Christian Ziegler is the perfect Florida GOP leader. Why should he step down?
The GOP celebrates its indulgent Zieglers. It's going to line up behind one for president - yet again. So why shouldn't a vicious, abusive, pornographer lead a party addicted to dictator thrill?
I wholeheartedly endorse Christian Ziegler. He is a pro-life, pro-family and strong social conservative.
— John Stemberger, leader of the forced birth movement in Florida, endorsing Christian Ziegler for chair of Florida GOP in 2022. He shouldn’t quietly change his mind now. See my recent civil discussion or privacy and forced birth with Stemberger here.
Christian Ziegler is the chairman of the Republican Party in Florida. And he is the type of person who does the following, according to official police documents and public reporting:
Cruise Sarasota with his Proud Boy-loving and supposedly gay-hating School Board wife Bridget at 7:30 a.m., looking to score a threesome with a substance-addled, depressed, potentially-suicidal, long-time female “friend” they threesomed with once before.
Shows up at the friend’s house expecting sex just five minutes after the “friend” backs out because Bridget backed out. “Sorry I was in mostly for her,” the friend said, just before Christian came by anyway.
Creates amateur pornography of what happens after his arrival. It’s unclear if Christian had his “friend’s” consent to create the porn, which GOPers are supposed to hate.
Bends the depressed, substance-addled, potentially-suicidal “friend” over bedroom furniture and either rapes her or “has sex” with her in the most power-imbalanced, cruel, degrading possible way, while recording it. Tapes the friend’s request to avoid ejaculation onto her new shirt. Reasonable people can disagree, I guess, on how to classify that particular sex act in a legal sense.
Exchanges these texts with his “friend” afterward. Note the “lol.”
Friend: I’m not okay with what happened the other day between us.
Christian: Oh. That’s not good. You are my friend. Known ya for like twenty years now; Lol.
Friend: Yeah I know, but that was not cool and you didn’t bring her and did that to me,” she wrote.
Christian: [Bridget] was in. Then couldn’t because no response. She said in next time. But I understand. Your [sic] my friend I actually like you as a person, so sorry you got upset, but can leave you alone if you prefer.
If he had gotten his “friend” pregnant, he would have forced her to risk her life to give birth to a fetus conceived in this way, with the solemn, courtly, compassionate support of John Stemberger and his fellow travelers.
The dictator thrill — sexual and otherwise
None of that is hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is a minor, venal sin that most, if not all, human beings engage in at some point in during the complex act of living with other human beings. I’m know I’ve been hypocritical in ways large and small over the course of my public and private life.
But Zieglerism is something much deeper, more selfish, and more cruel.
It’s the Lavrentiy Beria-style sexual indulgence of people who have power of over other people. It’s the behavior of petty dictators who imagine themselves acting under the impunity of larger dictators.
If you will do what Christian Ziegler did to a “friend” — whether he gets a rape charge or not — then you will do anything to anyone if you can get away with it. It is the total absence of conscience.
Lustily pursuing whatever cruel kink excites you with total impunity while attacking other people just for existing is part of the dominance thrill that drives dictator personalities up and down the dictator personality continuum.
But to be clear: indulging in voracious, predatory, extra-marital, “consensual” sex from wounded people is just one subset of that dictator thrill. Indulgent dominance takes many forms. It manifests itself in many different modes and levels of private behavior and public grossness. It’s why the 1920s Ku Klux Klan got drunk to brutalize drinkers during Prohibition.
It’s why “the cruelty is the point” is the defining observation of this GOP era, in which acting on a conscience is the ultimate sign of weakness or RINOism.
Dictators of a feather
You see this dictator thrill play out in the way Polk Sheriff Grady Judd forced the Republican Polk County Commissioners — and particularly Commissioner Rick Wilson — to humiliate themselves in their public roles last week through a side-by-side discussion of the sheriff’s new surveillance platform vs. the school speed zone cameras to protect kids he “100 percent” opposes.
The article below — and videos within — captures their surreal and abject submission to the sheriff’s vague and distant dictates.
Grady did this to Wilson and crew without even showing up to the meeting. I’m sure Grady considers Rick Wilson a “friend;” but dictators are especially cruel to their suck-ups.
By the way, the Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday that there are no guidelines or governance of any kind for operation of the new spy capability the County Commission approved without any meaningful answers from the sheriff.
There are no rules of access to the video for deputies, etc. And if there were rules, according to the Sheriff’s spokesman, the public would not be entitled to know them. And your representatives could not approve it fast enough.
That’s dictatorship power.
Craving the thrill of that power — in all its forms — is what unites and drives the Zieglers, Trump, DeSantis, the Canadys, the Stargels, Grady Judd, all of them. It’s why they’re completely unaccountable to the public they “serve” and go out of their way to avoid engaging us or speaking honestly and openly to the public about anything.
It’s why Grady Judd will never retire. What can replace that feeling of making a weak man jump for a dictatorship personality? Taking wildlife pictures?
To quote Christian Ziegler: LOL.
I hope “Christian” fights to keep his gig
The only remotely amusing part of this terrible story is Christian Ziegler telling Ron DeSantis and his fellow GOPers he’s not resigning as chair.
“We have a country to save and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up,” Christian Ziegler wrote.
I suspect he knows where some bodies (and/or gross sex acts) are buried, too. It will be fascinating to see how hard he gets pushed.
To be clear, Bridget Ziegler should resign from the elected Sarasota School Board position she occupies. Her participation in all this — and her sexualized cruelty that preceded it — leaves her unfit and unworthy to continue as a public representative. But it makes her a perfectly good Republican in the state of Matt Gaetz — I mean, other than the lesbian sex.
If I were her, I would leave public life, and try to build a semblance of a normal home life for the sake of her kids. I suspect marriage to Christian Ziegler has carried its fair share of degrading and humiliating moments for Bridget. Cruelty often begets cruelty. If she ever leaves public life quietly, I can feel some compassion for that.
But Bridget could just as easily seek to join her husband in GOP party leadership. It would make sense. The Zieglers perfectly represent your clearly expressed public values, my dear GOPers — I mean, other than the lesbian sex.
Yes, there are plenty of gross, abusive, dictator personalities who are not Republicans. But there are zero leaders — zero sources of power — in the Republican party today who do not get off on the thrill of dictatorship. It is mandatory. Checks on that power have been purged from the party.
After all, do any of you think Trump wouldn’t do everything the Zieglers have and more to your wife or daughter (or son) or “friend”?
You all know the answer; and you’re all going to line up behind Senile Bonesaw Jesus submissively yet again — and try to rid America of representative government and institutionalize Jan. 6th — just so SBJ can try to take “retribution” on people you don’t even know, just for existing.
So why do you object to Christian Ziegler? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Be honest. You’ll just replace him with another “Christian” Ziegler anyway. Why go through the hassle?
How about, instead, you actually own your lived public values, rather than pretend shock and outrage or silence, at a gross couple you empowered who got caught in an entirely predictable sexual indulgence and cruelty scandal?
A most fitting name
It’s also quite fitting, by the way, that the guy’s name is “Christian.”
Maybe Jesus is trying to tell you something, John Stemberger, et. al., about the generational damage you’ve done to your religion with your gross, selfish, earthly cruelty.
Thoughts and prayers.