Really, what’s left to say about the Tennessee Legislature?
There’s mainly the photo above.
With yet another guns in parks law, it proves beyond a doubt that its rhetoric about small government and local control is simply a lie.
If it were not so tragic, it would be funny in how the Tennessee Legislature has become a parody of itself. On its best days, our legislators make the old episodes of Hee Haw look like meetings of Mensa.
Parallel Universe
At a time when the public longs for leaders who can find the common ground where we can come together, our state politicians are always willing to divide us, even pit us against each other, and do anything to stay in office. They play to the cheap seats where bigotry is rewarded by their anti-urban language, where fear is spread by their rhetoric about the need for self-protection, and where its fight against a more diverse society holds Tennessee up as a laughing stock.
The evidence is unquestionable that the Tennessee Legislature has been pimped out to please narrow (and narrow-minded) special interest groups and it acts on the premise that pandering trumps policy any day in their world of puffed-up self-importance.
We voters have allowed the Tennessee Legislature to become the equivalent of a medieval court, where the real world is cut off from decision-making, where some real people are merely considered collateral damage, and where bit players gain power by doling out indulgences and approvals.
They have created a world where every lame attempt at humor is met with gales of laughter and every shallow idea is met with nodding heads from the palace guards and fawning special interest lobbyists. It is a world built on the massaging of oversized egos and undersized commitments to public service.
Fatal Interaction
It would all be funny except for one inconvenient truth: because of them, people will die.
That was the case with their defeat of Insure Tennessee and that is now the case with their latest gun proliferation law. With the defeat of the common sense expansion of Medicare, they effectively sentenced some of their fellow Tennesseeans to death for lack of quality health care, and with the passage of their latest gun lobby legislation over the objections of mayors, police chiefs, and business leaders, common sense received a fatal wound.
As a result of its “guns everywhere” legislation, there is no place where we can now be confident that we are safe from gun violence. And as a result of their gun legislation, essentially a solution looking for a problem, police responding to a call must now presume that guns could well be a factor. Because of it, police will respond with more fire power, and when this involves legal protests and crowd control, officers never know how many people in the group might have guns, creating a tense environment in which tragedies can occur.
After all, for every gun in police hands in the U.S., there are more than 300 guns in the hands of the public. At least in the past, the rest of us could be relatively certain that their owners would keep them at home, but now almost every part of our families’ lives can be invaded by people whose poor judgement or macho attitudes lead them to take their guns with them everywhere.
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
After years of complaining that the federal government was injecting itself into our personal lives, that the reach of government should be markedly reduced, and that government social engineering was a threat to American values, our Tea Party legislators now engage regularly in all of the behaviors they exhorted for so long.
These days, it’s hard to find a decision so personal or private that the Tennessee Legislature isn’t willing to inject itself: women making decisions on their reproductive rights, families of gay children worried about bullying, and families who see their homes and places of worship as the best places to teach religious beliefs, and teachers who want to teach science fact about the age of the earth and human biology.
And if you are a person of faith who believes that your religion demands care for the poor rather than cuts in services, if you are a taxpayer who wants fairness for middle class families, or a parent who wants your children to understand and appreciate the full diversity of the world they will live in, you are merely misguided and deserve little consideration in the world of our legislators.
Maybe it’s time for the American Psychological Association to consider a new disorder: Tennessee legislative clinical psychological disorder. It’s the condition that occurs when average people become part of highly partisan group and the groupthink they engage in leads them to believe they are always right, and because of it, they force their opinions on others rather than focus on the prime responsibilities for which they were elected.
The Wrong Side Of History
We live in strange times in Tennessee, and the hopeful view is that the bursts of extremism that we are witnessing is the last gasp of people who are on the wrong side of history, and in the face of change, they cling to the notion of a society that hasn’t existed since Ozzie and Harriet was on television. These days, Barry Goldwater – the father of the modern conservative resurgency who once shook up American politics by saying that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” before being drubbed in the race for President in 1964 – would likely be a pariah in the Tennessee Legislature.
After all, he also said: “I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
“And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’”
If only he were around today to say that to the super majority in the Tennessee Legislature.
In the meantime, if you weren’t able to get to Nashville to share your opinions with your legislators, you can always corner them here. Just don’t forget to take your gun.
SC: “… they cling to the notion of a society that hasn’t existed since Ozzie and Harriet was on television.”
What about going back to the Victorian Era when my grandmother’s rigidity was nurtured?
Even more frustrating than the extreme legislature is the lack of leadership in opposing their ridiculous actions. The “moderate” wing of the Republican Party seems to be intimidated by the Tea Partiers and their financial sponsors.What passes for “moderate” these days is not following the TP line part of the time. Democrats have been so shellshocked by their loss of numbers that they are as meek as a neutered pup. The business community, possibly the strongest voice of common sense left, has been too quiet.
When we have a shebly legislator who is
When we have a Shelby legislator who has his mugshot displayed publicly but is re-elected over and over with no opposition, another who compares Insure Tennessee to Hotel California, and a State Senator who legislates his version of liberty, no matter how it hurts the County, something has to change.
The question is, when will public leaders decide that they have to act, not only speaking up but raising the dollars to seriously challenge these legislators?
Our Legislature does not lead. It follows. When we have turnout, especially from those who are injured by these policies, we will have new representatives and a small chance for sanity in the Legislature. Democrats are not our solution because they are mostly just as incompetent. Somewhere there has to be rational Republicans, but if not, no chance for sanity any time soon.