Thursday, March 31, 2005
Schaivo Finally Dies, Christians Mourn Loss of Publicity, Continue To Worship Zombies and A Sadistic god
Tonight fundamentalist Christians everywhere mourn, not for the loss of Terri Schaivo who died today, but for loss of the shameful and shallow publicity they have received as a result of attaching themselves to her plight like bloodsuckers.
Fundamentalists have made her into the symbol for their deification of zombies. Indeed, Schaivo is their symbol of the value they place on life lived at all costs, under any circumstances, life without any of the necessary traits that define human agency: consciousness, self-reflection, communication or free will. In other words, life is not sacred to them but zombified life, life as living death is. Rather than life being lived or potential realized, this group of hate mongering publicity whores has traded the integrity of their religion for the nefarious priviledge of torturing the living dead. They have forsaken any right to respect by refusing to let the artificially animated corpse, the pitiful zombie that once was a living human being known as Terri Schaivo, finish dying all the way.
The feeding tube has served as a conceptual lynchpin in this incident, in discussions about life and quality of life. It has become a milestone for that point when life is so dependent on machines that quality of life is severely diminished. In this state the path to death is shorter and more humane than the intrusive, uninvited and anti-heroic measures taken to make sure every brain-dead corpse can maintain mechanical bodily functions for as long as possible.
Christians do not see it this way. Their history and ideology holds unnecessary sadism, suffering and ignorance as sacrosanct paths to virtue. They desired that Terri Schaivo keep suffering in a near-death state because it satisfied their sick fantasy of spiritual purity through suffering. The longer Schaivo suffered, the more she became the perfect object of their veneration. In this ideology of sadism, suffering is the path to purity and therefore death is a gift that one should deny oneself as long as possible because death is a release from suffering. As it applies to the individual believer, it is a merely masochistic outlook but when the standard is used against others it becomes sadistic, a means of prolonging the suffering of another person in order to gratify one’s own religious fantasies.
By temporarily obstructing Mrs. Schaivo from dying the way she wanted to die, the fundamentalist Christians also demonstrated their strong belief that submission and ignorance supercedes freewill and knowledge. By their warped illogic, people who commit suicide have “sinned” not because their death caused suffering to the friends and family who remain but because the suicide victim did not allow god, that great axe man in the sky to choose the time and place of their death. Similarly by choosing to remove a feeding tube or other artificial, mechanical means of sustaining life, they believe that human beings who exercise freewill to alleviate suffering are subverting divine authority to kill at will. They believe that their god prefers to watch people cling to the most meager semblance of life in an unconscious state for years and even decades, causing suffering to the comatose person and the friends and family of the comatose person. What but the most sadistic god would make such a demand of his followers? Who but the most dangerously delusional, psychopathic and mentally unsound people would blindly follow such a god? And why should the rest of us stand by on the sidelines like idiots and pretend to respect their beliefs?
America is a place where people are free to follow such a tyrannical god, to wallow in ignorance, to indulge barbaric fantasies of causing suffering to other people. But it is not a place where we can allow such people to wield power over the rest of us.
According to a catholic priest speaking on the Thursday, March 31 broadcast of Nightline, a recent survey indicated that 85% of Americans would rather die than be kept alive with heroic measures if a medical condition rendered them permanently unconscious and totally dependant on mechanical life support systems.
Now all that remains to be done is to find a way to protect ourselves from the dangerous delusions and rampant ignorance of the remaining 15% and then we can finally let Terri Schaivo begin her long overdue rest in peace. We must all hope that we can keep these maniacs and their zombie fetish from taking control of any more of our country than they already have.
Fundamentalists have made her into the symbol for their deification of zombies. Indeed, Schaivo is their symbol of the value they place on life lived at all costs, under any circumstances, life without any of the necessary traits that define human agency: consciousness, self-reflection, communication or free will. In other words, life is not sacred to them but zombified life, life as living death is. Rather than life being lived or potential realized, this group of hate mongering publicity whores has traded the integrity of their religion for the nefarious priviledge of torturing the living dead. They have forsaken any right to respect by refusing to let the artificially animated corpse, the pitiful zombie that once was a living human being known as Terri Schaivo, finish dying all the way.
The feeding tube has served as a conceptual lynchpin in this incident, in discussions about life and quality of life. It has become a milestone for that point when life is so dependent on machines that quality of life is severely diminished. In this state the path to death is shorter and more humane than the intrusive, uninvited and anti-heroic measures taken to make sure every brain-dead corpse can maintain mechanical bodily functions for as long as possible.
Christians do not see it this way. Their history and ideology holds unnecessary sadism, suffering and ignorance as sacrosanct paths to virtue. They desired that Terri Schaivo keep suffering in a near-death state because it satisfied their sick fantasy of spiritual purity through suffering. The longer Schaivo suffered, the more she became the perfect object of their veneration. In this ideology of sadism, suffering is the path to purity and therefore death is a gift that one should deny oneself as long as possible because death is a release from suffering. As it applies to the individual believer, it is a merely masochistic outlook but when the standard is used against others it becomes sadistic, a means of prolonging the suffering of another person in order to gratify one’s own religious fantasies.
By temporarily obstructing Mrs. Schaivo from dying the way she wanted to die, the fundamentalist Christians also demonstrated their strong belief that submission and ignorance supercedes freewill and knowledge. By their warped illogic, people who commit suicide have “sinned” not because their death caused suffering to the friends and family who remain but because the suicide victim did not allow god, that great axe man in the sky to choose the time and place of their death. Similarly by choosing to remove a feeding tube or other artificial, mechanical means of sustaining life, they believe that human beings who exercise freewill to alleviate suffering are subverting divine authority to kill at will. They believe that their god prefers to watch people cling to the most meager semblance of life in an unconscious state for years and even decades, causing suffering to the comatose person and the friends and family of the comatose person. What but the most sadistic god would make such a demand of his followers? Who but the most dangerously delusional, psychopathic and mentally unsound people would blindly follow such a god? And why should the rest of us stand by on the sidelines like idiots and pretend to respect their beliefs?
America is a place where people are free to follow such a tyrannical god, to wallow in ignorance, to indulge barbaric fantasies of causing suffering to other people. But it is not a place where we can allow such people to wield power over the rest of us.
According to a catholic priest speaking on the Thursday, March 31 broadcast of Nightline, a recent survey indicated that 85% of Americans would rather die than be kept alive with heroic measures if a medical condition rendered them permanently unconscious and totally dependant on mechanical life support systems.
Now all that remains to be done is to find a way to protect ourselves from the dangerous delusions and rampant ignorance of the remaining 15% and then we can finally let Terri Schaivo begin her long overdue rest in peace. We must all hope that we can keep these maniacs and their zombie fetish from taking control of any more of our country than they already have.
