Governor Greg Abbott and True Grit



Many of you may saw Governor Greg Abbott of Texas giving a stirring message of unity and a prayerful message of hope to the citizens of Dallas the day after the murder of five Dallas policemen.  Some of you may have been surprised to see Gov. Abbott in a wheelchair.  Now, mind you, if Abbott was a left-leaning Democrat the news media couldn’t get enough of that story. Every mention of the man (and there would be plenty of them) would start with the term “Wheelchair bound Gov. Abbott…”  But, of course, Abbott is a Republican and a devout Christian, and a conservative in a solidly red state so the media soft peddles it.   
     Gov. Abbott was paralyzed in an accident in 1984.  A tree fell on him when he was jogging.  However, he still has fully-functioning nerve receptors in his legs and feels pain just as intensely as any of us.  That is important for the rest of this story. 
      Governor Greg Abbott knew that he had to help set a tone that day in Dallas.  He had to show that Texas government from the top down was yearning, acting and planning for peace, compassion and justice.  Abbott did that, and effectively, while he was in excruciating pain.  Greg Abbott had two-day old 2nd and 3rd degree burns on both legs from the knees to the ankles.  They were wrapped in medical dressings.  Whole sheets of skin had been first boiled away and then, by necessity, snipped away, the layers of nerves beneath laid bare. 
     Abbott had been vacationing with his family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming when the accident occurred.  He was receiving treatment when news broke that a peaceful protest in Dallas had been scarred by the actions of a mad man and good people were dead and injured.  Doctors had told Abbott not to travel, but his first words were, “I’ve got to come back.”  When his staff and medical team told him to rethink that decision he simply said he was going home and to “….make it happen…”  At the same time the decision was also made not to tell the public about his injuries, their extent and their aftermath. 
     It wasn’t until Sunday evening that the Austin American-Statesman broke the news of the governor’s burns.  The Governor’s staff had squelched the story up until then.  “We didn’t want to distract from what was happening in Dallas,” the governor’s spokesman, told the newspaper. The story became uncontainable when Abbott had to be hospitalized, facing probable surgery, at Brook Army Medical Center.
     For those of you who are fortunate enough not to have direct knowledge of burns let me tell you that pain management is a serious problem, but infection is a killer.  Gov. Abbott’s burns are being changed daily.  He will probably be fitted with special elastic stockings that minimize scarring.  He will be months in the healing. 
     The seriousness of this injury will probably keep him from attending the Republican National Convention.  But he doesn’t need to be there—only his name does.  Because here are some other facts.  Trump will not win.  Period.  Don’t try to pretend he can because any way you cut the numbers they are not there.  Hillary must not win, she is not worthy of the office, but she will win with Trump on the Republican ticket.  But there is a path to victory.  At the convention, dump Trump.  Nominate Governor Greg Abbott as President of the United States.  He can win.  Let him.
     God bless Gov. Abbott who shows us how to keep the faith.    

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Generation of Serfs

  On October 25, 1415, Henry V of England laid some serious hurt on the French at the Battle of Agincourt at Pas-de-Calais, France.   Part of the success of this campaign was due to Henry’s use of the longbow, but part of it also goes to the creative use of military indentures.   These legal contracts required all the English captains to provide specified amounts of men, material and time to the King’s cause.             An indenture was a document, written in duplicate and then torn along a jagged line, like little teeth ( dents ), in the paper.   One portion of the contract was in possession of each party and when the required conditions and period of service were fulfilled, the parts reunited, and the debt was considered paid.   Many of the people who first came to this country from England came as indentured servants, worked off their debt and became the backbone of the country.             Today we are creating a nation not of indentured servants, someone with a carefully
Read more

Our Beautiful Constitution and its Ugly Opponents

 The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God, I would simply ask them how else so many geniuses in the matter of human governance could have been clustered together in the right time and place to create both our country and the means to govern it.    Our founding fathers had the vision to devise a way to not only govern themselves, but govern a country that they could not imagine, yet believed would prevail. The constitution of the United States is like a good parent.   It has allowed us to grow up as we have grown older, with the result that the United States of America is the oldest living democracy in the world.   The miracle of this document is that it lives, breathes and moves with the times.   The three branches of our government work together while standing alone
Read more

"You Didn't Build That:" Part I

Late in the day on Friday, July 13 th , President Obama mounted the stage of Historic Firehouse Number One in Roanoke , Virginia .   The room held around 800 people but it was hot and several people fainted.   In front of a carefully screened group of supporters he gave one of the most important speeches of his reelection campaign.    It was not meant to be a major speech.   That will come in the even more carefully scripted Convention Hall in Charlotte , North Carolina this September in front of adoring media and rabid political supporters.   But this speech in Roanoke is crucial to the 2012 election because on Friday, in Virginia , President Obama went off message.   Whether through error or hubris, he abandoned his script and spoke off the cuff.   And in so doing, he showed us the man behind the curtain.   The angry but controlled, insecure yet charismatic, market fearful, socialistically inclined man that Barrack Obama really is. I am speaking, of course, of the now famou
Read more