THESE ARE THE NEW RULES.

In political protests, rules of decorum don't matter if it's your pet cause.

Tennessee House Republicans on Monday initiated the process of expelling three Democratic lawmakers who joined protesters in demanding stricter gun laws following the Nashville mass shooting that left three young children and three adults dead.

Days after last week's shooting, thousands of demonstrators flooded the Tennessee state Capitol to decry GOP lawmakers' inaction in the face of deadly gun violence. Inside the House chamber, Democratic Reps. Justin Jones, Gloria Johnson, and Justin Pearson took to the podium with a bullhorn and led demonstrators in chants supporting gun control legislation.

As The Tennessean reported, Tennessee House Republicans cast the trio's actions as an "insurrection" and, at the end of Monday's session, "introduced three expulsion resolutions" claiming that the three Democrats "did knowingly and intentionally bring disorder and dishonor to the House of Representatives through their individual and collective actions."

A vote on the resolutions is expected on Thursday. "Democrats will have little power to block expulsions," The Tennessean noted.

So it always is when bourgeois norms break down.

[Robby Soave's] call would be correct if the social norm was that nobody does this kind of thing.  But when the principle is honored only in the breach, and a long train of abuses and usurpations by the cancel culture of the left signifies a desire to subject anyone who disagrees to absolute despotism, that principle is no longer valid.  We are in a grim strategy situation, and it's clear to the culture warriors that offering the other cheek no longer elicits cooperation.  Restoring the old social norms of disagreeing without being disagreeable is going to be difficult.

Did Democrats really think that after the show-trial style January 6 investigations, there wouldn't be an opportunity for someone, somewhere, of a different political persuasion to return the favor?  It's not as if grousing about "fascism" is going to have much purchase any more, either.

Pearson, one of Tennessee's youngest lawmakers, told a local media outlet that "the thousands of children and adults who marched outside of the People's House are not insurrectionists."

"My walk, my colleagues' walk to the House floor was in a peaceful and civil manner, and it was not an insurrection,” Pearson said, pushing back on the state GOP's characterization of the protests.

The both-sides-ists are predictably at it at the usual places.

Republicans always make the same mistakes when dealing with these kinds of antics. First, they seek to “take the high ground,” thinking they are dealing with bad behavior and ill-breeding rather than recognizing Leninist and Maoist revolutionary warfare actions for what they are. Second, they always forget that Democrats never fail to mistake kindness for weakness.

So it goes when you're in the grim strategy equilibrium.

At the moment, there are plenty of things Democrats have done that call for massive punishment. Bear in mind, dear reader, that Grim Strategy outcomes are outcomes in which both the punisher and the punishee wind up in a worse place than they would be in either the repeated Nash or the cooperative outcome.

Restoring something rationally cooperative is never easy.  We may be playing by the new rules for some time.