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Sunday, March 27, 2005

One More For The Road

Hopefully this will be final time we refer to the Terri Schiavo case. Indeed, we've endeavored to scrupulously avoid the whole mess for as long as possible, but obviously it has morphed into something of a microcosm of the greater cultural civil war at hand. So we battle on.

It has been said that war, in addition to all the pain and sorrow and death and violence, brings with it clarity. And that's true; war clarifies things. People must make actual objective decisions, draw a line, and pick which side of that line they will stand on. Such is the situation here.

Just when it seems that our well of contempt for the morons of the world has been tapped dry, they go and do something even stupider than before. The braying jackasses parked for days outside Terri Schiavo's hospice make a perfectly good argument against Darwin's thesis. Apparently a dozen people have been arrested thus far for attempting to sneak in food and/or water with which to nourish her. The latest of these was three kids and their father. "Dad" seemed all too impressed with himself, thinking he was giving his offspring a crash course in Sticking It To The Man, via some sort of putatively Thoreauvian act of civil disobedience. Dad and sons were unceremoniously handcuffed and hauled away.

It may have been more constructive to let these idiots through, to have let them sneak in and deliver their bounty to someone who can't swallow. Yeah. Let these kids see just how utterly stupid and irresponsible their so-called "parent" really is, and clap a manslaughter charge on Dad. You want a message, you clueless retards, there ya go. You can bring in a bucket of fried chicken and a gallon of Gatorade, and it won't help, not one damned bit. One more time -- Terri Schiavo cannot swallow; she has not been able to for fifteen long, torturous years. God is not going to miracle your gift of food down her esophagus, shit-for-brains -- she'll choke and drown.

This is a perfect illustration of the total lack of thought on the part of the protesters, who really ought to be commended at this point for showing the rest of us just what kind of dumb motherfuckers we're really up against. There is no bargaining with this level of fanaticism and sheer idiocy -- they just have to be slapped down. Preferably with weighted truncheons, and preferably in places where further procreation will be painful and thus impossible.

Some have done charming things such as superimposing Schiavo's face on the traditional picture of Jesus' crucifixion, and changing the usual "I.N.R.I." (the Latin for "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews") to "Terri Schiavo", thus making her their martyr.

And that's really the heart of the matter here -- this is not about Terri Schiavo for them. It never was. It's about their sheer inability to cope with things that are out of their control. It's about Their Faith. It's about Them, as far as They are concerned, though they'll never admit it.

How do we know? Well, let's take a look at their words and their actions. Some of these idiots are even referring to W. and Jeb as "Pontius Pilate" and "Judas". Far be it from us to defend a Bush (much less two), but come on. What exactly would these fools have them do -- subvert the law and spirit her away to where, the White House? Stick her in the Lincoln Bedroom and re-insert the feeding tube, and allow us all to foot the bill in holy perpetuity to keep Them happy? Both Bush brothers did all they could; indeed, they went above and beyond the legal call, taking literally unprecedented steps to subvert and overturn what had already been legally adjudicated nearly two dozen times over the years.

There doesn't seem to be any realistic, pragmatic objective to the wingnuts' aims. They do not seem to understand that it costs money, effort, time, and special facilities to maintain the care for this woman day after day, and as such, you can't just roll her out and spirit her away in the dead of night. Who undertakes the care for her? Who gets to pay that person?

There are so many more areas of cognitive dissonance, it is truly difficult to break them all down. Some of Them apparently not only want to murder Michael Schiavo, but Judge Greer. They seem to ignore the fact that twenty other judges have already adjudicated the exact same way as Judge Greer. Okay? This is not coincidence or anomaly, morons; this is what people who have to live in the real world call a pattern. See, people use "patterns" to determine little nuggets of empiricism called "facts". Welcome to the world of rational thought; come back when you can't stay so long.

It doesn't seem to occur to these dipshits that maybe this is a case for Ockham's Razor -- that after all the nefarious conspiracy theories and religious claptrap have been debunked, the simple fact is most likely that Mike Schiavo is just a guy with a wife who befell tragic circumstances. He made an honest effort for seven long years to find treatment for her, and has since had to reconcile to himself the cold hard fact that neither she nor he nor most of us would want to be stuck the way Terri Schiavo has been stuck.

If God had been planning a miracle for her, maybe He would have just re-regulated her severe potassium imbalance in the first place, and prevented this whole rotten mess. Who knows, maybe He did just that, for as long as He could, until Schiavo's bulimia got the best of the regulatory functions of her body.

The morons just don't know; they'll never know for sure. And after all these useless cocksuckers pull up stakes and go back to their caves to pick fleas off each others' backsides, Terri Schiavo's family still has to live with it all. But instead of using that brain that God gave Them, the morons have decided that this is Their call to arms, Their chance to assert Their faith.

They didn't choose to do any of this for Spiro Nikolouzos, nor for poor little Sun Hudson, the latter of whom succumbed not even two weeks ago from the tender mercies granted by the Texas Futile Care Law, signed by none other than then-Governor George W. Bush in 1999. No, because when the plug was pulled on Sun Hudson, there were no cameras or reporters for these self-righteous fucks to posture and preen in front of, like the fucking show cats that they are.

That's the worst of it -- the callous, cynical abuse of the rather noble ideal of real faith, of constant self-reflection and re-examination of personal moral principles. These assholes are not faithful; they are spiritual vampires, living parasitically off a dying woman, stuck in the thrall of their own dogma, secure in the sanctimonious notion that there's nothing new for them to learn. They've got it all figured out, just ask them. Not that you really need to ask them; they're all too happy to kick down your door and tell you How It Is.

And now Randall Terry says that he will do what he can to oust the Republican politicians. Sounds like we all owe Randall a big "thank you"; not only has he drawn a line we can all quite clearly see, a line which even most Christians and evangelicals have rejected (that government should intervene in end-of-life care decisions), but he wants to kick out moderate Republicans and run wingnuts in the midterms. That would make the return to sanity that much easier, before it does come down to calling for war on Jesusland. Enough is quite enough of the nonsense emanating from Bobo's World. Get back to work and quit wasting everyone's time, you stupid bastards.

Happy Easter, everybody!

4 comments:

Doc said...

1: Bush signs Texas Futile Care act...to protect profits. He sits in his fake ranch for 3 days after the Tsunami, and waits even longer to even mention the recent reservation/school shooting.

2: Schivo's dad let's his own mother die with dignity after falling seriously ill at 79.

3: Delay let's his father pass on with dignity.

4: All of these people have wworked to keep Ms. Schiavo's body alive, have followed talking points meant to confure "supporters (ie: she can "get better" with a little physical therapy, or what not), that her husband is a murderer with greedy motives...etc...

These people are at war with reality.

I COULD understand the parent's grief to some extent - what p[arent wants to outlive their child? But as a psychotherapist I do have to wonder - without a Fristian exercise in remote diagnosis - if the parent's behavior and motivations are just a tad warped for various reasons, power-hungriness over their daughter being among them. Thier behavior often seems less like stress and bereavement and more like histrionics.

The hypocricy is just smothering at this point but it appears the gluttonous over-reaching by Delay and the GOP has, on the heels of a failed WMD report and much suspicion about the Social Security "crisis" is rankling their extremist base as well as moderate Republican.

Lots of fireworks to come I think............

Anonymous said...

Brilliant stuff, Hammer. Keep pounding and prying.

Anonymous said...

Not only did DeLay euthanize his dad, he THEN sued a couple companies for wrongful death and got 1/4 mil settlement.

"In 1990, the DeLays filed suit against Midcap Bearing Corp. of San Antonio and Lovejoy Inc. of Illinois, the distributor and maker of a coupling that the family said had failed and caused the tram to hurtle out of control.

The family's wrongful death lawsuit accused the companies of negligence and sought actual and punitive damages.

Tom DeLay was a named plaintiff in that suit. The case settled for something in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-delay27mar27,0,5710023.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Heywood J. said...

Thanks for all the great comments and kind words, guys. I logged on and saw "4 comments", and my first thought was, "Ah hell, I've gone and put the 'H' in 'Jesus H. Christ' again, and pissed off some folks."

And of course, part of the point is to more clearly delineate the not only the divide between "us" and "them", but between them and "them"; that is, people of serious faith who live in the real world, and jerks who are using Jesus to build their bandwagon. Real people of faith resent the hell out of this circus too, I would think.

And while the meme of how the loons are out of touch with reality is commonplace, I continuously have to remind myself of just how literal this phrase really is. These folks are completely at odds with even fundamental empiricism, in virtually every area of human thought or endeavor. How can they think their way out a wet paper sack if they just default to God to do it for them.

By now He probably just wants to be left alone anyway. Not only is it a case of looking at the state of the world and asking why anyone would truck with such a deity, but why would a deity create such a gaggle of derelicts to abuse His name and intent?