Bill Lee: When The Moment Called For Leadership, He Played Politics
"We have no plans to change our strategy"
If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to have selfish, ignorant leaders.
George Carlin
One of the saddest and most frustrating aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the corresponding pandemic of stupidity that has multiplied the impact and the body count. This is a time when we should reasonably be expecting our elected leaders to lead. Instead, we have intellectual and moral nonentities like Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R), who couldn’t lead a pack of hungry Cub Scouts to a Dairy Queen.
Of course, exactly WHAT Gov. Lee’s “strategy” is, few can say with any degree of certainty. Like most Republican Governors, though, it looks like equal parts denial, wishful thinking, and pandering to his state’s lowest common denominator. Nevertheless, Gov. Lee appears to have approached the pandemic with an eye toward what policy/policies would provide the biggest political payoff to him. That means avoiding making the hard truths clear to his constituents. Unfortunately, it’s also meant he’s lacked the integrity to be honest about what beating COVID-19 will require.
Except that doing things like going against CDC guidelines, resisting masking mandates, and not advocating for vaccination may be politically popular…but they do nothing to promote public health. In fact, one could argue that Gov. Lee’s reluctance to lead has resulted in needless deaths among his constituents in Tennessee.
And you wonder why people argue that the GOP has turned into a death cult?
Like most of America, the Volunteer State doesn’t exactly have a handle on its COVID-19 outbreak. The Delta variant has, as is true nationwide, placed a tremendous strain on Tennessee’s hospitals. Emergency rooms are packed, and ICU beds are few and far between…if they’re available at all. So you’d think that Gov. Lee would be committed to doing whatever it takes to protect public health and the safety and well-being of the citizens of Tennessee, right?
If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
George Carlin
Well, you’d be wrong. WAY wrong. How bad are things in Tennessee? Children now make up almost 40% of the Volunteer State’s new COVID-19 cases. The state has underreported its COVID-19 cases by about 5,100, meaning its actual caseload had been about 20% higher than previously reported. Currently, more people are infected with COVID-19 than at any point during the pandemic. And several school districts have closed until after Labor Day.
Listen to Gov. Lee, though, and you’d be hard-pressed to know that anything’s amiss. More Tennesseans are sick and dying than ever before…and Gov. Lee appears to be happily fiddling while Rome burns.
It hasn’t helped matters that Gov. Lee has allowed parents to opt-out of mask mandates in Tennessee’s schools, which effectively imperils schoolchildren. Because children under 12 are too young to be vaccinated, they’re at the mercy of the adults around them, many of whom are unvaccinated and refuse to wear a mask.
Pretending that nothing is amiss, that science is wrong, and that COVID-19 is a hoax is certainly one strategy available for combatting the pandemic. Sadly, it’s also a damned poor one. That anyone would advocate for policies that put children at risk is unconscionable…and yet, that’s exactly what Gov. Lee is doing. He knows that mask mandates and vaccines are unpopular in Tennessee, and thus far, he’s shown himself unwilling to go against the grain.
As has happened in other red states, where Republican Governors have thoroughly politicized what should be solely a public health issue, Gov. Lee is coming under fire by those who understand what’s happening. Thus far, though, Gov. Lee has continued to choose politics over public health. Even members of Tennessee’s COVID-19 task force have become disenchanted with Gov. Lee’s penchant for preferring politics over leadership.
A group of medical and education leaders has called on the Governor to step up and show some leadership by issuing a statewide mask mandate and allowing for virtual schooling. Gov. Lee has thus far been outspoken in resisting calls for either strategy.
There does seem to be a growing groundswell of pressure, particularly from media outlets, on the Governor to show leadership and take actions that would help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Action from the Governor’s office seems unlikely, though. Gov. Lee essentially declared COVID-19 to be “over” at the end of April, even though only 25% of Tennesseans had been fully vaccinated at that time. Like most Republicans, he wants to get on with the business of business.
Like several other Republican Governors, Gov. Lee has proven himself to be far more concerned with his political future than with the health and well-being of his constituents. Building one’s political brand on the dead bodies of constituents who perished due to your incompetence and lack of compassion is a helluva way to polish one’s political turd, eh??
How many have to die before Bill Lee decides it’s time to show leadership and maybe, just maybe, save a few lives?
At this point, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the Governor has blood on his hands and that he’s complicit in a wholly preventable genocide. If he hasn’t shown leadership after 18 months, we probably shouldn’t expect him to see the light now, eh?
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