Okay, the Republicans have opened up the pandora’s box of using one family’s tragedy to score political points. It’s awful, it’s reprehensible, but it’s happened.
And the worst thing is the probably WILL score political points after this.
As I see it, we have the following options:
1. Do nothing and hope this all goes away.
2. Bitch and complain and hope that someone hears us.
3. Take action.
Right now I’m leaning toward number 3, because of the overwhelming number of Americans who are also disgusted by Congress’s actions of yesterday and today.
But what do we do? Hold a march? Email? Call?
I don’t think this is enough. I think what our congress is doing right now is so unbelievably bad, that is requires us do something big, huge, smelly and snarky.
My thought is this, and it’s inspired by Hunter’s excellent rant on dKos. I think we should start a blogosphere drive to either purchase copies of medical dictionaries for Bill Frist, or start a drive to purchase copies of the United States Constitution for all of the senators and representatives who are using their public offices to get involved in one family’s tragedy.
I want to hear from y’all here in Booman Tribune what you think we should do. I’d also like to know if anyone has some thoughts on logistics on how to get this mass drive started.
We’ve had success doing stuff like this recently, in buying roses for Boxer and in the Sinclair Broadcast boycott. I think this is something we need to do now and quickly.
Thoughts?
Hope to get some good feedback on this, and hopefully some partners in crime 🙂
Getting all legalistic (medical dictionaries, bills of attainder, etc.) isn’t the answer. Democrats, in my view, need to get away, fast, from looking like they are in league with Mr. Schiavo (forgot his name–Michael, maybe?) in trying to starve/dehydrate Terri. And all the whining Dems in Congress are doing about Republicans’ actions on this is the worst. They look petulant and weak, and like all they care about is the politics rather than compassion (thank god that memo came out showing the GOP is not “above politics” here or we’d really be sunk).
Something was posted at dKos about a bill Shrub signed into law in Texas that cut off medical care for poor people in similar circumstances, regardless of how their family felt about it. If that’s legit, it needs to be pushed–hard. But my druthers would be for Dems to take a stand that no one be euthanised unless they clearly asked for it in a legal document. And if you are going to end someone’s life, don’t pull this bogus scam where you try to negate responsibility by cutting off food and water. “Oh, we didn’t kill her, we just stopped prolonging her life.” Ugh. Just shoot her up with a massive dose of morphine or some other appropriate drug, please.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
with ya there. She is literally brain dead. This is an ethical matter to be decided with families in concert with their religious/spiritual advisors, doctors and after a lot of thought and reflection.
This is not up to the government. And I also don’t see it as euthanisia. This is not the government adopting policies to encourage certain groups of people to die. I don’t see where you get that from.
She is NOT brain dead–that is one of the exaggerated claims that has been going around. There are respected experts in neurology who have said they can’t be sure what level of consciousness she has, and that she could in fact improve with therapy.
But again, I’m not denying that she’s very high up on the “slippery slope”. But you don’t want to even start down that slope, in my opinion.
I’ll again quote the Nat Hentoff piece from the Village Voice: “‘It is much like Germany in the ’20s and ’30s. The barriers against killing are coming down.’…If the courts finally permit the husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo to continue to press for her death by starvation by again removing her feeding tube, more of the barriers to killing may come down in other states. So this isn’t only about Terri Schiavo. It could be about you.”
For those not familiar with Hentoff, he is NOT a right winger. He had a weekly column in The Nation for years, before going to the Village Voice. If you click the link to the article, you’ll see links to some of his other columns, which should make it clear that he is not a Republican or Bush supporter by any stretch of the imagination.
We are supposed to be, as progressives, the advocates for the weak and powerless. That’s why I align myself with progressive prolifers like Hentoff.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
please link to those “respected experts in neurology”, because what I’ve read is this has been reviewed by countless doctors and in the courts and they have determined she will not “improve with therapy”.
Secondly, I don’t have to agree with Hentoff simply because he’s on the left. Those of us on the left actually are good with diverse opinions on a variety of subjects. That’s part of what makes us liberals.
Third…I don’t believe the analogy to Germany in the 20’s and 30’s is accurate. First off, the Weimar Republic was just starting to explore the area of reproductive freedom and legalized abortion. Now, I know a lot of the radical anti-abortion folks out there like to point this this and say, “see! liberals are Nazis because the Weimar Republic was liberal and they legalized abortion and the Nazis used it and they were bad so all pro-choice people are Nazis.” That’s a pretty simplistic view of both the ethics of this issue and the history of Germany in the 20’s and 30’s, and ignores the use of Nazis controlling the means reproduction – including incacerating, castrating and killing gay men – in thier desire to use eugenics to build the master race.
Therefore, I still don’t how a husband making a determination about medical intervention to keep his wife alive – after consulting with medical experts and whatever religious/spiritual folks he chooses – equates to Nazi Germany.
Sorry. You’re just going to have to not use simple analogy and spell it out for me.
He may not be a right-winger, but he is well-known for being RABIDLY anti-abortion/”pro-life.” On a topic like this, for me, he has less than zero credibility.
You said families should decide. From what I understand, everyone who is a blood relation to Terri wants her to be kept alive. A man who is not a blood relation, but was married to her for a fairly brief period before this happened (not sure how long, but they were young and did not have kids) wants her dead. I was actually shocked to discover that once you get hitched, your spouse overrides all your blood relations combined on these things, no matter how long or short a time you’ve been married. I don’t think that’s right at all–look at the divorce rate!
the warning Nat Hentoff gave in the Village Voice about a year and a half ago: “‘It is much like Germany in the ’20s and ’30s. The barriers against killing are coming down.’…If the courts finally permit the husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo to continue to press for her death by starvation by again removing her feeding tube, more of the barriers to killing may come down in other states. So this isn’t only about Terri Schiavo. It could be about you.”
And disabled rights groups do see troubling signs. There was a representative of one who came on an NPR talk show recently to complain about how every time a quadrapalegic appears in a movie, they want to die; yet he says he knows countless quadrapalegics and none of them are suicidal.
What about the true story represented in that DeNiro movie “Awakenings”? Scientists of the day did not think those people had any consciousness, but they did. What would a doctor of the 19th century think upon examining Stephen Hawking? It’s foolish to assume we magically have all the answers in 2005, especially when there is disagreement over these issues within the medical community.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
of carrying water for the right. The inconsistencies you point to are their problem, not mine!
I didn’t actually mean to quote Hentoff again in that reply (sorry–paste got away from me), but the point I was making was not that “he’s on the left so you must follow his lead” but more modestly “it is possible to be on the left, even to be a ‘famous’ lefty, and not agree with euthanising Terri Schiavo”.
But in order:
I personally would want to be kept hooked up to every machine they’ve got, even if I’m supposedly “flatline” on the EEG or whatever; but Terri Shiavo is far from that state.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
In the middle of researching Nazis/abortion/women’s rights, and just completed a diary on gays in the holocaust, so I’m a little hypersentive to Nazi analogies that are a far reach at best, or absolutely false.
To your points:
1. Are you married? I don’t want to make this a personal thing, but I am and I can tell you my husband knows a lot more about who I am and what I want than my parents ever did. He knew a lot more about me than my parents did before we had a child. Having a child has definitely put a different dynamic in our relationship, but I don’t see it as the defining mark you do: that suddenly you have a child with someone and you automatically know everything about them after that. In my experience it just doesn’t work like that at all.
I think trying to infer that there is something nefarious going on with the husband is just plain wrong. And I think what Congress is doing really rips apart our laws on privacy and marriage.
I personally would want to be kept hooked up to every machine they’ve got, even if I’m supposedly “flatline” on the EEG or whatever…
You should have the ability to do that, or to communicate to your spouse that that’s what you’d want to see happen and she should have the ability to carry out your wishes if you are incapacitated. Conversely, your personal desires in this area should not be used as the basis of legislation to govern all people. That is not the basis law or our freedoms, IMO.
That’s okay. As you said, we can disagree on the left, just don’t put me over on the right!
I am married, and have a five year old son and almost two year old daughter. My wife shares my opinion about Ms. Schiavo, but we just found out from dKos that the overwhelming American public opinion is on your side. I think we are probably both surprised about that.
So I guess we don’t have the political problem we thought, after all.
Alan
Maverick Leftist
I love it when we can actually have a real exchange of ideas on subjects like this, and not have it degrade into a name calling fest.
Best to you and your family.
This isn’t the government adopting policies to encourage certain groups of people to die
Grannyhelen, I so wish that this were true, but the plug is being pulled on Spiro Nikolouzos, AGAINST HIS WIFE’S WISHES, because she doesn’t have enough money to pay for his treatment.
Apparently, the government has adopted policies that encourage poor people to die.
…and killing or punishing poor people for being poor is reprehensible, and a much closer analogy to what the Nazis were actually doing than the current debate over Schiavo.
Schiavo, again, doesn’t have anything to do with what the Nazis were all about, IMO.
I guess I ended up jumping in on another conversation. I wasn’t part of trying to equate the Schiavo situation with Nazi eugenics.
I just thought Spiro’s story was sad, and it underscores the rank hypocrisy of what the federal government has done in Terri’s case.
thanks for clarifying…
I’ve been wrestling with this since the story started and haven’t really responded to any diaries. To me it’s such a personal family thing and exposing the issue even more just doesn’t sit right with me.
I have no faith in our government and have run out of energy to try to fight the republicans on anything, especially where even the Dems don’t stand together on this.
I think the breaking point for me came when they created a law singling out this one family.
That’s when I started thinking about political action, because that’s just awful and sets a very bad precedent.
And how much of our tax money did this made-to-order, designer law with the higher purpose of providing the Rs with a smokescreen for all their other dastardly deeds cost, I wonder.
Re your poll, how about we flood all our representatives fax machines with copies of the constitution?
Check out Newsie’s diary (3rd most recent right now) for GOP talking points – good fodder for such faxes and letters.
Newsie has a great diary on GOP “talking points” on Schiavo at dKos.
Asking him to cross post over here…
I’m not sure if anything will help but I kind of like the idea of sending copies of the constitution-maybe it would refresh their memories. I also like the idea of pushing Dems. to take the ball and run with it, if this is now a culture of life wouldn’t it be great to do as suggested on Americablog-introduce a bill to assure that no American will die for want of health care? Call it Terri’s bill and let the repugs look even worse than usual when they vote it down.
We need to do something, something big, to get their attention. I think the focus should not be on which side of the Schiavo case you fall on. People have valid reasons for their views on either side, but that’s not the problem.
Our issue is (or should be) that Congress chose to subvert the Constitution and the Judicial process. In the dead of night, for a single case, and without the will of the people, Congress clearly overreached. Whether it was grandstanding, diversion from Delay’s ethical problems, whipping up the base, or for sincerely held beliefs, Congress went over the line and that is what we must address.
Faxing the Constitution is a good idea, and since they’re on recess, maybe fax to their local offices. We should also make clear that we object to Congress being called back in such a manner, leaving constituents virtually no ability to weigh in with their reps. It was very frustrating as a citizen to feel so helpless while this travesty was occurring…their offices were closed and their mailboxes full.
This is huge, and is not about one woman from Florida and the disputes within her family, it’s about preserving our system and spanking Congress for abusing the process. Somehow we have to capitalize on the fact that a majority of people disagreed with their methods, no matter where they come down on the Schiavo case.