07

Yesterday's most active threads had a notable political slant to them. The most active thread of the day was titled, "The Fascist Part of the US strikes again in Tennessee" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The thread focuses on a protest at the Tennessee state Capitol building in which students demanding that something be done about school shootings briefly took over the building. During the protest, three Democratic legislators took to the floor of the chamber to encourage and support the protesters. In response, Republican lawmakers who dominate the assembly proposed bills to expel the three Democrats. Subsequently, two of them — both young Black men — were expelled while the third — an older White woman — was not. This is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory at best for the Republicans because both the members will probably be back soon to fill the seats from which they were just expelled. Liberal posters in this thread see the expulsions as anti-democratic acts to squelch free speech and pointed out that the legislature rarely expelled anyone, not even admitted sex offenders. Conservative posters compared the protest to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and supported the expulsions as deserved for such behavior. A similar split occurred over the racial connotations of the expulsions with liberals pointing to the poor optics of expelling two Black legislator while excusing their White colleague. In response, conservatives contorted themselves to contrive differences in the behavior of the three who had acted in unison. A conservative poster insisted that Americans are tired of the race card being played and would be happy that the legislators were being punished for their "bad behavior". Without missing a beat, the same poster suggested that liberals would be gleeful if white men were being expelled. Given the implication that the real victims of racism are white men, I suspect this poster's complaint is not about "race" cards, but the wrong race card. The protests that led to the expulsions were in response to gun violence, specifically the recent school shooting in Nashville. Many posters compared the legislature's failure to take action in regard to school shootings to its determination to remove the legislators, saying that this clearly demonstrated Republican-dominated body's priorities. One poster pointed to a proposal by the Tennessee governor for armed guards in schools. I'm not sure this was as strong an argument as the poster believes as it simply highlights that the Republican response has been nothing more than a proposal that has not been acted upon. But, of course, the response now includes racially-charged expulsions.