(no subject)

[sallowsiserary]

I've just returned. My replacement dad/physics mentor had a heart attack right after I arrived, so I spent this week in hospital waiting rooms, being bombarded by "news" of the terry schiavo (sp?) case. Does anyone else find this publicity stunt absurd? The woman has been in a coma for over a decade, during which she has remained brain-dead (call me crazy, but for all intents and purposes, I consider this DEAD). They are preserving her body with a feeding tube, but it's a vegetable. And in an absurdist distraction stunt, the government has suddenly decided to interfere with the "life" of this individual, trying to force the body to be kept 'alive' until her money runs out, at which point it will die anyway. Let's examine their side briefly. They seem to be claiming that she is still alive, and has some level of consciousness, so it would be wrong to 'let' her die. Even if this were true, what kind of asshole do you have to be to force someone to remain a prisoner in useless flesh? If she is conscious,she has endured more than 10 years of torture, being unable to communicate or move. Whatever thinking bits were left of her would surely be utterly mad, and unable to beg escape. The word 'compassionate' is being wantonly thrown about by the right, but their so-called moral beliefs only last up to the point where the individual's expenses run out. None of them believe their idiotic claims strongly enough to offer to personally pay for the body's care after that point. This just smacks of the kind of thinking that tries to pass off cash and power-grabs as attempts to rescue and help countries in trouble. Since when have we ever actually 'helped' a country by attacking them, sapping their resources,and forcing our style of government on them? Never, and to distract from that, the government is doing the same thing to this girl's husband: attacking him politically, trying to force him to sap all his resources on futile 'care', and forcing him to make a ridiculous choice because of their 'morals'. If the public actually buys this ploy as "compassionate", perhaps it will allow the republicans to continue to justify our behavior overseas. If the republicans were really acting out of compassion in their manuevers, they would have tried to raise the standard of living, health care, and education at home first. Which they have obviously not done. Their ploys have made the situation here worse.
If the government is granted legal the ability to fuck with us individually in addition to en masse, how will they pick who's next?
Now they are trying to force universities to hire more conservatives to increase the "intellectual diversity" in our higher education systems. Hmmm...the majority of well educated people happen to be leftists who believe in evolution. That must have been a fucking coincidence! Sorry for the rant, my country is going to shit.