So anyway, I read this article on AOL news and it was all I could do to not punch my computer monitor in. It's like it's 2005, and we're all dealing with Terri Schiavo all over again. Luckily it's not in this country - so this will probably be the last anyone here in the U.S. will hear about this particular case.
...At least I fucking hope so...
I just don't get it. I don't think I'll ever get it. I don't know if there's an adequate explanation out there for the mentality that the Italian government demonstrated here - at least not one that will make me say, "Oh...well I guess you've got a point there!". Look...I know it all boils down to that archaic Catholic dogma that every life is sacred right down to the most worthless little broken spermy man (Spermyman - how's that for a fucked-up superhero?!). I come from a frakkin' HUGE Catholic family - I get that that's where this is coming from. I just cannot wrap my noodle around that thought process though. For fuck's sake - the girl was basically dead anyway - stone fucking dead...her goddamned BRAIN wasn't goddamned DOING anything. Machines were feeding her, relieving her bowels, and allowing her lungs to breathe...that's fucking dead folks! Oh, ok, ok...sorry - her brain was still sending signals to her heart to continue pumping blood through her body - but only because of the MACHINE THAT WAS MAKING HER LUNGS FUCKING BREATHE!!!
Three quotes from this just abso-fuckin'-lutely floor me. Firstly we have Cardinal Barragan from the Vatican saying, "May the Lord welcome her and pardon those who brought her to this point". Hey Barragan - FUCK YOU! Two things brought this poor girl to this point - 1: The CAR that hit her 17 fuck years ago, you imbecile; and 2: YOU!!! You and people like you - the Church, and the holier-that-thou, 17th century, backwoods right-wing fuckhead lawmakers in the Italian government. Which brings me to my second quote, this one courtesy of Rome's mayor who said that the lights in the Colosseum would be on all night in mourning for "a life that could have and should have been saved".
WHAT?!?!?!
Are you completely out of you fucking head?! Do you at least pause for a breath to think about the nonsense that's about to come out of your mouth before you say it?! Read my lips by proxy of my fingers: THERE WAS NO LIFE TO SAVE...capisce? NO LIFE!!! The girl has been brain dead for SEVENTEEN-FUCKING-YEARS! Short of the arrival of the MOTHERSHIP with a library of previously unknown medical knowledge, she was never coming back from this. I refer to my statements above...something about machines and what not. You know...I went through this with the Schiavo thing four years ago...all it succeeded in doing was elevating my blood pressure and giving me an urge to round-up some pro-lifers and some Republican politicians (which I suppose are pro-lifers by default anyway...but, still - you know what I mean), lock them in a Catholic church, and burn it to the ground.
Lastly there's the Italian Health Minister who said, "I hope the Senate can proceed on the established calendar so that this sacrifice wasn't completely in vain". This was in reference of course to the emergency session the Italian Senate held to get a law passed to prevent the girl's doctors from unplugging her. Excuse me Signor Italiano Stupido, um...what sacrifice?! The only thing that was sacrificed was the life the girl could've had had she not been hit by the aforementioned car! She didn't even know anything had happened! I like to believe that if there is a human soul...it would have left the body sometime around, oh I dunno...YEAR ONE!!! Not year seventeen. I'm sorry, nothing in this universe short of The Almighty him/herself coming down and showing me otherwise is going to make me believe that Eluana Englaro was still in that body, or that she had the faintest fuck of a clue what was going on around her. Same goes for Terry Schiavo, and the hundreds, if not thousands of people all around the world sharing similar fates.
I visit my father's grave every year around Memorial Day. I haven't missed a year since he died. For all but about three or four of those years (accounting for age limitations) I've stood at his grave and talked to him for a while...you know, fill him in on what's going on in my life and the world. I would imagine that, including this year, I will have made and broken 30 promises to come back later in the year and visit again. It's not that I don't care; it's not that I don't have the time; it's not that I don't want to. It's just hard...it's a really hard goddamned thing to do. Now...do I believe that my father is there when I go?...Absolutely not! It's a plot of land with a corpse buried underneath. But I do believe it's a place to start - a door to whatever other place he's residing in. I believe a body is just a body - it's an organism, just like the billions of others on this world. We're singularly blessed to be able to learn, create, express and feel the way we do. But a body is just a body. I have to believe that what makes us who we are, call it a soul, call it spaghetti, call it whatever you want - I just have to believe that that thing knows when the body is done - and it checks out accordingly. The selfish need of loved ones to hold on to us for as long as possible is understandable...and just. But who is anyone on this planet to say otherwise when even the people that cared most for someone - needed that someone more than any other - say it's time to let go?
The single most common argument from the religious right is that no one has the right to play God with a life. To say that, and then take the stance they do on issues like these is the most hypocritical thing I have ever had the unfortunate displeasure of witnessing. That is what I'll never understand...THAT is what no one will ever be able to satisfactorily explain to me: How can someone believe that? How can they not see the flaw in their own logic? How can they continue to spew their vitriol without seeing that in so doing, they've already defeated their argument? Someone please make me understand...
2 comments:
Word verification: calmers
I think you should take a few calmers yourself.
Yeah, it's "playing God" that kept her alive, according to an episode of South Park. Brain-dead is dead. I agree. A person's body at that point is just an empty shell, a "living" monument to the person who once was. I'm not being "opinionated" here, just saying that the pikey is right.
But here's my issue. You say that the soul should know to move on. True, it would take some seriously advanced alien technology to revive a person at that point, not to mention restore whatever has been physically lost after aging 17 FUCKING YEARS in a motionless, inactive, (insert other redundant modifier here) catatonic state. But here's my issue with that assumption...
The Borg. That's right, the Borg. "To be assimilated is a fate worse than death," so they say, presumably because your soul is enslaved, too. But if your argument is that people can (and have) "come back" from assimilation, is that due to the technology you said we don't have yet? Personally, if I were surrounded by Borg, I'd set my phaser for overload, taking as many of those techno-zombie mother fuckers out with me as possible. Fuck that. I don't care if there is a longshot chance that the Collective will one day, centuries later, be neutralized (or otherwise evolved into something else) so I may have my original consciousness back. I don't care. If you see me running with the Borg herd, do me a personal favor: adjust the frequency of your phaser to something I haven't adapted to and shoot me right in the neck. I mean it. And if you have a Klingon dagger handy, plant it in my chest cavity just for good measure. Fuck being a Borg. Free my soul.
I was going to write something about how ridiculous this is; how the intersection of something real (government) with something imaginary (religion) is a stupid and dangerous thing. But I think the word verification says it all:
grate
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