Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fulfills General Jack D. Ripper’s deepest delusion

"Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation, fluoridation of water? Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids." 

No, that's not health czar Kennedy speaking. He's busy swimming with his family in D.C.'s free-flowing and polluted Rock Creek. It's not Trump himself, as he is pals with at least one batch of communists (Putin's gang) and is trying to strangle other communists in a place that rhyme's with whina, as in "Whina isn't China bowing to my precious tariffs?" It's not even Florida's Glorious Leader Ron DeSantis who, yesterday, signed a bill in Trump-like fashion to ban fluoride in Florida's water.

No, the lead-in quotes belong to the fictional General Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Gen. Ripper unleashed Armageddon due to 1950s-style paranoia about the addition of fluoride to America's drinking water. 

This was a fear pushed by the conservative John Birch Society who saw a commie behind every tree, within every Liberal, even in Republican POTUS Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Birchers stoked the Red Scare and opposed the Earl Warren's Supreme Court's effort to integrate public schools. Their "Impeach Earl Warren" signs adorned highways all over the U.S. but especially in the unreconstructed South. Birchers even hated Mr. Rogers for his niceness and inclusivity. We once called them Right-Wing Nuts, then shortened it to Wingnuts, and, now, MAGA.

Project 2025 is the place where the John Birch Society meets Christian Nationalism. Their goal to remake America in their paranoid vision would be ridiculous if it weren't so frightening. They have been fomenting this hatred for generations and now it has come to pass. We are the fools who believed that America was at heart a good and strong and generous country, a place for everybody, while these nutcases were plotting their takeover. Sure, we still have humor, but there is a good portion of Americans who "don't get it." They have no sense of humor so Gen. Ripper's quotes fall on deaf ears. Trump has no wit and no humor; all he has is his greed and egomania. And his reins on a world superpower -- us, the U.S., America the formerly beautiful.