If I could write Abbott a letter (I could, but I don't think he would read it), I would ask him why he lied to the citizens of Texas during his press conference update on Coronavirus today. He claimed that testing "wasn't any good if you are testing negative." This is totally wrong, and I don't know why he would say this unless he just wants to make an excuse for catering to the Trump administration. We can't know who is silently spreading this disease unless we test wide swaths of the population, sick or not, because carriers are frequently asymptomatic. 

He also said that he was going to follow Mnuchin's directives about restarting business. Mnuchin would be happy to sacrifice the working class on the altar of his stock market in order to satisfy Trump. When Mnuchin and Trump talk about sacrifice, they are talking about your life. Abbott was happy to kiss up to his conservative base and strangle rural hospitals out of existence by cutting the funding. Anything that neoliberals like Abbott can do to destroy the fabric of public life, they will do. Destroying the fabric of public life includes using austerity to cut funding and collapse safety nets like county hospitals, rural doctors, Medicaid, and so on.

These "holier than thou" conservative types like Abbott believe that safety nets for working class people and generational poor are a waste of money; they think these populations of vulnerable people are undeserving of anything except charity. That is why charity, especially from Christian sources, is encouraged over using government to properly distribute tax dollars. When charities manage everything, then charities can make decisions based on their private set of moral values. They use these moral values against the recipients of their charity.

This is a destructive and undemocratic way to govern a society. Neoliberalism leads to death and violence. We can see this in action as Trump uses briefings to spread disinformation and bully and insult the free press. As we sit here now watching this horror unfold, we can also see the gaps, huge chasms really, between the haves and the have nots. But people like Abbott see the world through a neoliberal lens, a lens that devalues human life using deception and a "profits over people" approach to every decision.