"R.E.S.P.E.C.T."
"R.E.S.P.E.C.T."
Find out what it means to me? Well sure, I'd appreciate that—but only if you have time left over from finding out what it means to not only yourself but those inside and especially outside your bubble
OK, I’m going to come out and admit it right from the git-go so we can just concentrate on the topic at hand: Yes, I am sending this CeeGee on a Sunday because if I don’t I will have posted but one single solitary Substack entry in all of April.
So this way, even though I’m sure YOU recognize I have proven woefully inadequate in keeping up with posting, to new subscribers they’ll at least see that I posted twice this month. Which will kinda-sorta look to them like I’m posting every other week? Maybe?
Which is still only 25% as much as I said I’d be posting back when CeeGees went live last October. Again, my apologies for that. It’s been an unavoidable slow-down, one which I intend to end soon.
But the good news is that I made our second quarterly donation to the American Red Cross yesterday. It wasn’t a lot since it was 10% of just the intake from monthly subscriptions, but hey, it was something. And it specifically went to the Tennessee Home Fires Campaign to “install free smoke alarms in homes that don't have them, and to educate people about home fire safety.”
Incidentally…are you absolutely super-duper certain your home is as fire safety-ready as it can be? Maybe click the link above and scroll down the resulting page to take a couple quizzes that’ll help you make sure…
But anyway.
On the evening of my last post—which tried to make lemonade out of the lemons the Tennessee House gave my TN District 52 by expelling our representative, Justin Jones—I caught Saturday Night Live and was struck by a gesture made during the show’s traditional sign-off.
The whole cast had gathered behind former cast member and that night’s host, Molly Shannon, as she bid the audience farewell. And while everyone else started hugging and gushing over Molly (as they should have), new-ish cast members Devon Walker and premier Trump impersonator James Austin Johnson held up a black t-shirt with “Jones Pearson” in white lettering on the front.
Just five days earlier, I’d stood next to Justin Jones in Legislative Plaza across from the Tennessee Statehouse. It was a few minutes before high school and college students from across Nashville would descend upon the plaza to rally for gun reform, and just a few hours before the House would announce they were moving to remove Jones and his counterpart, Memphis’s Rep. Justin Pearson, from the House altogether. By joining gun reform adherents who were begging legislators to do something about gun violence from the gallery above them, Jones and Pearson “broke decorum” by encouraging the ruckus from the House floor.
And so the two young, Black “Justins” were indeed kicked out of the state Congress, while the older white lady from Knoxville who’d joined with them during their breach of decorum from the House floor was not kicked out. It sure seemed racist and like a miscarriage of justice to the rest of the world, and the outrage made Jones and Pearson famous—or at least famous enough to become frequent star cable news interviewees, and to inspire a subtle political statement made from the SNL stage at 30 Rock in New York City.
Despite the ferocity with which the Tennessee House Republicans’ expulsion strategy backfired—it martyred the Justins and internationally showcased their considerable political and oratorial skills far sooner than they would have been showcased otherwise—another bunch of state House Republicans with a supermajority forced out a young lawmaker this week after she, too, broke “decorum.”
Don’t worry, this time the perpetrator was white, and when I say “forced out,” she was just barred from physically participating in the political process from the House floor. So hey, no racism involved, no outright expulsion. Progress, right! I mean, she can still vote, and thus represent her constituents—unlike the Justins, who, before their city councils voted them back into the House as interim representatives, were out-out…totally removed from participation.
So maybe, I naively thought, my theory outlined a few weeks ago was right: that the fame the Tennessee House unwittingly bestowed upon Jones and Pearson by unfairly expelling them would at least tamp down on overzealous Republicans in other states who would haphazardly excise young legislators they took issue with from “their” statehouses.
By now you’re probably on to me that what the Montana House of Representatives did to 34-year-old Rep. Zooey Zephyr last week was pretty sinister in and of itself—just not in a racial context. It was sinisterly transphobic, because Zephyr is indeed a trans woman.
The Justins eventually stopped being recognized by their House speaker when trying to answer the cries of their constituents and steer the conversation on the Tennessee House floor toward gun reform. So they took drastic measures and, yes, broke decorum, by encouraging vehement protest from the well of the House floor. They did this in response to the Republican supermajority refusing to even entertain the thought of debate on gun safety, despite the recent mass shooting in Nashville that killed six of their neighbors, including three nine-year-olds and a family friend of Governor Bill Lee.
Zephyr, in turn, eventually stopped being recognized by her House speaker when trying to answer the cries of her constituents and steer the conversation on the Montana House floor toward trans children’s rights. She took drastic measures and, yes, broke decorum, by encouraging vehement protest—this time, though, from her seat on the House floor. She did this in response to the Republican supermajority refusing to even entertain the thought of debate on the bill they intended to pass that would ban gender affirming care for trans children. This despite so many examples showing the rates of suicide among transgender youth jumping when such care is taken from them.
I think the outcry Tennessee Republicans were met with from around the globe when they kicked out Jones and Peterson was an unpleasant surprise for them. But as this AP article explains, Montana Republicans were only too happy to make Zooey Zephyr the more popular Zooey in a Google search when you search for “Zooey” (she comes up before even Zooey Deschanel!).
The plan here was precisely to make Zephyr famous. I guess because they figured if they showed their fellow Montanans how distasteful the weird trans person in their state Congress was, people would hate her as much as they did? And blame Democrats for letting such miscreants be legislators? And take it out on U.S. Senator Jon Tester, a Montana farmer and moderate Democrat, when he runs for reelection next year?
Tester is one of a handful of senators Democrats absolutely must get reelected in 2024 to retain their Senate majority.
I’ve gone off on a tangent. I know, hard to believe. But what I wanted to talk about was how disrespect factors into predicaments like these. And how respect could factor into getting us out of such predicaments.
Again…I suppose I’m being naive. But since that theory figures into what CeeGees is supposed to be all about—i.e. trying to come together enough to make life better for a shitload of people—I’m gonna finish this post by finishing my thought.
There’s nothing that pisses me off more than when I feel like someone’s disrespecting me, y’know? Which is why I try to show respect to even those who I find it hard to respect. If they’re worth interacting with, and debating with, then they’re worth a little respect. And showing them that respect will hopefully help me out in the long run, anyway—they’ll be more likely to work with me and consider my perspective moving forward.
I don’t know Zooey Zephyr’s full story. The only context I know is that she’s trans, and that she’s had friends and colleagues who have taken their own lives because of their own struggles being trans in a society that largely shuns them. That’s why she told Montana House Republicans “You will have blood on your hands” if they banned gender-affirming care for trans youth. And that was enough “lack of decorum,” I guess, for them to boot her from the House floor for the rest of the session.
By the way, this was after her GOP “colleagues” refused to even make an attempt to refer to her as a “her” rather than a “him.” And they said they would continue to misgender her when they address her moving forward—if they ever do address her again, that is—because they’ve set themselves up so they no longer need to.
I know they don’t ‘get’ being trans. I mean, I certainly don’t truly get it, either—and a part of me probably, therefore, fears trans culture, too. But the disrespect on these bozos’ parts…ugh. Is it really helping to further your cause? You really think that’s your ticket to people’s hearts and minds? That’s what will motivate them to come out and vote for you?
I don’t know, maybe they’re right. Maybe it will motivate enough folks to further their agenda in the short-term. But not in the long-term. Even if they feel transgenderism isn’t real and needs to be held in check, away from the public eye, wouldn’t it show more strength if they moved that direction while still respecting the people at the heart of the controversy as fellow human beings?
The U.S. House bill that Speaker Kevin McCarthy just squeaked through last week would raise the debt ceiling only if a ton of governmental programs that help a ton of needy people went away. I’d say the language in that bill not only disrespects the folks who are depending on those programs just to get by. It also disrespects all the congresspeople who came before these congresspeople, who wheeled and dealed and fought to pass laws they thought would make the country better…only to have this Congress refuse to pay the bills associated with those political actions.
That’s what raising the debt ceiling does: it allows us to take care of the financial obligations incurred from stuff that past Congresses already passed. So the current Congress is effectively saying, “We don’t care what y’all figured out and passed before, we’re not paying for it. We’d rather threaten to crash the world’s economy so we can bully our agenda into existence—without bothering to earn it by actually legislating.”
Come to think of it, that attitude reminds me of why Justins Jones and Pearson were told they were really being expelled at one point. It wasn’t really about “decorum.” It was that they selfishly called attention to themselves (?!) by grandstanding from the Tennessee House floor. And in doing so, said Majority Leader William Lamberth during Pearson’s expulsion hearing, they disrespected not only their Republican House colleagues, but all of the Republicans’ hundreds of thousands of constituents. That was why they were really being expelled.
And here’s the last example of disrespect I’ll suggest we should do away with.
I think it’s disrespectful not to try and help average everyday Americans who are not MAGA acolytes, mind you, but nonetheless are legitimately afraid of what the browning and gayification of America means for the country’s future and, mainly, for the futures of themselves and their family and friends.
That doesn’t mean hate can be tolerated, even if it’s subconscious and unintended. But I still maintain that there are far more conservative people in America than not who would like the MAGA movement to disappear for good and stop staining their reputations as true, sensible conservatives. But despite said sensibility, many in this group still instinctively respond to the fear tactics of the GOP when it comes to minorities and the marginalized.
And they feel scared of Black, and brown, and gay, and trans people because of inherent bias, ingrained in them throughout their lives. We’re talking mainly white folks, here, and especially SWAMs like myself—the straight white American males (and the SWAFs, too, of course, the straight white American females)—good people with some bad vibes deeply ingrained inside their perspectives.
And, yeah, I used to be in that group. And I still have hangups about people who aren’t part of my comfy little societal bubble.
I live in just about the most woke-friendly neighborhood in the South, and that’s by choice—I’d never live anywhere else in Middle Tennessee other than East Nashville.
I produced a Bernie Sanders benefit concert, too, on the eve of Super Tuesday 2020. Bernie’s by far my biggest political hero.
Plus, I am so, so proud that Justin Jones is my state representative.
All that said…I get nervous when I’m around certain Black culture that I clearly am not cool or cultured enough to authentically take part in. I am still uncomfortable around trans people. And I used to be uncomfortable around gay people, and just Black and brown people in general.
I liked Rush Limbaugh in high school.
But I went to a large public college (Indiana University), which helped. After graduation I moved to Indianapolis, my first big city. Then I moved to L.A. and lived everywhere from the Valley to Santa Monica to Echo Park. Then I moved to Marin County north of San Francisco (one of the wokest and richest counties in the country, I reckon); then to Ventura, California (one of the most hippie-friendly surf towns around—I was miserable there, tbh); then to East Nashville.
The more I spent time around people from different persuasions, the less self-conscious I became around them. Makes sense, right?
I’m obviously still working on it, though. I must admit, until VERY recently when referring to trans or non-binary folks, I had to pause first and break it down to myself: “OK, they were born a boy, but identify as a girl now, so they’re transitioning from boy to girl, which makes them…a ‘trans girl,’ got it.”
So I guess my concluding point is: give good people with bad outlooks a chance to change. With love and care, and a gentle approach, and while showing them some respect…insist they change, pretty much. If you are to have any kind of a simpatico relationship, they’ll just have to.
And I believe the ones who do change, even when it’s not a complete about-face, are key to righting the ship much faster here in the U.S. than if we just wait for all the assholes to organically become vastly outnumbered (or pass away).
But man, for my part…I still need a lot more friends who are not straight, and/or white, and/or American, and/or male. I still need a much more rounded view of American society, even though lots of people around these parts—these quite liberal parts—think of me as “the Bernie guy.” I just need to keep connecting with, and truly understanding, and feeling comfortable around people who walk a very different path than mine.
And until I build that kind of understanding between myself and those who operate outside my personal comfort zone?
Well, I suppose I’m not showing the respect for others that I am ultimately calling for with this article.
Yours,
~Dean