Governor Ron DeSantis’s shockingly cruel political stunt of moving asylum-seeking refugees to different parts of the country without notice (especially after watching the coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s death), shows me the real choices laid before us as a nation.

It’s not about red and blue or Democrat and Republican. It’s about empathy, the cornerstone and foundation of humanity. It’s about truth and dignity.

Remember this prediction if you wish. This man will never be President of the United States. He is without heart or soul. By pandering to the ones, he loses the other, and no contemporary American president can win without lots of one and some of the other.

What an awful thing to do, what a huge mistake to make. And he’s the smart one? What next? Shipping cancer patients in Texas and Florida who can’t afford health care to the Mayo Clinic?

There are a lot of valid complaints and problems with our crippled immigration system, a lot to argue about and change.

This evil political stunt, which delighted millions of broken and heartless people, reveals this ambitious and empty man to be sick in the soul: he is incapable of empathy, sympathy, or compassion.

Thus, he is incapable of leading a nation so diverse and full of heart. If you love America, as I do, then you know that this will not stand in your heart. It is not who we are. Real people don’t get on the news; just ask those women in Kansas.

It takes many people- and demagogues – to sicken and pollute a nation as much as ours. It will take a lot of people with compassion to heal it. You wouldn’t know it to read the news, but we have many millions of those.

Whoever shows genuine empathy and compassion gets my vote; I don’t care what label they use or what party they join. The whole world is stunned at the love shown for a stolid monarch. The entire world is shaking its head at the spectacle we’ve become.

We are not worse than the British or superior to them.

We are just sicker now; our souls are bleeding and dark, our country hemorrhaging decency and compassion. For much of our history, such a soulless use of people for power would never have been considered, let alone cheered. Everywhere you look or listen, hatred, argument, and contempt pour like rain over our spirits and hopes.

We have no leader bringing us together with decency, compassion, and honor. Governor DeSantis, like the horror show he wants to succeed, is not that person.

Our battle isn’t between one party or the other, or one color or another; it’s about restoring the heart and feeling and the need to fight for compassion and empathy, not power and domination. I like to keep an open mind about everything in this world, especially politics.

But my heart is closed to people like Ron DeSantis. There is no empathy to reach. Using people that way is beyond comprehension.

He is not fit to lead. Just turn on the BBC and see what I mean this week.

The lines to say goodbye to Elizabeth are 10 miles long; not a single person has been arrested, appeared to be drunk, abused or insulted other people, been shot by police, gunned down innocent mourners, or carried a machine gun or smartphone or camera into the church where her body lies in state.

They can respect one another in this way, no matter their differences.

The contrast between the mourning ritual and Governor DeSantis’s cold and heartless political stunt suggested that the crisis facing America isn’t political; it goes to the soul of our country.

It asks us to choose between the worst kind of callousness and the kind of compassion and empathy that is too powerful and painfully on display in England.

In Great Britain, the people can still unite over the need for compassion and empathy.

There was no trouble in the long, long lines. Everyone shared food, saved places in line for those who needed a bathroom, nodded, bowed, or smiled as they walked past the Queen’s casket.

Nobody had to shout to the mourners to keep moving, stop bumping, put their phones away, or be courteous and respectful to other people and the Queen. No officers carried guns to force them to be. When they were asked to stop, they stopped. When they were asked to move, they moved.

In America, ambitious and power-made governors are shipping legal refugees seeking asylum and a new life in the land of the once free and brave. DeSantis reveals his almost carnal ambition but is incapable of showing compassion or empathy to the needy, the different, and the vulnerable.

He is dead in the center. What is he beyond ambition and calculation?

Has the governor ever considered that “woke” people, whoever they are, deserve respect, compassion, and empathy, just like he and his followers do?

Has he ever considered trans children and their parents need compassion and empathy as they navigate complex life challenges, not cruelty and intimidation?

Has he considered young rape victims or women with birthing disorders to suffer horribly under his abortion plan?

Has he ever considered that his job is to protect and serve, not persecute and abuse?

Can a leader of a nation function without compassion or empathy and exist on pure hatred and political domination? I am no international expert, but I believe Vladimir Putin cannot possibly serve his cruelty since he is devoid of the compassion and empathy he will need in a country whose soldiers are suffering so much and dying so needlessly, or for the children, men, and women and Ukraine who have slaughtered like chickens in a slaughterhouse.

People need what Elizabeth offered them, not the bloodless cruelty of disturbed and delusional men.

People like Putin suffer from the cruelest mental illness of all – the inability to feel empathy and compassion – are doomed to fail and be overturned and rejected. Day by day, DeSantis seems to be channeling him.

I believe that in my bones as strongly as I believe anything. The message for me from England is that compassion and empathy are critical to being human; without them, a nation will lose its soul and fight long and hard to get them back.

The people want compassion, and everywhere you look, they need it much more than guns and wars and hatred and argument and nakedly ambitious political stunts disguised as leadership.

Photo by Annie Liebowitz