How, exactly, are mask mandates “overreach” or “government control,” but mandating that there can’t be mask mandates isn’t overreach or government control?
It’s a question made necessary by Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s interest in joining the insanity that is running rampant in too many GOP circles these days. Sexton and his entire Republican Caucus on Wednesday asked Gov. Bill Lee in a letter to call a special COVID-19 session to block “overreach” requiring students or business patrons to wear masks as COVID-19 once again surges in red states that have resisted vaccines.
The entire super-majority Republican Tennessee General Assembly, indeed many Republican politicians across the nation – witness Rand Paul of Kentucky who rages against masks and vaccines, but didn’t mind his wife investing in lots of COVID treatment stocks – should be ashamed over this sad folly. COVID-19 does not care what our political stripes are. It just wants its own control. It just wants to keep infecting and mutating into a constantly more dangerous killing machine.
But we can stop it – if we just will.
Sexton’s letter is taking aim at the wrong enemy. Rather than focusing on the virus which already has claimed nearly 13,000 Tennesseans and sickened almost 1 million, the letter states that lawmakers should convene to “address misdirected and mandated response to COVID-19 by local entities and officials. It is of the utmost urgency to move quickly due to the potential of significant harm to Tennesseans.”