Useless?

[undergroundpanther]

Looks to me like...


Our culture hates a loser,it hates weak,sick,"defective" people.
It hates victims,it shoots messengers if the message is about an abuser. This sick abuse dynamic plays out over and over in private homes, schools,institutions and governments.


Eugenics is an American invention too.Hitler made Eugenics national policy.Good Germans rationalized it.
There is a socio psychological war on the weak,on anyone who isn't"normal" on the handicapped,the mentally ill,the poor.
It has been going on for millennia.
The Nazis killed off the disabled,the retarded and mentally ill first.People like Terry Shiavo were the first to die.Nobody noticed because they could not cry out,they were helpless and produced nothing of value.They were useless eaters.A burden on the utilitarian utopia of Hitlers Aryan nation.
To many top down competitive cultures with an internalized elitism expressed by this sociopath pull yourself by your own bootstraps "ethic"and contrasted with success stories/Horatio Alger type myths like ours, the disabled and those who do not produce enough are throwaway people,resented for being weak by the strong..Just nobody says it out loud..

People say,
Terry is a vegetable, she can't feel pain, starve her to death.
Be rid of her because she will never have a quality life.( it's quality always as defined by normals ) They are concerned about her Quality of life for themselves.
So many people are so concerned about her quality of life they'll gladly starve her to death unsure of whether she will feel pain or not and calll it "mercy".

But the unspoken side is also Terry takes up a room,she drains bank accounts,she taxes her families emotions,Other people have to maintain her life for her.She takes up the time,employees,space,and liquid feed and all that a more able brained person could use.How much is terry worth? Terry in effect if she is starved has the status of a throwaway person.She is helpless to say no,don't kill me. The able bodied cry she'd be dead if "the miracle of medicine" wasn't keeping her here..

Remember Ronald Reagan would have died much sooner if we let nature take it's course with him. We don't know what kind of vegetative states Reagan was in ,they kept him out of the public eye.We never debated removing his feeding tube.
Why?


Science tries to tell us who can and cannot feel pain.
Sometimes scientists are like a bully who's caught as he tries to convince the authority figures who could punish or restrain him..that his victim must be blowing the abuse and pain all out of proportion to reality.The bully has an INTEREST in mnimizing his victims voice of suffering.Utilitarian beliefs are the salve to numb empathy..Whos voice is missing in the Terry Shiavo case? The victims voice,Terry.So her family fights for her because they love her.They are by proxy the person who FEELS the pain. And The able bodied don't want to bother with Terry.
Scientists and Bullies both have made mistakes on the pain issue before.Politicians and the public together created Holocaust and Genocide on all kinds of people declared inferior.before..

It was once thought fish could not feel pain..turns out they do. It was thought that babies could not feel pain either,operations were done on infants without anesthesia because it was widely believed babies lacked the ability to feel pain like we do..turns out science was wrong again..


Terry will not feel being slowly starved.. She may or may not feel it.And It's ok to starve terry even though her family loves her, and she is a human being,and we shudder if we had to live like her,because of why?
Terry is not your daughter.You are not Terry.
And yet people who do not know her can in effect hold her life in thier hands.

Starvation as"mercy".

We give criminals sentenced to death lethal injections we are all so concerned we are not cruel to them. We give sick dying dogs lethal injections so they will not FEEL their bodies in the worst states of sickness. We abort fetuses ASAP so they will not grow brains to feel the abortion procedure and just to be sure both mother and fetus are numb through it all.
Why do we do this? Could it be EMPATHY? and utilitarianism both working on a complicated personally agonizing case by case situation?
A decision that cannot be accomplished in a sound byte.


Why do we not give this kind of quick numb death to Terry that we grace Convicted Death row Child Killers and rapists with?

Is ti because to deliberately inject an innocent grown woman with drugs that would kill her fast looks and feels like murder?

Maybe it's because that's what it IS.

Yanking out Terry's feeding tube and letting her starve that too is murder,and it may be torture too.How is torture and muder mercy? When lethanl injection is quick and painless? No matter what we believe about her capacity for feeling pain,our beliefs don't make it so..We believed fish could not feel pain once,we believed babies could endure surgery without anesthesia too. But it turns out science was wrong.
And we are going to risk torture to get Terry out of our sight?

Why all the rush to be rid of Terry? Is it because she takes up space,drains bank accounts,uses up employee time,why what is so evil about her existence that it MUST end right NOW? Kill the helpless they are a drain on the economy!! The Brain dead must go they aren't Productive enough to live???!!Productive for Whom?
Her family loves her,enough to fight for her empty life.

So who are we to yank her feed tube and torture her because our scientists who also cut the vocal chords of animals they vivisect to remove their own capacity to feel compassion for tortured animals,to do"science" believes consensus of experts" she can't feel pain.

Are they Terry? No so how can they say.

And why not give her a lethal injection instead of risking torture on top of death?

Why are people not discussing this option?

Too Hitleresque? Too close to the truth?



Are you willing to let a nation of hypocrite,able bodied people possibly torture a helpless woman,who cannot cry out,by telling yourself she can't feel,because she's brain dead..Science is not all that good at empathy..And neither is our culture..It's kinda sick the idea of lethal injection is not discussed here because it looks like what it is, murder or "ghoulish". But the silent torture of slow starvation is OK as long as the victim does not cry out or complain. She is sorta like people in the 3rd world we starve so CEOs can make profits and we get"jobs" The victims of"economic development"that we never hear about it's almost like they don't feel it. Once in awhile there is a Live aid show,or some protests.. Funny how this silent starving,silent torture issue in the 3rd world in some ways is so similar to terry's plight.
Victims of abuse by the strong unable to be heard because maintaining the comforting beliefs about other people is more important to us than feeling real empathy FOR them where they are at..

It looks like in able bodied America the value is no suffering is as important as your own..is what matters most.
And who is suffering here in Terry's case really?
The hospital tired of tending her? A bank account? A corporation? A husband? Who?

Reagan had a slow death ands no one DARED debate yanking his feeding tube out and starving him to death..Why not? He lived as a vegetable ,he was kept out of the public eye.Regan was"permitted" his time of brain dead weakness,because he was of a certain rich and famous class that is not to be thrown away..

Terry is not an idol to the rich like Reagan was..she is another person like me or you who is weak,a citizen turned throwaway,She will be starving to death because we able bodied don't want her here taking up OUR time,our space, we are so merciful yo her,and because the experts tell us, we believe she can feel no pain,the experts with stunted empathy trying to tell us it's OK to starve the weak who cannot scream to death.. It smacks of Eugenics..
We are so ever alert to see if a fetus is aborted a fetus that could grow up to be cannot fodder or line a rich man's pocket..Terry just has no potential to be used or give anyone pleasure by existing now.Her time is up.

America is full of hypocrites, cowards, bullies and posers when it comes to actually facing the ugliness of our human condition and the frailty of a quality life and bodily weakness and the need sickness imposes upon us that happens in life or the disabilities that can happen to all of us.

Here is another side of the Terry Shiavo case nobody talks about:

Many soldiers coming back from Iraq now are brain damaged. Some become like Terry,due to "better armor"And we Don't see these soldiers,they are overflowing army hospitals and hospices...And Bush cuts veterans benefits and veteran health care to buy more hi tech weapons because he wants to take over the world..He is killing our economy to dominate and plunder the world.And if we attack the helpless,the poor,the different among us we will be misplacing our anger and not get around to seeing who is the real danger.. Terry Shiavo's case is another'ethics' test run ,a public spectacle illustration to gauge how much of our American empathy for the weak among us is dead or dying....Remember MSNBC last summer was asking the public in a poll if torture was something wrong to do to enemies or not.Around that time MSNBC for a couple of days showed Al Queda gassing puppies?.I wrote about this..I see a pattern here.

http://upits.pitas.com/082302.html

.The Bush admin is using the media as a psychological assessment tool gauging the publics' psychological willingness to accept torture as national policy....than Abu Gharib happened later.. but there were no riots,nobody storming the Whitehouse to keep the government from breaking Geneva,this inaction on our part was seen by them as PERMISSION.......Can't you see the really disgusting fascist Underpinnings of the Agenda to destroy American Empathy motivating this case to be in the spotlight? ..It's Eugenics...The war on the Weak the disabled..Is it OK or not to kill off useless eaters?

Is it OK to get rid of useless eaters..or not??
Come on people, throw away your sentiments..Survival of the fittest nature would have her dead...and nature is no moral..Riiight..

I think to myself what monsters Americans are becoming in the name of efficiency and I shudder.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

1. No, not exactly.

For me, the Schiavo case became about a person's right to die and ability of the government to remove the decision making power from a legal guardian. However, it's also euthanasia issue as well. Everyone notes the fact that she will have to starve to death, but that would not be the case if we did not have a barbaric law preventing people from committing suicide in a non-painful, humane manner. It has nothing to do with the "drain on society", and maybe it's an unspoken issue for YOU, but I do not suspect it is for most of the people on the right to die side of the issue.

Do not project your barbarism onto the rest of us.

[undergroundpanther]

2. No,I am not advocating barbarism

I think the state making decisions about who lives and who dies is DANGEROUS.

As for me I read scientists are not 100 %sure if she could feel pain.
I am unwilling to risk torture for the health of the state.

I also think the state has no business in deciding if Terry lives or dies.

That said I was trying to bring up issues about this case no one is seeing.

Like right now Bush is cutting veterans benefits..Health benifiets are being curt for EVERYONE else too.

Alot of people coming back from war have brain injuries.Bush is cutting veterans benefits AND he refuses to allow stem cell research that could offer help to brain injured people..What does that look like to you?

Also Terry is not a sentimental but disabled public figure like Reagan.Why is SHE singled out a target when there are plenty of other people suffering in similar circumstances who's voices are not being heard.

And why NOW? Why is Terry Shiavo a hot button Now?

The timing of this national debate is very suspicious to me.Considering Thimerosol. Mercury and the damage done.
And brain injured Veterans. The "tort reform"issue...
We were not debating this issue before the war when there were no brain injured veterans coming home to be ignored raising a ruckus for their benefits.

I saw a similar pattern when the media was discussing whether torture is ever justified..Than Abu Gharib,they were testing public outrage reactions.The government knew torture was going to occur they wanted to see if the public would go along with them.And since we didn't storm the white house Gonzales..is attorney General..Something sick about that pattern don't you think?

Think about the deeper and wider horrid implications that a court ruling will have on pa person who is disabled,and their right to live, their right to die and the dulling of human compassion that invariably happens when the state makes life or death decisions.

That process is what scares me about this case,besides the obvious frightening part of the inhumanity of the state deciding Terry's fate and overriding her family in favor of death...

I am very afraid for us all.

[Swede]

3. It's been dragged through the courts for a decade.

Every court ruled that she made it clear to her husband that she did not want to live like this. Supreme court of Florida,Circuit,Appeals and finally the US sumpreme court all agreed.

[salin]

4. Wow. Very thought provoking

per the culture of discarding the weak. Most of my career has been working with urban youth. Institutional racism, culture of blaming the poor for their condition, media disregard of violence and tragedy when the victims do not look like most anchormen/women. One day I was driving between job sites in Detroit. There were three different shootings in schools - one in front of the school (drive by type thing where someone ran across the front yard of a middle school and got shot at) - one in the halls of a highschool (think there were several fatalities) - and another (don't recall details) at another high school. Made the every ten minute news cast on a local am radio station. Didn't make area news papers. Certainly didn't make it to the national news, as several high profile shootings were being covered...

I know I refer to something very different - but it fits the pattern to which you refer. Something very perverse growing in our culture. And it is being fed by the top, and in turn is enabling the top.