Parks and Wreckreation

By BRUCE LOWITT

After going “back to the drawing board” following a wave of protests over plans to make changes to Florida’s state parks, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday he will add burn pits and bombing ranges to his original plans for hotels, golf courses and pickle ball courts.

“I can see now why Floridians were so unhappy with the limited changes I wanted to make,” DeSantis said. “Obviously they want more money coming into the state than those piddling courts, courses and hotel rooms would provide.

“That’s why I plan to contract out to the federal government hundreds of acres, maybe thousands, for military purposes,” DeSantis added. “The Pentagon would, heh-heh, kill to get their hands on some of our beautiful wide-open park lands. Hell, nobody’s using it now except for a bunch of dumbass hikers and dirtbikers, and the Pentagon brass will fork over billions of taxpayer dollars for it.”

When questioned about the loss of habitat for Florida’s popular wildlife, DeSantis said very few of the fauna would be affected by his plan.

“I hear there’s a shortage of alligators in New York City’s sewers,” he said, “and we’re ready to ship up a few thousand of them. As for the panthers, manatees, flamingoes and the rest, we’ll just do what we’ve been doing with migrants. We’ll fly them to Martha’s Vineyard or wherever the fuck else we feel like.”

The governor, a quarter of the way through his second and last term running the state, is seemingly more disenchanted than ever with the job.

“Check out any U.S. map. Florida looks like a limp dick and I’m sick of the ‘Florida Man’ jokes,” he was overheard telling Lieutenant Gov. Jeanette Nunez last week. “I’ll show them Florida Man. We put in a couple of bombing ranges, maybe a nuclear missile site like they’ve got in Wyoming and Montana, and nobody’s going to fucking laugh at us anymore.”

DeSantis denied his that his hidden rage, and his goal of turning a large swath of Florida into an armed camp, was in any way a reaction to his failed 2024 Republican presidential campaign after it blew apart in January like a pup tent in a hurricane with a 30-point loss in the Iowa caucus to president-turned-felon Donald Trump.

“It was obvious from the get-go that Trump was going to get the nomination and I wasted a shitload of money chasing that impossible dream,” DeSantis said, “just like the MAGA crowd has wasted a shitload of money on the ridiculous dream that Trump’s going to win in November. Him? Hah! If MAGA World is looking for another way to blow a few hundred-million bucks, I’m gearing up to run against Kamala Harris in four years. ”