House Majority Leader William Lamberth, sponsor of a bill that would overturn a Supreme Court ruling that immigrant children illegally in the country are entitled to a public educationl. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
For those not on board with the right-wing theocracy that controls the Tennessee General Assembly, late winter brings on an all too familiar case of political car sickness. Democrats collectively cringe in the back seat for three months as Republican lawmakers drive cockamamie bills down a twisted road that runs from the town of pointless to the county of unhinged, with an occasional stop in cruelty city along the way. The GOP’s annual legislative assault on decency and rationality is something Blue Tennessee is wearily accustomed to, though this year’s does feel more concussive than usual given the added psychic baggage of Trump 2.0 chaos bombs splattering all around us.
Which has me thinking: what are they thinking? What is it that keeps Tennessee Republicans confident and comfortable advancing bills that are often so plainly out of step with realities of lived experience on the part of the humans who are most affected by their legislative adventures? I have a theory about this.
My theory is that when it comes to some of their worst ideas, GOP lawmakers are seeking to govern a place that doesn’t actually exist. I don’t mean by this a place that used to exist. Cultural conservatism is often framed as political nostalgia for a bygone America — for instance, restoring the traditional (read: sexist and racist) social structures and values of the mid-twentieth century. That’s not my angle. My theory is not that they covet return to an idealized past, but rather that they seek to impose direction over a nonexistent present. It’s not about remaking the present in the mold of a beckoning yesteryear; it’s about navigating the future based on willful ignorance of the present.
Let’s illustrate with a couple of the current legislative session’s less stellar ideas.
First is the controversial bill allowing public school districts to refuse enrollment to a child without legal immigration status unless the kid’s parents pay tuition. If you were starting a country from scratch with literally zero undocumented immigrants within your borders, and at that time of origin were setting rules for educational access, perhaps it wouldn’t be absurd to put future immigrants considering relocating illegally on notice up front that their kids may not be entitled to free public education.
But situated within the live real-world context of a sizable and economically significant undocumented population, this bill absurdly penalizes children for the actions of their parents, actively harms settled communities, and threatens the state’s economic stability. And by flaunting civil-rights-compliance conditions tied to federal education funding, the bill (per its fiscal note) may jeopardize north of a billion dollars in federal funding for public schools.
Yet the bill’s proponents act as if none of these realities exist. Asked about consequences in a committee hearing on March 11, House sponsor Rep. William Lamberth, a Portland Republican, pulled his head out of the sand long enough to reject the premise entirely, declaring “this bill is about one thing: allowing the locals to check immigration status.” If there is a world where this bill could be imagined as a morally plausible consequence-free approach to immigration policy, it’s not the one we actually live in.
Tennessee public schools could exclude immigrant children without legal status in GOP-backed bill
Second, consider Rep. Gino Bulso’s resolution teeing up an amendment to the Tennessee Constitution that would make it unlawful to compel any medical treatment, including vaccinations. As vaccine advocate Emily Delikat wrote , Bulso’s brilliant idea risks transforming the state, once in the vanguard preventing disease through school and daycare vaccination requirements, into a leader in illness, impairment, and death. Given how current anti-science political winds are blowing, the vaccination angle is what stands out most in Bulso’s amendment, but I wonder if the thing might have other pesky consequences.
The text of the amendment defines the “medical treatment” that cannot ever be compelled to include “any intervention intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or mitigate any physical or mental condition.” This seems breathtakingly broad. If no test can ever be compelled to diagnose a physical or mental condition, then would it be unconstitutional to perform an assessment (as departments routinely do) to see if a police or firefighter trainee is physically or mentally fit for the role? Could a public hospital not insist that staff or visitors involved in direct patient contact be screened for an infectious disease amidst an outbreak or epidemic? The world Rep. Bulso apparently imagines is one where science gives up all ground to individual choice in any and every setting. The world we actually occupy is one where screening requirements in certain social contexts are basic and essential tools of public safety.
I will grant that sorting out alternative theories of GOP folly at the state legislature is largely an unproductive enterprise. Are they cruel? Are they bigots? Is it a lack of compassion? Are they just plain stupid? Clearly all of these are operative at one time or another, often in combination. My point here is to add another layer of explanation that may explain some of the bills that are really out there: that Republicans on the Hill are willfully benighted — living and governing in what the dictionary defines as “a state of intellectual, moral, or social darkness.” They legislate the unimaginable because they are unable to imagine what they are legislating.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.