Posted on 03/22/2005 8:26:31 PM PST by hipaatwo
it is worth remembering that the excruciating slowness of the execution here, the incremental-ness of death, is designed by its champions to inure us to it. After the first hour, the second passes with far less fanfare, and the third less still. I've been following this closely, and I needed to remind myself today how many hours Terri Schiavo has actually been without sustenance by counting the days since Friday afternoon and multiplying by 24. How much more easily the time passes, and the world around us changes, for those following only fleetingly, or not at all.
Why should we think this is intentional? Consider, say, a month ago, before Terri's plight took center stage, if you had asked someone in the abstract: "How would you feel about starving and dehydrating a defenseless, brain-damaged woman?" The answer is easy to imagine: "Outrageous, atrocious -- something that wouldn't be done to an animal and couldn't be done to the worst convicted murderer."
But then it actually happens ... slowly. You're powerless to stop it, and ... you find your life goes on. There are kids and jobs and triumphs and tragedies and everyday just-getting-by. An atrocity becomes yet another awful thing going on in the world. After a day, or maybe two, of initial flabbergast, we're talking again about social security reform, China, North Korea, Hezbollah, etc. A woman's snail-like, gradual torture goes from savagery to just one of those sad facts of life. As is the case with other depravities once believed unthinkable, it coarsens us. We slowly, and however reluctantly, accept it. We accept it. The New York Times no doubt soon "progresses" from something like "terminating life by starvation," to "the dignity of death by starvation," to "the medical procedure that opponents refer to as starvation." And so the culture of life slides a little more. The culture of death gains a firmer foothold.
Of course, the physical needs of the body are not limited to food and water. There is also air. But no judge, even in Florida, would ever have had the nerve in Terri's case to permit "the medical procedure that opponents refer to as asphyxiation." Too crude. Too quick. Too obviously murder of a vulnerable innocent. Brazen, instant savagery might wake us from our slumber. For the culture of death, better that we sleep.
The crucified died far far quicker than this.
I don't count on it, I beg for it.
It would be so simple, just shut her in a sealed room. Call it air starvation.
Is it just me or is it eerily ironic that Terri Schiavo may die on the weekend that we commemorate the inhumane execution of another pure and innocent person? (I'm talking about Jesus for those of us on the East Coast who are starting to nod off)
JCSS, Pontius Pilate? Do I remember correctly, cinnathepoet?
He said "I thirst."
So repulsively ironic.
Give me a break. Bush did all he can and has stood steadfast behing Schaivo 100%.
They would have to reinsert the tube and then sort it all out...
That is correct... Pontius Pilate "Pilate's Dream" from JCS.
What's crazy is I too compared the judges to Pontius Pilate. But I hadn't considered that this is Holy Week as well. Freaky...
If I err, I err on the side of life. It's time, Mr. President.
I agree that he is a vile sociopath, but unfortunately he's not in a class by himself. San Quentin prison in California is filled with hundreds of thugs like him, as are most of the other state prisons.
Very freaky...the judges have "washed their hands" of her (impending) death by allowing time to elapse and by claiming that she is dying by her own will.
Whatever the outcome, it will be blamed on W by the mass media and the dimmitudes.
Excellent graphic. They're birds of a feather. Can I pass that one around the net?
Sporkgoddess, JCS is my favorite play. Many of my friends and my kids have performed amazingly in it. I cry like a baby almost all the way through. The man who played Pilate was a good friend with great faith in God, and was extremely talented in performance and voice. And his "Pilate's Dream" and his rendition of it was the camel that broke my sobbing back.
Yes. Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my children.
Bump
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