([email protected]) is a retired journalist and marketing executive living on Miami Beach. He loves most things about life in Florida, just not Ron DeSantis.