Episode 19. Some Things Are Worth Dying For

MIKE DONOVAN: The America that we are living in right now is not a free America. I'm afraid that the coming apocalypse of the American economy will kill more and in ways that we cannot imagine.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Not Free America radio. Mike Donovan here, your host for the next 10 to 15 minutes of absolute packed full of news and information and everything you could ever possibly want to know about the fight for your civil rights in the United States. Well, let's dispense of the niceties. That couldn't possibly be true since the civil rights of Americans is under attack at every corner of this country. We will bring you what we can.

No shortage of news to talk about related to civil rights. But first today I want to talk about something big in the news today. Texas Lieutenant governor Dan Patrick -- you guys might've seen this, appeared on Fox news with Tucker Carlson. And he says to Tucker that – and there were two different visits to the show. There was one last night and one like a month before. In the earlier visit, the Lieutenant governor said that there are more important things than living… and he's come under a great deal of attack.

And he went on Tucker last night to explain himself, and I want to share a quote with you that he said, he said, “I'm sorry to say I was right on this. And I'm thankful that we are now finally beginning to open up Texas and other states because it's been long overdue.” People have attacked this man as a monster, as a person who doesn't care about people dying. And at first glance looking at the statements I can certainly understand why people would think that -- more important things than living? What's more important than living?

Well, let me answer that question for me. I've got a kid, I've got two kids, right? I’ve got two kids. And those two kids are worth more than my life. I have a little brother and two brothers and they're both worth more than my life.

I’m kind of weird but I have clients and people that I care about who I think are more valuable than me. So would I ever imagine sacrificing myself because I had a person that I loved that needed… would I ever imagine doing that? Yes. I think I would, but that's not what Lieutenant governor Patrick is saying.

What Lieutenant governor Patrick was saying was that in Texas, you know, as of now, about 500 people have died. And he says, “look, we’ve got 29 million people in the state. We've completely locked the down. We're crushing the workers, crushing the businesses, crushing the markets, and crushing the economy.” And he said, “look, when I say there's more important things than living, I'm talking about saving the country for my kids and my grandkids and for all of us.”

And then he says, and I quote, “I don't want to die. Nobody wants to die. But man, we've got to take some risk and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.” Well, you know what, Lieutenant governor Patrick is absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. And you know, I'm a progressive Democrat, voted Democrat all my life. I'm so out of line and out of sync with my own folks here. But I just don't think it makes any sense to engage in an attempt to control this virus with the numbers that we have and understand its spread and how it's occurring… It doesn't make any sense to shut an economy down. Here's the thing I need you to understand and please, I speak to my left leaning friends here very, very specifically.

The economy isn't an abstract thing. It exists and it is part of our lives. What we do to it may impact our lives on a daily basis. In fact, we know that it often does. So when we take the economy of the United States where the state of Texas and we put it on life support and we shut it down and you save how many lives, how is it quantifiable? How will we ever know? How many people will die from the coming poverty? How many people are not going to be able to stand in bread lines because they're ill or infirmed?

How many people are not going to be able to take care of their kids? Their families are going to fall apart. They have no money, no food. They can't pay rent. They're kicked out. Imagine the homelessness crisis. If you've been to LA, think about Los Angeles and now think about it everywhere.

Think about every major city in the country with the kind of homelessness problem that LA has because that's what's coming in a great depression.

And who knows? Maybe we'll figure out some way to avoid it. But I'm going to tell you folks, as a person who's operated a business employs hundreds of people and in has studied business, I don't think it's workable. The things that you do in an economy now have impacts and not just specific impacts, but sometimes disparate impacts for much longer periods of time.

It's like a ripple in a pond… and you can't jump into the pond and expect the ripples to not affect the rest of the pond. We shut the economy down. We shut the country down. We shut people's civil liberties down. We told people they had to stay in their homes. We did things that are unthinkable in the United States of America. Never before have we done these things, but we were told that everyone needed to do these things so badly that we couldn't trust the American people to take care of themselves with education and resources.

So we have to criminalize behavior like going outside or going to church or talking to your friends or visiting grandma – you know, real horrible stuff. So we had to criminalize that. Why? Because the crisis was so bad… Existentially a threat. But is that right? Is it?

The virus has killed so many people. It is a horrible, horrible disease. But I'm afraid that the coming apocalypse of the American economy will kill more and in ways that we cannot imagine.

You know, when Lieutenant governor Patrick says that he thinks about his kids and his grandkids, I think about my kids. And are they going to even have an economy that can – do they even have a shot? You know, everything that I believed -- I was born in this country. If you're listening to this and you are an American citizen who was born here... If you moved here, you chose to come here. I think probably even more significant. We all understand then what America's promise is and we understand our responsibility to it.

And part of that responsibility is standing up and speaking out when something's wrong. And the biggest problem I have here is that the Lieutenant governor of Texas can't stand up and say something very reasonable, which is we've had 500 people die from this disease. How many will die if our economy goes off the rails? We've got to get life back to normal. Agree, disagree. Don't call the man a monster, a demon, a devil, a killer. He's an American. He has an opinion.

We have a constitution and the Bill of Rights and that Bill of Rights guarantees him the right to make that argument. I understand. It's hard to remember what the Bill of Rights guarantee because in such a short period of time we've lost it all.

No, I'm not typically the kind of person that goes and defends Republicans. I'm more of a Democrat, but this is an exception. And Texas democratic party chair said that the Texas Republicans, like Patrick would put Texans at risk to enrich themselves and their stock portfolios. Now to a person like the democratic chair, Gilberto, I wonder if he realizes how many people are suffering that have no stock portfolios. How many mothers are trying to figure out how to feed their, their baby or the kid?

And not with a stock portfolio. You see, this is classism finest. Now I want to leave you with this. I want to leave you with this. So we know that as of Tuesday, nearly 170,000 people had died of the coronavirus right? Okay. So the scientists came forward today and said -- and it was printed in the times, that we believe that there are an extra 25,000 deaths out there that are attributable to COVID-19. And to come up with this estimate, they looked at the recent mortality data of 11 countries.

Now, in the countries where more people had died recently… They said, “okay, how many more people died recently than the last year? And all those deaths must be COVID-related.” As we try to figure out all this nonsense and craziness… You know, when are we going to get out? When are we going to get back to work?

How are we going to make sure we take care of ourselves and protect ourselves? Why is it that we want these numbers to be higher? Can someone tell me why that's important? I thought the important thing was to make the numbers lower. What are you doing? Why do we have to believe the numbers are higher? 170,000 is a huge number. More Americans have died from the coronavirus in a month than die from the flu in a year. So why do you try to make it seem worse? When someone's trying to point you in a different direction?

It's usually because they don't want you looking at them. Folks, thank you for joining me tonight. I really appreciate it. We'll be back tomorrow. Stay safe. Stay healthy tomorrow. Tomorrow, Protest in the Commonwealth of Virginia. We will have folks on the scene. We'll bring it to you. Not live, but a recap in the evening.

Thank you folks for joining me on Not Free America radio… toll free number for civil rights violations. If you or someone you know has had their civil rights violated, (855) 925-2833. Thank you so much. We've already received several legal referrals from folks calling and keep them coming. We're in this together and we're going to fight to protect your rights together. Thank you so much for joining me folks. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care. Stay safe. Stay healthy.