This story has almost everything. Racism. Fascism. Guns. Transgender. Everything except justice. This feels like a convergence of so many different threads and we may look back on it as a tipping point.

AOC predicted this:



For those who haven't been following this story, when thousands marched on the Tennessee legislature in the aftermath of the Covenant School shooting, they were supported by Democrats Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Pearson.

Here's one description of what they did:

(Johnson, by the way, filed a failed resolution to expel Republican David Byrd, who was accused of sexually assaulting teenagers. A recorded phone call has him apologizing to one of his accusers for unspecified actions.)

Republicans, with a super-majority, chose to expel two of the three members of the Democratic Party for violating decorum. Coincidentally, the two members expelled are black men, while the one who was not is a white woman. Why? Gloria Johnson has a theory:



Here's what the expelled members had to say:





This should be interesting:



Blatant racism and anti-democracy. Convince me I'm wrong. I dare you.

Justin Jones will win in a landslide in 2024. The Tennessee GOP ****ed up.

I stand with Justin Jones.

Usually three sides to any story
We have the lefts

After Jan 6 we have no choice but to take House storming and insurrection very seriously.

So we have Dems call it a peaceful protest

GOP calls it a insurrection

Somewhere in the middle is the truth

Why the ideological centrism? Sometimes, the truth is not in the middle.

Looks like the Tenn. Republican legislators wanted to leave no doubt in anyone's mind that they are the party of racist white supremacist.

Not that there was much doubt before.

Yes I know saying racist white supremacist is redundant.

So Representative Johnson missed being expelled by 1 vote. So it seems the true story is that the majority of Tennessee Republlican legislators were principled in removing all 3 insurrectionists, and only a small minority declined to vote out Johnson (possibly for racist/sexist reasons).

What was the margin for the two that were expelled?

And then the follow-up question would be who were the reps that voted to expel the black guys but not the white lady?

Sometimes not in the middle, but rarely at the outer fringes.

The House expelled Reps. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, on a 72-25 vote, and Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, by 69-26,
in a move that put the nation's eyes on Tennessee and its politics.

But the House failed by one vote to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to kick Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville, out of the chamber. The effort to expel Johnson failed on a 65-30 vote."

https://www.tennessean.com/story/new...n/70079929007/

It is ironic this is all happening in Tennessee. As the most popular professional athlete in the state recently posted IG videos of himself flashing a gun in a strip club in Denver, Colorado, which had to have broken several gun laws.

One would think that a principled politician who was truly interested in gun safety and reform would have strong things to say about a tremendously influential athlete promoting such behavior, but I dont recall hearing much of anything from The Tennessee Three when this all went down. Maybe they did make a strong statement and I just missed it. Oh well.

I will say, given this I dont expect the Grizzlies to get involved in any protests the way the Bucks did during the Jacob Blake protests when they briefly shut down the bubble.

IN response to AOC's tweets, I get the feeling that many (but certainly not all, as evidenced by the insurrectionists who stormed the Tennessee Capital) of Gen Z are aware of how hard they got played by the Democrat establishment during the Floyd Riots of 2020, so it will indeed be interesting to see if there is appetite to have the same thing happen again.

Any explanation for why Jones got 72 votes and Pearson only 69?

So one black guy gets 72 votes, another black guy gets 69 votes, and the white lady gets 65 votes, and we're saying that all of the Tennessee GOP is racist.

But that obviously isn't true. It would seem like the vast majority of the Tennessee GOP voted to expel all 3, but of those who didn't, not even all of them voted to expel both black guys.

The article unfortunately doesn't explain why one black guy got three less votes than the other one, but it's presumably because there was less evidence against him.

https://tennesseelookout.com/2023/04...-justin-jones/

Ok. So Charlie Baum voted against kicking out all three of them.

Whitson didn't vote at all on Jones or Pearson but did vote against removing Johnson.

Baum, Gillespie, and Richie were the three that voted against Pearson.

Gillespie didn't vote on Johnson and Richie voted against expelling her.

So the reps who voted for the black guys but not the white lady are: Barrett, Bricken, Russell, Sparks.

Bryan Terry looks particularly fishy by abstaining on the Johnson vote but voting for the other two.

Whitson also seems a little fishy since he abstained on the black guys but voted against kicking out the white lady.

Gillespie also looking fishy since he voted against expelling Pearson but abstained on Johnson. What's that about?

What do you make of this? If the 3 didn't speak out against gun violence then, what conclusion are you drawing about their recent actions?

You're really twisting to find some way to make Democrats seem in the wrong in this situation.

I definitely think it is wrong to be constantly performatively outraged over the legal sale of guns, but be mostly agnostic towards the illegal gun market flourishing in Dem controlled cities, which are responsible for a giant % of homicides in this country. And in the case of Memphis especially, agnostic towards probably the most popular person in the entire state flashing guns on Instagram (that they must have illegally transported to Colorado, where they were flashing them from).

The 2 congressmen expelled represent the 2 biggest cities in Tennessee, which I suspect also have the highest number of homicides, mostly from illegally carried guns. So if these former congressmen were sincere one would assume they would have been focused on the illegal gun market in their cities and getting those guns and the criminals carrying them off the streets.

When it comes to gun reform I find the activist Democratic element to be Kabuki theatre, with zero commitment towards actually reducing gun crime, and often pushing criminal justice "reform" which does the exact opposite. So yeah, this all seems in the wrong to me.

Reps who voted for the two black guys but either abstained or voted against expelling Johnson: Barrett, Bricken, Russell, Sparks, Terry.

Reps who voted against expulsion or abstained for Pearson and Johnson but not Jones: Gillespie, Richie.

Reps who voted against expulsion or abstained for all three: Baum, Whitson.

Baum comes out looking the best since he seems to have voted on principle. Whitson looks bad though since he abstained on the black guys and voted against Johnson, although not as bad as those who only voted against or abstained on Johnson.

Gillespie looks fine since he only voted for Jones

Two guys getting expelled but one woman not by a few votes seems like very minor news compared to two people getting expelled at all.

Well a lot of people are saying it's because of racism but they should probably also be considering misogyny.

In this case it would be misandry*

*As an aside, I actually had to google search the term, because I didn't know what the word for discriminating against men was; which says a lot about establishment narrative control as there is clearly a lot of discrimination against men in our society.

Possibly but not necessarily. Plenty of misogynistic rationales out there for finding her less culpable than the other two.