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Mar. 27th, 2005 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arwen_lune(From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)
THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
Cult: Live, even if it kills you
Jay Bookman
Published on: 03/24/05
Death can be a good thing, even a welcome thing. It is not, in every instance, something evil that must be fought with every weapon at our disposal.
In a rational world, that statement would not be controversial. It expresses a truth confirmed by the experience of every generation that has ever taken breath. In my own life, I have twice welcomed death on behalf of someone close to me who was in a great deal of pain. That sad experience has been shared by millions.
But as the Terri Schiavo case demonstrates, we do not live in a rational time.
Today, to acknowledge the eternal reality that death can be welcomed is to risk being branded as a killer. In the terminology of the day, it marks you as part of the Culture of Death, the force of darkness, arrayed against the Culture of Life, the force of goodness and light and love. It is idiocy, but the leaders willing to stand up and confront that idiocy are few and far between.
In this bizarre time and place, facts no longer matter. Within the communication back-channels offered through the Internet and elsewhere, facts can be mutated, invented, woven into false story lines and then broadcast as gospel to millions without fear of contradiction or challenge.
And by the time that false story hits the mainstream, it can pack a punch that knocks reality for a loop. As the Schiavo case demonstrates, that false reality can force even the government of the United States to bow down before it.
The real Terri Schiavo, the Terri described by the doctors who have examined her and in reams of court and medical records, has been in a persistent vegetative state with no cognitive functions for 15 years. She has no hope of improvement, let alone recovery. Her cerebral cortex, the seat of human reason and emotion, has atrophied into liquid and cannot possibly be restored.
The imaginary Terri, the figure concocted by the Cult of Life, is someone else entirely. The invented Terri smiles at loved ones and attempts to speak. With therapy, her nonexistent cortex can somehow be reconstituted. "She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts," as House Majority Leader Tom Delay said. "It won't take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only take the medical care and therapy that patients require."
But those who believe in that imaginary Terri are not content with such fabrications. In their little morality tale, they have their damsel in distress in the imaginary Terri, and they have cast themselves as her heroic rescuers. But they need a villain.
So, waving the Bible but ignoring the biblical injunction against bearing false witness, they have used their imaginative powers to morph Schiavo's husband, Michael, into wife-murdering Scott Peterson, shamelessly inventing "proof" of his base character and attacking him in terms that shock decency.
It does not matter that in reality, lesser men than Schiavo would have walked away long ago. In a rational world, Schiavo would be praised for fighting for his wife, for refusing to abandon her to those who would use her for their own purposes and condemn her to a protracted existence — not a life, an existence — that she did not want.
It is a measure of our perversion that Michael's refusal to abandon Terri has instead been twisted into proof of his heartlessness and faithlessness.
Here's the reality. In the past 25 years, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans have at some point slipped into a persistent vegetative state. Of those cases, I have found just one in which the patient emerged into something approaching consciousness.
David Mack, a Milwaukee police officer, was shot in the line of duty in 1979 and regained consciousness after 20 months in a vegetative state.
Mack lived another five years, but he was paralyzed and could communicate only by moving his eyes across a spelling board. He told his wife that he wished the bullet had killed him. He begged for a lethal injection or for feedings to stop. He would frequently send the same message:
"I D-O-N-T W-A-N-T T-O L-I-V-E L-I-K-E T-H-I-S A-N-Y-M-O-R-E."
But 20 years ago our laws had not yet evolved to accommodate Mack's wishes, and he was condemned to live. That is what the Cult of Life wants for any of us who suffer such misfortune.
THE TERRI SCHIAVO CASE
Cult: Live, even if it kills you
Jay Bookman
Published on: 03/24/05
Death can be a good thing, even a welcome thing. It is not, in every instance, something evil that must be fought with every weapon at our disposal.
In a rational world, that statement would not be controversial. It expresses a truth confirmed by the experience of every generation that has ever taken breath. In my own life, I have twice welcomed death on behalf of someone close to me who was in a great deal of pain. That sad experience has been shared by millions.
But as the Terri Schiavo case demonstrates, we do not live in a rational time.
Today, to acknowledge the eternal reality that death can be welcomed is to risk being branded as a killer. In the terminology of the day, it marks you as part of the Culture of Death, the force of darkness, arrayed against the Culture of Life, the force of goodness and light and love. It is idiocy, but the leaders willing to stand up and confront that idiocy are few and far between.
In this bizarre time and place, facts no longer matter. Within the communication back-channels offered through the Internet and elsewhere, facts can be mutated, invented, woven into false story lines and then broadcast as gospel to millions without fear of contradiction or challenge.
And by the time that false story hits the mainstream, it can pack a punch that knocks reality for a loop. As the Schiavo case demonstrates, that false reality can force even the government of the United States to bow down before it.
The real Terri Schiavo, the Terri described by the doctors who have examined her and in reams of court and medical records, has been in a persistent vegetative state with no cognitive functions for 15 years. She has no hope of improvement, let alone recovery. Her cerebral cortex, the seat of human reason and emotion, has atrophied into liquid and cannot possibly be restored.
The imaginary Terri, the figure concocted by the Cult of Life, is someone else entirely. The invented Terri smiles at loved ones and attempts to speak. With therapy, her nonexistent cortex can somehow be reconstituted. "She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts," as House Majority Leader Tom Delay said. "It won't take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo. It will only take the medical care and therapy that patients require."
But those who believe in that imaginary Terri are not content with such fabrications. In their little morality tale, they have their damsel in distress in the imaginary Terri, and they have cast themselves as her heroic rescuers. But they need a villain.
So, waving the Bible but ignoring the biblical injunction against bearing false witness, they have used their imaginative powers to morph Schiavo's husband, Michael, into wife-murdering Scott Peterson, shamelessly inventing "proof" of his base character and attacking him in terms that shock decency.
It does not matter that in reality, lesser men than Schiavo would have walked away long ago. In a rational world, Schiavo would be praised for fighting for his wife, for refusing to abandon her to those who would use her for their own purposes and condemn her to a protracted existence — not a life, an existence — that she did not want.
It is a measure of our perversion that Michael's refusal to abandon Terri has instead been twisted into proof of his heartlessness and faithlessness.
Here's the reality. In the past 25 years, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans have at some point slipped into a persistent vegetative state. Of those cases, I have found just one in which the patient emerged into something approaching consciousness.
David Mack, a Milwaukee police officer, was shot in the line of duty in 1979 and regained consciousness after 20 months in a vegetative state.
Mack lived another five years, but he was paralyzed and could communicate only by moving his eyes across a spelling board. He told his wife that he wished the bullet had killed him. He begged for a lethal injection or for feedings to stop. He would frequently send the same message:
"I D-O-N-T W-A-N-T T-O L-I-V-E L-I-K-E T-H-I-S A-N-Y-M-O-R-E."
But 20 years ago our laws had not yet evolved to accommodate Mack's wishes, and he was condemned to live. That is what the Cult of Life wants for any of us who suffer such misfortune.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-27 07:50 pm (UTC)The end is nigh. The world's gone crazy too much.
Date: 2005-03-27 07:59 pm (UTC)What's to me even freakier is that these folks have other kids. Shouldn't they concentrate on the well-being of the living, instead of focusing all of their strength and efforts on the almost dead one?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-27 08:14 pm (UTC)They lost my sympathy when they claimed she had said 'I want to live' when they took the feeding tube out. There's grasping at straws and there's just plain lying.
Forcing to live is the cruelest punishment
Date: 2005-03-27 08:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-28 05:36 pm (UTC)It pretty much sums up my feelings about this case, although I do have to say, that I really *really* hope I'll never have to be in the position to decide if there's a chance of recovery or not and then do the courageous fight of Terri's husband.
I see with some discomfort the figth against windmills that the parents take, as if aiming for a guinness book of world records entry for the most lost court cases over the same matter.
Sadly as soon as the religious nutters take over any discussion the question of serious consideration and care for what is actually objectively the best course falls over the back immediately.
In the end I can only hope whatever happens will be the best for the human (not "life") that was Terri.