OPINION:
Here’s the situation: Two Black male elected lawmakers in Tennessee were expelled from their seats after grabbing a bullhorn, raising their fists in the air and leading an activist protest against their own legislative colleagues as a means of pressuring for gun control. And their response to the expulsion?
To throw down the race card.
To accuse the mostly White legislative body of racism.
To rail against the unfairness of their fellow lawmakers, against the unfairness of society, unfairness of the system. To raise fists and demand their will.
They are the dream of today’s Democrats.
Welcome to the Democratic Party, 2023.
When today’s Democrats can’t get what they want, they turn to chaos and street-style activism and seize bullhorns and bricks and take up the angry march or take over offices and scream. When they’re called to account for their rebel uprisings, they quickly pivot and play the victim and pretend as if their accusers are intolerant bigots. And they use words as weapons. They grab at whatever incendiary rhetoric they can find as means of silencing and cowering their political opponents.
An example?
“Look at the disrespect,” said Gino Bulso, a Republican state representative, of one of the activist lawmakers, Justin Pearson, “with which he has conducted himself today. He called our speaker a liar. He pointed derisively at our speaker.”
Justin Jones, one of the two expelled activist lawmakers then responded to Bulso with this: “What [Bulso] was essentially saying was that Justin [Pearson] was an uppity negro.”
No. Not even close. That’s not at all what Bulso was accusing — but in the world of Democratic Party politics, truth has no place, particularly truths that get in the way of scoring political wins.
Democrats are simply despicable.
Pearson and Jones, along with a third lawmaker, the White 60-year-old Gloria Johnson, made the decision to cast aside their own lawmaker labels for activist buttons and take up the tools of street protest movements to drown out dissenting opinions and put a halt to orderly discussions.
They behaved badly. They treated their political seats as platforms for personal agendas, rather than as humble positions of trust and duty to their constituents. They made mockeries of their offices. They cast aside laws and regulations and policies and even the Constitution to throw down with the activist crowd. They led up the activist takeover of their supposedly somber seats and offices of service. They behaved like 2-year-olds throwing tantrums.
And then, when faced with the consequences of their unholy actions, they cried discrimination. They feigned victimhood.
This is not how the duly elected are supposed to act.
But it’s how Democrats act.
“Democrats stage sit-in on House floor to force gun vote,” Politico wrote — in June of 2016, when dozens of Democrats took over the floor of the House on Capitol Hill to protest Republicans who failed to bend the knee to their leftist demands.
Not much has changed over the years.
This is how Democrats act because today’s Democrats can get away with it. Jones, on Monday, was reinstated to his seat. Democrats always get away with it.
Powerful Democrats and their powerful allies in the media rally behind their thug elements. That’s why Democrats always get away with it.
Vice President Kamala Harris actually traveled to Nashville to meet with Jones, Pearson and Johnson. Former President Barack Obama tweeted, “No elected official should lose their job simply for raising their voice — especially when they’re doing it on behalf of our children. Silencing those who disagree with us is a sign of weakness, not strength, and it won’t lead to progress.” President Biden spoke with them via conference call and invited all three to visit him at the White House.
Biden also said this: “[The] expulsion of lawmakers who engaged in peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic and without precedent. Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence and expel duly elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.”
The remarks are ridiculous, given that the trio had ample opportunity to debate the merits of gun control — because their job puts them right on the legislative floor where debate on various issues goes forth. They didn’t want to debate, though. And the reasons they didn’t want to debate is because they know their particular debating points — ultimately, to strip citizens of the God-given and constitutionally protected right to bear arms — would not pass legislative muster. So they resorted to activism and chaos.
They joined in a mass takeover of the legislative offices.
They used their offices for wrongful purposes and abused their positions for selfish political gain.
They cried and cried and cried when their abuse of power was called out and they were forced to face the consequences of their poor choices. But this is the epitome of Democratic Party politics these days. Thuggery has replaced critical thinking; drumming up chaos has taken the place of principles and platforms. It works for them. It’s working for them.
Jones was reinstated. Another Democrat gets away with it. But only in this lifetime. A day will come when the unruly, the unrighteous, the dividers and conquerors, the immoral and base will have to explain themselves.
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil,” 2 Corinthians 5:10 states.
All. Even Democrats. And that is the dream of the righteous.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.