Message to Tennessee two of three: you don't belong here

The Tennessee Three is a good name. It will help make the trio of Tennessee state representatives famous far beyond the chamber that expelled two of them — the two African Americans. There is no question that the representatives, including the 27-year-old Justin Jones and 28-year-old Justin Pearson, committed a serious breach of decorum on the chamber floor when they used bullhorns to lead a rowdy protest from the floor of the state house after the murders of six people — three of them 9-year-olds at a local school.

According to The Washington Post, which has tracked school shootings since Columbine in 1999, the Covenant School in Nashville mass shooting was the 377th at an American school. It raised the death count to 199, 425 injured, and more than 349,000 students experiencing gun violence at school. There is no other country in the world where school shootings are routine matters. Andy Ogles, the member of Congress who represents Tennessee’s 5th congressional district where the Covenant School is located, sent this travesty out as his Christmas card:

Like almost always, the killer came to do evil at the Covenant School, armed with an AR-15. High-velocity assault weapons obliterate their targets when fired because of the speed of the round. The police officers who respond to the scenes, as well as the survivors, face grave psychological trauma and consequences from seeing the victims obliterated by weapons designed for the US military to kill America’s enemies on the battlefield. Those weapons have been fetishized for a generation by the fantastically corrupt NRA, which maintains its iron grip over a vast faction of MAGA/GOP extremists whose cowardice against this constant depravity equals the cowardice of the Uvalde Police. Both sets of cowards were content to do nothing, while the shooters killed and killed and killed again. The Uvalde cops cowered in fear, while the politicians do the same. The result is violence, death, impatience and outrage.

Speaking of breaches of decorum, there have been no denunciations of Donald Trump’s 30,000 public lies, or of George Santos’ outrageous presence in the US Congress by the Tennessee Republicans who seem immunized against outrage, action or even a mild yawn against mountains of public misconduct that swirls in their midst. Yet when an opportunity presented itself, they reacted with a nuclear strike aimed at two young black men, who had been elected just like them. The expulsion disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of Tennessee citizens by denying them representation as punishment for dissent. The white majority doesn’t seem to care. Their message is clear. You don’t belong here.

That is what it is. Tennessee was a slave state that joined the Confederacy, birthed the Ku Klux Klan, practiced Jim Crow, and fiercely resisted integration. Recent years have seen an explosion of extremism in Tennessee that mirrors what has happened in many states across America. The tilt seems clear. The MAGA/GOP is ready to shatter established norms around basic democratic norms to wage cold civil war.

The conduct isn’t just reprehensible, it is deeply radical. They have embraced a toxic banana republicanism that threatens retaliation for dissent. Simultaneously, they impose their extreme agenda through outlandish political decisions delivered by Federal Court judges like Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who outlawed mifepristone, the FDA-approved abortion pill, with a stroke of the pen, using an 1873 law as the justification.

We are witnessing the maturing politics of revenge, retribution and retaliation as MAGA policy. Everything is zero sum. There is no thought of restraint, or any pause for consideration around the MAGA crowd when they have some power. Their first instinct is always the same. They wish to use their power to take something away from someone else who is usually different in some way. Whether it is a vote, bodily autonomy, marriage or something else that can be taken away, there seems to be a ready movement that seeks to take it.

It must be opposed.

What happened in Tennessee is an abuse of power. Period. The Tennessee state legislature has disgraced itself. Its leadership of fools has managed to create a public relations abomination that exceeds Speaker In Name Only McCarthy’s humiliations and abasement. It is extraordinary to watch, but entirely predictable.

All of it is fueled by a deep malice and anger from a faction of politicians who believe they have the right to decide who gets rights. They are the business end of the vast culture war that manifests itself across Fox News and its thousands of interconnected and associated tentacles.

Here’s a piece of advice. Pay attention to people who seek to take things away from you that you take for granted. Take them seriously. What would happen if they ever had real power? It’s worth thinking about.