By now, you can’t fail to have heard what happened in Tennessee. The story goes like this. There was a massacre at a school, in which kids were shot and killed. Democratic members of the House of Representatives protested for gun control — after hearing Republicans, for example, shrugging, and literally saying things like “we’re not going to solve the problem.” And in response? The Republicans, who control the House…expelled two of them. Expelled them.
A firestorm erupted, and rightly so. Hear the words of Justin Jones himself, one of the expelled members. “This is a historic day for Tennessee, but it marks a very dark day for Tennessee because it will signal to the nation that there is no democracy in this state,” Jones said during the debate before he was expelled. “It will signal to the nation that if it can happen here in Tennessee, it’s coming to your state next. And that is why the nation is watching us, what we do here.”
He’s exactly right. And on top of all this lay the ugly tinge of bigotry and hate. The two members expelled were young black men. Tennessee’s famously the birthplace of the KKK. The one member who wasn’t expelled was a white lady. Jones — in words that echo through history — compared this to a lynching. Not of him and Justin Pearson — but of democracy.
What does all this mean? How bad is it? It’s very, very bad.
Let me put for you formally what just happened here. The GOP is now beginning to use a new tactic — one that’s classically fascist. A putsch. What’s a putsch? It’s when you…purge your opponents. Just dispense of them. Because that is how little you value democracy. Opposition isn’t something to be heard, bargained with, negotiated with — it’s there to be annihilated. This is what the Tennessee GOP did.
If that sounds harsh, let me put it in context for you. What was the issue — putatively, anyways — at hand here? Gun control. 70% of Americans, higher by some counts, support gun control. Americans are sick of their kids dying at school. Being traumatized by “active shooter drills.” Very, very few think arming teachers or absurdities like bulletproof backpacks are solutions. The GOP, as we all know, is firmly in the pocket of gun nuts and the NRA. And so it’s not willing to even consider this issue in any democratic way. Hence — protest guns after a massacre — and you get putsched. That is the stark reality of what happened here.
But it’s only really the beginning of that stark reality. What just happened, in a technical sense? Well, about 150,000 people in Tennessee now find themselves without…democratic representation. In a very real way, democracy has ceased to function. If I can take away your representatives, what have I really taken away from you? The Mother of Rights, which is self-governance, self-determination, access to and control over the rule of law. If I can take away your representation — just like that — then the rights born of the Mother of Rights, basic freedoms like expression, movement, association, privacy — they can hardly be attained, protected, defended, guaranteed. In a very real, democracy ceased to function in Tennessee.
That is a major, major deal. For many years now, since the dawn of the Trump era, really, America’s been downgraded to a “flawed democracy” by political scientists. That means, basically, that one side has been relentlessly attacking it. But Tennessee begins to show us where all this ends. Democracy isn’t just flawed — it’s over.
Now, Tennessee isn’t totally, irreversibly there yet. The expelled members will be reinstated by various means. But that is almost besides the point, because, well, think about what Justin Jones said above. What he warned of. The GOP has now learned about a new tactic — or at least is willing to use a very old one. The putsch. They’re going to employ this tactic in state after state. And what happens when they do?
Let me put that in context. This is a coup by any other name. It might seem like that’s an overstatement to some, but it’s not. In the classic sense of political science, it’s a grim fact. If a party can simply…remove…its opponents…then in what sense is democracy left to function? If that party is led by demagogues to begin with…in what sense does democracy work? The textbook line into authoritarianism is crossed here.
That line is the beginning of a very, very slippery slope. One of history’s slipperiest. What is removing your opponents usually followed by? Sham trials. Political persecutions. Kangaroo courts. Political sentences. Then the circle expands outwards, from your formal political opponents, to all kinds of opponents. Critics, like intellectuals and journalists. Artists, novelists, writers, musicians. And it ends with everyday people not being able to voice dissent, at basic levels — forget exercising the right to peaceful protest, just saying the wrong thing when there’s a Gestapo around can land you in a world of trouble.
This slippery slope isn’t the road to fascism. It is fascism. If you doubt me, let’s do a little more context. Idaho just passed the first “interstate restrictions” on women’s healthcare. What does that mean, in practice? Border checks? If you try to enter and leave this state with a woman in the car, are they going to search your communications, devices, try to guess your intent? And who’s “they,” anyways? Losses of rights like that necessitate the creation of shadow institutions, which have to police people for not exercising the rights they’ve now lost, and punish them when they try to. And to connect the dots, meanwhile, authoritarians in bodies which were once democratic are taking those rights away.
Make no mistake — that’s what happened here. The Tennessee Three, and Jones and Pearson in particular, were denied the the most basic right of all: expression. Of course we can all speak our minds. If we’re members of democratically elected bodies, yes, we can protest. Sure, we can even stop those bodies and demand their attention, when there are terrible tragedies like massacres happening. In fact, that’s our duty. When a massacre happens — a democratic body shouldn’t pretend like it’s business as usual. Because of course all those dead people don’t have rights anymore, do they?
So free speech and expression were taken away. But not just those. They were taken away from Jones and Pearson — in order to remove the Mother Right from all their constituents, and all the protestors who backed them. That is an extremely dangerous line to cross. Because when you take away the Mother Right from vast numbers of people, their right to self-determination and representation and self-governance — by suddenly denying their representative their basic rights — democracy has ceased to function.
Jones and Pearson understood all this intimately. They are strikingly wise and powerful politicians and leaders, even though they’re young. And while this context is disturbing, so, too, America’s changing. Consider a quote.
I find it very alarming, and I think what we are seeing is the Republican Party is really completely shifting to this very far right, authoritarian-type of fascist ideology where they really have gone to using the power that they do have to silence political enemies, to ram through agendas that people don’t want, and to use the power of the executive, or when they have majorities in these states, to poke people into submission.
Who said that? It wasn’t so long ago that I used to point out that Americans needed to say the word fascism to really grapple with what was happening to their country. That quote’s by Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress. So now we have members of Congress saying fascism and authoritarianism out loud. That is a sea change.
In Tennessee, young people staged a die-in in the House. They chanted “fascism!” at the Republicans who were expelling Jones and Pearson. That, too, is a remarkable change. This isn’t San Francisco or Manhattan. These are young people in Tennesee — rejecting fascism en masse. Calling it what it is. Saying it out loud. Furious that it’s trampling all over their futures — and taking their possibilities and lives, in some cases, away.
Many said that the GOP pushed things too far — and that they’ve lost a young generation for good now. They’re right. You see, something curious is happening in America. Gen Z appears to be waking up. Again, that’s a tremendous social transformation. The last few generations have glumly accepted the tyranny, basically, of the Boomers. Gen X wrote politics off, famously apathetic. Millennials tried to rise, were beaten back, and then appeared to be traumatized by the experience. But Gen Z seems different. It’s not just that they’re mad. It’s that they get it.
They understand, innately, the realities of the plight America faces. They’ll say fascism right out loud…in the South…to their State Houses. That’s a big deal. It means that they possess an understanding of the situation that matches its urgency. One equal, perhaps, to the occasion. How many pundits do you see saying fascism? How many old-school Democratic Party leaders? Mostly, they’re still playing nice. Gen Z isn’t. They are beginning to vote now, and when they do the results are utterly disastrous for the GOP, like in Wisconsin.
There’s a simple enough explanation for all this, and it goes back to straight social science. Gen Z’s back is against the wall. They have nothing left. They have no money, no jobs, no futures. Meanwhile, what’s left of democracy is being taken over swiftly by fascists, who are only interested in hate and violence, not solving a single problem. Then there’s the planet melting down. Gen Z knows it’s running out of time, and it’s pissed off.
So the GOP appears to have made a mistake. It’s woken up a generation, and altered a long-standing American tradition: apathy. The interesting thing about Gen Z is that they don’t need to be desperately exhorted to vote — they just do.
Now, I raise all that for a reason. The GOP is getting increasingly desperate because it knows it doesn’t have a future. Not democratically, anyways. In a rapidly changing America? In an aging America where the everyone under the average age of 38 literally thinks of them as fascists, authoritarians, crackpots, and lunatics, and scorns them with utter contempt? The only way the GOP stays a party, much less one in power, is through authoritarianism.
That is why its attempts at undoing democracy are getting more extreme, more widespread, more fanatical, more frequent, and more flagrant. The GOP knows it has to consolidate power now, or in a very short time, as Gen Z ages, and America changes — it will never have much of it again. Think of how wedded it is to extreme stances that literally everyone sane in the entire world rejects at this point: no healthcare! Machine guns for everyone! Kids dying at school! They’re so absurdly extreme that they reject the idea of….clean water. LOL, good luck drinking lead on a dying planet, I guess. The GOP’s knows that it has only way out of the mess it’s in: a last, desperate bid for authoritarian power.
Will it work? Think, for a moment, of just how fast it’s accelerated. Think of the GOP member just last week who taunted kids…after a massacre…asking them what gun they’d prefer to be shot with. Consider how DeSantis has turned Florida into a laboratory for authoritarianism, seeing how far he can push it, expanding Trump’s circle of scapegoats to include even “real” Americans, who happen to be LGBTQ, or have kids that are different, or just…read books. Consider the unconstitutional “ban” on interstate travel for women’s rights, and how such moves create the need for shadow institutions to police people in authoritarian ways. How Texas is hoping to build just such an institution — a vigilante paramilitary of true believers, immune from prosecution, just like the SS, giving the kinds of crackpots who stormed Congress on Jan 6th…guns and badges.
Now think about Jones, Pearson, and Frost. They’re young guys — in their twenties. And yet they get it. They understand all this in their bones, that this is where things are heading, how slippery the slope is, just how far the GOP’s willing to go. They openly warn of it. An authoritarian fascist descent. They’re Gen Z’s rising leaders, and they’re different. Old-school Democrats still play nice. Merrick Garland’s still out there somewhere, LOL, playing the world’s longest round of golf. My generation, Gen X to Millennial, was afraid to put things in these stark terms. But this is different.
I know that sounds a bit trite, so let me explain. Jones and Pearson were expelled for “breaching decorum.” Now think about the entirety of…our side. What’s it still observing? Decorum. Why didn’t anyone much say fascism loudly or strongly during the Trump years — thus paving the way for all this — anyone in power, anyways? Decorum. Why is that the media still equivocates “two sides,” as if democracy and hate slash violence are somehow both equivalent in moral and political terms? Decorum. Why aren’t the Dems, for heaven’s sake, down there with Jones and Pearson, right now, giving speech after speech, this very day? Decorum.
Who hasn’t been expelled? Well, Rep. Paul Gosar hasn’t, and he tweeted a video in which a cartoon version of him killed AOC. George Santos hasn’t, and he’s lied about, well, everything. Marjorie Taylor Greene hasn’t, and she’s smeared her colleagues as paedophiles, among a whole host of other things. Who hasn’t been expelled in Tennessee, as Justin Jones himself pointed out? Rep David Byrd, an “admitted child molester.”
Jones and Pearson are wiser than we know. They didn’t bow to rules of decorum, because they understood those rules are double standards, only there to preserve the old, failing norms and institutions in the first place. What good is decorum if it leads to…kids being massacred? If it’s about expelling members for protesting it? If it’s about being silent and complicit and passive in the face of authoritarianism and fascism?
At what point is decorum just…appeasement…complicity…cowardice?
It’s in this sense that America’s finally changing — at least it’s young people are. They’re not interested in decorum anymore. When I used to say, look, a society can’t take on fascism until it can say fascism, the response I’d get was decorum. We can’t say that, it’s rude, it’s offensive, we don’t want to offend those guys. And I, like you, would wearily try to point out that “those guys” literally didn’t want you to have rights, right down to not caring if you or your kids lived or died. That change is finally arriving in America. It’s OK to call it what is now, and that’s a long, long overdue thing, because…
Democracy isn’t about decorum. It never has been. It’s about much, much bigger and truer things. The eternal values of peace, truth, justice, equality. Sometimes, norms of “decorum” — when they preserve old ways of hate, violence, bigotry, and ignorance, all of which are the polar opposites of democracy’s values — are what stifle a democracy. In the hands of serial abusers of power, norms of decorum stifle dissent, silence, intimidate, quash opposition. Democracy requires — as Jones and Pearson know, and have said — a healthy dose of what John Lewis famously called “good trouble.”
And the more Americans are willing to get into that? The more on the back foot the GOP will be. Remember, the vast, vast majority of Americans oppose the GOP’s entire agenda — from guns to ending abortion to lower taxes for the wealthy. But America’s long had a silent majority that’s afraid to really speak loudly enough, to demand it be heard — and that’s because of…decorum.
Make no mistake, American democracy is in grave peril. The GOP’s doubled down now to the point there’s no going back. It’s never going to be able to be a “normal” political party again. It’s in a fight for its life, which can only be had by ending America’s democracy. It’s going to be one or the other. And in that fight? My friends, the only enemies aren’t the fascists. They’re also foolish norms — like being nice to them, silent when they abuse power, is somehow going to win the existential battle for the soul and survival of a democracy. At what point does decorum become complicity and appeasement? The Tennessee Three just showed America, its young people, and the world. Let us all be humble enough to learn from their courageous and wise lesson, my friends.
