Marsha Blackburn: Doubling Down on More of the Same

I was reading Sarah Grace Taylor’s Nashville Banner story about Marsha Blackburn wanting to make the electric chair the primary means of executing people in Tennessee — and all I could think about was how this very old person wants to “get tough on crime” by electrocuting other old people for evil committed when they were young.

And then all I could think about was just how futile and stupid it all is. No young person caught up in a murderous rage has some voice in the back of their head saying, “But if I do this, I will also die, some day in the future, at the hands of the state.” It seems like it should be self-apparent, but obviously, if you had the ability to think through the long-term implications of your actions, you probably wouldn’t be in a situation where you kill someone. I would be willing to bet that the death penalty has zero deterrent effect.

I guess what I’m stuck on is how much of Blackburn’s gubernatorial campaign is just promising to keep doing what we’re doing, but extra tough. We’re not just going to execute people; we’re going to fry them in the electric chair. We’re going to crush China. We’re going to go harder on immigrants. We’re going to make Nashville sorry. We’re going to double down on Trump’s agenda.

Marsha Blackburn: Tennessee's Beacon of the Status Quo

The Republican nominee for governor — whose party has run the state for decades — promises a 'beacon of freedom'

What’s this for? Like, who wants this? How is any of this going to make things better for Tennesseans in the future? 

Except Blackburn — a sitting senator who is now running for governor — has no future past the governor's office, right? She’s like Trump and Mitch McConnell and, formerly, Lindsey Graham — these ancient husks who can’t hold a debate, can’t even hold a conversation, can’t meet with constituents, can’t answer anything but pre-planned questions.

I have to wonder if there’s a necromancer on each staff, keeping them upright and moving. 

Do you know what a zombi really is? Like a Haitian voudou zombi, not a Hollywood zombie? It is one of the most horrific (apocryphal) things that can be done to a person. They are given a potion that mimics death, and after the funeral, after they’re buried in the ground, the poisoner comes and digs them up and enslaves them. And a hallmark of this enslavement is that the zombi has no self, no vague memories of their previous lives, and no will to withstand the demands of the poisoner. How much this is an actual physical phenomenon and how much it’s a psychological one is up for debate.

You don’t have to be some kind of anthropologist, though, to see how a culture that has legends about zombis is still working through the legacies of slavery.

Here in the United States, we’ve got the inverse problem. Rather than enslaving the half-dead, we elect them. We’ve got a necro-crasy, in which our leaders are all elderly ghouls arguing over who gets to sit in the graveyard feasting on the corpses and who needs to lay down and join them.

Tennessee, what if, just once, we voted for someone new? Look at your ballot this fall and pick a name you don’t know. Let’s see what happens. How can it be worse than this horror movie in which all our policies are designed to settle fights that started before many of us were born?

Voting for Republicans isn’t getting Tennessee anything. Hell, voting for Democrats isn’t getting Tennessee anything either. But at least if we stop voting predictably, politicians will have to start delivering on some stuff.

I mean, truly, imagine what Blackburn’s campaign would look like if she needed to earn your vote? We can live in that world now. But it’s up to you.