Endgame
It appears that Michael Schiavo’s brave efforts to end the ordeal around the disposition of the remains of his wife are nearing an end. All that’s left is a final, desperate effort by the ghouls who have made a fetish of this animated corpse to have Florida Governor Jeb Bush run the Constitution and the rule of law through a shredder to gratify their perverse and morbid obsession. Although I would not underestimate the mendacity of any member of the Bush family, I suspect that not even Jeb has the appetite for the shitstorm that would surely follow.
I was hoping not to write about this story again, but it’s so annoying and offensive on so many levels that it’s hard to keep it to myself. First, I am sick of the hideously one-sided media coverage. With polls showing that towering majorities of Americans believe that Michael Schiavo has the right to execute his wife’s wishes in this matter, and who clearly would want, if not exactly the same treatment, at least the space to make their own decision on such an issue if they were ever faced with it, the media from CNN on down seems intent on framing this in terms embraced by the most extreme religious fanatics. There are so many dimensions to this story beyond the facile sentimentalism of what happens to one brain-dead woman: privacy, federalism, rule of law, the power of religious extremists with their extra-Constitutional views on the role of government in private decisions. And yet, all we hear is “poor Terri,” as if continuing to feed a lump of human meat will reverse the verdict that nature has rendered in this case.
What’s more fundamentally morally offensive to me is how the alleged “right to life” people cheapen the whole notion of life and humanity with their shallow, screeching idiocy. Biological life may be measured by having a pulse, but dogs have pulses. Birds, insects, sponges – all these things are animate creatures when they are alive. What makes humans special and different, in my ethical estimation, is our consciousness, our ability to connect and socialize with each other, and interact with the world around us. Without that, our humanity has no meaning, our lives have no dignity, our existence has no further purpose.
Death waits for all of us someday. It’s our fate as mortal creatures, and for those of us who enjoy life, it’s not something to look forward to. But our culture – American culture in particular – seems to have developed an unnatural fixation on certain kinds of death, and a sense of entitlement to certain lives. For example, the families of the people who had the misfortune of being in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 have received staggeringly generous payments at public expense. Another person who may have had the misfortune of falling out of a rowboat in a deep lake that day, or getting hit by a drunk driver, or getting a nasty diagnosis, is seen as just a victim of circumstance. In fact, the deceased may have been as good or better a person, with just as much to contribute to the world, as someone who died in more spectacular fashion, but that has nothing to do with the way society deals with their loss.
Despite the masks of sympathy and compassion surrounding publicized cases of premature death, our social rituals say more about ourselves than they do about the departed. They speak to our own fears of death, our own insecurities and sense of powerlessness in the face of mortality. And it is by these things that we can be judged.
The parents of Terry Schiavo were dealt a terrible hand. They lost their daughter fifteen years ago, but because her body remains animate, they are unable to fully recognize the separation. And because the law has conclusively located control of her fate with her husband rather than them, there is also the sense of bitterness and frustration that comes with that. Their confusion and denial is comprehensible – to a point – since she was, after all, their daughter.
What’s more troubling and pathetic is the emotional energy invested by the ghoulish claque of camp followers, who have no knowledge of the departed Terry Schiavo and simply see her case as a symbol. A symbol of what? Of their own loss of control of their lives, their fears of death, the terrifying sense of dread and nothingness that yawns beneath their rigid façade of religious certainty. These are emotionally-stunted, infantile people, intellectually incapable of reconciling their own anxieties about their place in the world, and instead projecting all their existential insecurities into a politics of hysteria and denial.
By all statistical evidence, the batshit crazy remain a minority in the US, but their representatives are in charge of the government at the moment, and are perverting the levers of power in service of this macabre agenda. As a result, sensible people can’t help but get drawn into the larger debate. We now have quack doctors making up their own diagnoses from watching videos, propagating completely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, relying on utterly unscientific anecdotal data, and in all ways abasing the power of reason to fear-fueled sentimentality. We have legislators willing to snap the rule of law like a twig across their knee, unable to recognize that there is no Act of Congress to bring the ghost of consciousness back into the husk that remains of Ms. Schiavo. We have a so-called news media unwilling to address the real issues, because it would detract from the bathetic melodrama that they’re using to hook their audience, whom they clearly view with contempt.
I feel bad for one family’s tragedy. There’s no solace for the loss of a loved one. But loss is part of living, and there comes a time to ask, when the spark and spirit of consciousness have been extinguished, what remains that is worth saving? At what point does hope turn false, and persistence seem stubborn and foolish? No one can answer those questions except for themselves. The spectacle surrounding this one hopeless case has made a mockery of the solemnity of one family’s grief, and has debased our laws, our culture, our discourse and our civilization. In times when I have grown almost immune to shock and outrage, I find myself depressed that we have sunk to a new low. Now, thankfully, it’s nearly over.
9:59:56 AM 
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