A Perfect Storm In the South

This is sad. Nashville is part of America's soul and to see what is happening there hurts. I haven't been to Nashville, but its music has been part of my life since childhood. I have been to Memphis, and I guess what's going on there is not too different.

On March 30, when Mr. Lee issued an executive order shutting down nonessential businesses, he stopped short of requiring Tennesseans to stay home. “It is deeply important that we protect personal liberties,” he said, ignoring tens of thousands of health professionals who argued that nothing less than a stay-at-home order would save this state from disaster. And not just this state.

Out of fear of what Tennessee’s delays might mean for their own populations, Fort Campbell, a U.S. Army base that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky border, restricted travel to Nashville. And Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, urged his citizens not to enter Tennessee: “We have taken very aggressive steps to try to stop or limit the spread of the coronavirus to try to protect our people,” Mr. Beshear said. “But our neighbors from the south, in many instances, are not. If you ultimately go down over that border and go to a restaurant or something that’s not open in Kentucky, what you do is you bring the coronavirus back here.”

What hurts the most about the situation is that it didn't have to be this bad. It's been a shitstorm of ignorance, stupidity, arrogance, racism, and greed across the world since mid-November.

I can only hope that, some day, there will be a reckonning.