DAN PATRICK

By George Smith

First, I do not consider myself or Bobbie Jean McCarty Smith as collateral damage or expendable.

We are both “semi-colon” people; you know, like when a writer inserts a semicolon, we ain’t done yet.

Yet, at almost 75 and 73 respectively, that’s the status assigned to us by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick who suggested some deaths should be considered acceptable to jump-start the economy due to the economic slooow-down caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

This is the headline that stopped me on my tracks Tuesday; “Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Wants to Sacrifice Seniors to Save the Economy”.

Patrick said, “No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

Wait! Whoa! Calf rope! King’s X! Stop!

Is he saying that a few hundred (thousand?) funerals of Baby Boomers are a good trade-off for opening up

restaurants, schools, movie theaters and concert venues? Is my life or the life of even one American of any age an even swap for being able to go to Disney World a little sooner than is medically advisable?

Is he basically saying that this virus could take his life (or mine or your’s) and death would be better than a repressed economy?

Surely, that is not what he’s suggesting, right?

Where could this elected public official be getting this ingrown-hair-into-his brain idea?

Earlier in the day President Donald Trump and his chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said that the economic cost of shutting down the country in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 may not be worth it.

Do individual Americans get a vote? Do I get a choice on whether I stick around to love my wife a while longer, wrap my kids and grandkids in fluffy hugs and try and be a contributor to society…OR take an early dirt nap so you and the other survivors can walk in on Obese Thursday at Golden Corral and chow down on the mile-long grease-goodies buffet?

Is this what our leadership has come to…saying that it’s okay if government shuts down the shutdown and I succumb in the aftermath, and if I should die it’s a small price to pay for a stable stock market.

Well, shut the front door!

If you, Dan Patrick, want to go toe’s-up for a 10 point jump in the Dow Jones, get after it, Brave Bubba!

But leave me and mine out of your myopic schemes. We’ll face whatever comes by standing strong and not laying supine while someone drones on with a syrupy eulogy.

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