Stop Calling Her Terry
In the news…. just a few short shoutouts because the news is so sickening to me, is so indicative of deep hypocrisy and corruption that I can’t really write any sustained discourse about it today. I just need a short break to re-energize.
Republicans are using Mrs. Schiavo for political gain and to distract from important issues facing us. Stop the doublespeak, stop the corruption. If you were so in favor of life, you would address starving children, the poor, family planning, healthcare, medicare/medicaid reform, and you’d be against sniper rifles and assault weapons and the death penalty and greed-motivated war and killing.. You wouldn’t be against school lunches, you wouldn’t be increasing the class gap, you would be taking care of the future of America, not bankrupting and destroying us. Mrs. Schiavo, who Tom DeLay has never met, is not your gift from God. Contrary to what DeLay said to distract everyone from his own….activities, Mrs. Schiavo is not lucid. Her higher brain functions are gone and portions of her brain are simply liquified. Let her go be with her God and stop using her. And please stop calling her Terry. You are not her friends.
God, it’s pathetic what will rally the right these days. I’m going to see Anne LaMott speak at Emory tonight just to be reminded about the message of Christianity.
In other news, isn’t it a little strange that no-one seems to care much about a student who goes around and shoots classmates and teachers, just as long as it’s not at a nice high school in a conservative town like Littleton? There’s no video, either, so it’s not “real” in terms of the cultural evaluations. No helicopters, no team of cowardly police, no crying anxious parents being interviewed? Some messed up Nazi-type kid miles from anywhere? On an Indian reservation? Columbine made Americans hysterical… but that was before we saw what kind of awful stuff we were going to go through later. I’m thinking that violence will increase over the next year or so… sure hope I’m wrong.
Medicare – oh, it’s too depressing. I’m going to go plant some flowers. Right now.
News is no longer news. It’s a diversion paraded as entertainment and contrived controversy.
On an Indian Reservation?? That was my nagging question, among the general questions you address as to lack of coverage.
I can’t plant flowers yet. Guess I’ll go eat chocolate.
Two points. I get the impression that those on the Indian reservation would like to be allowed to mourn free from an intrusive media presence. And post-911 there is inevitably less novelty news value in school massacres, no matter where they occur.
I agree with you that strangers calling an afflicted person by her first name is repellant. Also, her present sad state resulted from an eating disorder, apparently, so there was a bit of self-harm in play.
Hope
I’m an Australian so the nuances of your political environment are a little beyond me. What I find difficult is that you are willing to do to Ms Schiavo something that here in Australia you would have to face the courts for if done to an animal – namely withhold food and fluids until death ensues. What a terrible way to die.
My wife (Sue) gets the opportunity to work with folks who have suffered from motor accident injuries, some with significant cognitive and motor impairment. Sue loves these people. They are not human garbage just because their IQ no longer reaches a certain level.
Perhaps one of the indicators of a progressive and healthy society is to look after those who are weak and in need with love and sacrifice. Perhaps we need people like Ms Schiavo just as much as they need us for survival. They can teach us to love without needing something back, where touch and tenderness are more important than political persuasion or economic determinism.
Just a quick response as I’m headed out the door. I’m not willing to do anything to Mrs. Schiavo. For me, the question is not so much whether Mrs. Shiavo should continue to be kept alive without consciousness as it is whose decision it is – her own, or a manipulative hypocritical federal government. Mr. Bush signed the law in Texas that stipulated that if no-one is paying, out comes the tube. The very interests that Bush is with are the ones that set up this situation in the first place – money, money, money. There are people in hospices all over the country that won’t be able to continue because of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t subscribe to any blaming of the victim in any case, but from what I understand it may actually be more or a malpractice issue – again, this government wants so-called “tort reform” that would limit what people like Mrs. Schiavo could be granted. And – I am completely convinced that this case is also intended to stir up hatred from what remains of our judicial system. The laws that the courts are following in this case are ones that all the republicans are for – and now they will stir up hatred when the judges follow the law. It’s astounding that they could even get away with it. Myself, I’m a “right to die” person – and for me, this stresses the importance of a living will. I’m a “right to live” person too – when the person involved wanted that. My father didn’t want heroic measures – and it was better that way. In this case, she’s gotten every treatment available, she’s gotten every legal option there is – it has gone on 15 years, and the tapes you see are VERY selective. Wherever Mrs. Schiavo is, she isn’t with her body anymore in any case. I would wish for the same death myself – a gentle slipping away without pain, which is what she’s getting. But when people will lie and say things like “she just said she wants to live” when she is incapable of higher brain functions, when people call her a gift from God when they ignore thousands of others who could be helped, it sickens me. When the poor and the blue collar and the lower-middle class and the middle-middle class are being squeezed, when all our futures are being destroyed with national debt, health insurance is cut or denied, destruction of the ecosystem, imperialistic war, and so on – it’s a little hypocritical to talk about a culture of life. Jesus is with those people whose lives are being ruined by this administration – not with the hateful so-called religious who call for the bombings of clinics, or with the ones that kill more people with the death penalty in one state than in whole countries elsewhere. I would never claim that Mrs. Schiavo is “human garbage.” I just believe that when people choose not to live in that state – and there are several witnesses to her wishes on that – the government shouldn’t seize the case – esp when they don’t give a shit about anyone else in that condition.
As for the school shootings – I agree that the media circus is not desirable – I was only commenting on the difference in reaction is interesting. Actually, I felt that the Columbine hysteria was pathological – a building-block for things to come.
Yes, the differences were interesting.
Hope
A week without Vi, is a week without sunshine.