Why Tennessee Is ‘Undemocratic’If local politics have become unbearable, it is because they have mimicked Washington, D.C.
Carmel Richardson
Jul 21, 2023
As a native Tennessean, I was amused to learn this week that my home state is “undemocratic.” The Atlantic writer Anne Applebaum derided the Volunteer State in a recent article for being governed by Republicans, and for said Republicans disagreeing with one another (and with a vocal minority of Democrats and left-wing activists) over how best to govern the state.
Tennessee is, as Applebaum’s own reporting demonstrated, a place that is more often excessively democratic than otherwise: What else could explain the numerous factions she describes, which are not only tolerated but even powerful? Tennessee is also a place that, among the southern states, retains some of the fewest resemblances to a Southern aristocracy.
But standards like classical definitions and historical context are not those by which we measure “democracy” in 2023. Democracy now means, to those who use the word most vehemently, that every special interest group must be represented, at all times, and in all places. By this definition, Tennessee is heartily undemocratic. It is, after all, overwhelmingly Republican.
Nevertheless, the Atlantic did deliver one criticism fairly, that of the repeated quote from Nashville’s mayor, that “all politics is national”—or at least they are treated as such in Tennessee, he says. This line is intended to be a mic drop moment, but in 2023 it strikes the reader as merely true, if unfortunate.
The only time local politics seem to matter to American voters today is when they are told such and such school board member, or mayor, or state senator will affect national politics. Meanwhile, those who dream of idyllic localism too often find their city council is not only just as petty as the Washington, D.C., swamp, but petty in the same ways. The mayor is using the same talking points as a U.S. senator because they both got them from the same national cable network or digital media outlet.
It is a phenomenon which is not unique to Tennessee, and it has an escalatory effect: Once one side has used even the smallest tools as hammers, the other side is left either to fight for access to the hammers or to become a nail. Or, to use an example from Tennessee, when an activist moves from California and creates a network of local political “news” websites with the intent of radicalizing the local population against friends and neighbors, it does no one any good to pretend a national strategy is not afoot.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-tennessee-is-undemocratic/
