U.S. Rep. John Rose
Tennessee Republicans seem to have settled on the winning message, “If you don’t like how we’re doing things, you can leave.” Holly McCall of Tennessee Lookout was at the Statesmen’s Dinner on Saturday evening, and she reported on Twitter that U.S. Rep. John Rose said: "that 'Tennessee is built on Judeo-Christian principles,’ and that Democrats who have forgotten what makes Tennessee can go to California.”
I love this so much. These assholes stand in the presence of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who I would call a Disney villain, but would Scar ever? Please. DeSantis is, at best, the bumbling sidekick of a Disney villain who is progressively making things worse, but hoping the boss doesn’t notice. Anyway, they stand in the presence of DeSantis — who is running a state that the NAACP is telling people to avoid, where his homemade secret police force is imploding, and crops are rotting in the fields — and tell themselves, “Yes, this is the right approach. This is what Tennessee needs.” I’m sorry, but this is hilarious.
A page from the 1850 slave census showing Rep. John Rose's ancestors
And sure, let’s talk about those “Judeo”-Christian values. Is having pork as your 10th-biggest agricultural product part of that? Is bragging about a farm that’s been in the family since 1790 — which means we can look on a map and see that your family was not supposed to be there and was, in fact, stealing land over the “Indian Boundary” — a Judeo-Christian principle? Which is the principle? Stealing the land or flaunting that you did it for 233 years? John Rose, your ancestors, the Lancasters, used slave labor to build their wealth. They stole the bodies of Black people from themselves and then stole their labor so that you could have that land you sit on. Is that a principle you want us to emulate?
Talking about Biblical principles, Jeremiah 34:14 says slave owners are to free their brothers after seven years. In 1850, Rose's ancestor Thomas A. Lancaster owned a 30-year-old mixed-race man and a 20-year-old mixed-race woman. Rose, you know the chances that one or both of them are your relatives are astronomical, and yet your ancestor didn’t free them after seven years. So, is disobeying God part of your Judeo-Christian principles?
And if it’s cool for your ancestors to disobey God by keeping their own family members enslaved longer than seven years, couldn’t we argue that disobeying God is a core Tennessee value?
Listen, I’m not going to dog anyone who looks around at this pile of hypocrisy and cruelty and runs for it. But Tennessee Republicans don’t have any more right to this state than the rest of us (Native Americans excepted). Telling us to leave if we don’t like living with them? Fuck that. They can leave if they don’t like living with us. I hear Florida is a Republican paradise now, and I hear we have plenty of U-Hauls.
