Eat Your BBQ and Shut Up!
If You Want to See 'MAGA America,' Look at Tennessee.
21 percent of Black Tennessans can’t vote. They were charged with felonies and, as a result, lost that right. The right to vote, by the way, is not one guaranteed in the Constitution. Those good, Black folk and the rest of the residents of Tennessee who can’t vote (9 percent overall) have two things in common: They love BBQ, and if, and when, they get the right to own guns reinstated, then they will be again permitted to vote.
The state’s toughened voting rights restoration policy requires people convicted of a felony to get their gun rights restored before they can become eligible to cast a ballot again, Tennessee’s elections office said Tuesday, confirming a mandate that officials had been debating internally (Felons Must Get Gun Right Back).
This sounds completely insane, even irrational, but then again, who am I — and the 37 percent of Democrats in the state — to complain? Tennessee has supermajorities in the state house and senate. Voting rights groups call the state the most gerrymandered in the nation. Less than 10 percent of the seats in the state are considered competitive because of the extreme gerrymandering that has taken place since 2012 after Tea Party Republicans gained a majority.
The state is everything that MAGA wants and more. When six children were slaughtered in a white neighborhood Christian school by a former white (female) student, conservative Tennesseans demanded changes in the state’s gun laws. The Republican-controlled legislature made a few cosmetic changes to appease them and then passed a law protecting gun and ammunition manufacturers from lawsuits.
If you are not aligned with the extremism of MAGA in Tennessee, then there is not really a whole lot for you to do in the state beyond enjoying the delicious BBQ: the mouth-watering brisket and fall-off-the-bones ribs are to die for.
Tennessee has the most arduous vote restoration process in the nation. Instead of governing and trying to imagine how the lives of residents can be improved in the state, Republicans do all they can to return the state to an era when white Christians ruled supreme and everyone else served and suffered their whims. Remember, many of the people ruling the state today were once able to find moral justification for the enslavement and torture of Black Americans. The apple has not fallen far from the amoral tree, and thanks to Trump and MAGA, the racists and fascists of the state feel empowered.
Tennessee is following the trends we see throughout the world. Russia’s fascist revolution is offering all of the hate groups a moment to shine. Fascists in Germany, France, Italy, Finland, and, of course, in the U.S. are on the rise. As the world suffers more and more each year from climate change, the number of people on the move from one inhabitable place to other countries rises. The backlash is taking the form of stupidity and hateful ignorance — like the forces we see in control at all levels of the Republican Party.
As recently as last month, Tennessee election officials expressed uncertainty about restoring the vote to convicted felons who hadn’t regained their gun rights, saying in court depositions that they were holding up 12 such applications while consulting with the state attorney general’s office (Felons Must Get Gun Right Back).
As an American who finds he understands America less and less with each passing hour, I will ask a question that I am sure many other Americans will have no problem answering: What the f*** do gun rights and voting have to do with each other?!