The Schiavoing of America.

During the last few months I’ve lost interest in politics. I’ve stopped taping my favorite cable news shows, no longer watch shows I disagree with, and rarely bother to read the newspaper - although I subscribe to perhaps five daily sources.
I’m astonished and dismayed at what has happened to my country and have drifted into a more comfortable place in which I read science magazines and historical autobiographies. My disillusionment, shared by many, is due to the Schiavoing of America.

Most people remember Terri Schiavo, the poor Florida woman who was kept alive artificially for 15 years. Her husband Michael tried to help her recover and then, when he realized that there was no hope, tried to end her suffering. Sophisticated medical testing had shown she suffered from severe cerebral atrophy: she was in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state. We laymen have a cruder term: brain dead. Much of her cerebral cortex, basal ganglia, hippocampus, mid-brain, and cerebellum had died after a massive stroke. However, primitive portions of her brain survived; they kept her organs alive but no more. She was no longer capable of thought, emotions, or consciousness. Testing showed conclusively that there was no hope for recovery. None. Michael wanted to let her die naturally; her parents fought to keep her alive via a feeding tube.

All of this would have been – should have been - just another small story in which science wages war with ignorance. It’s a common American meme: science reaches an unpopular conclusion, then a small, energetic group of True Believers tries to deny it (i.e.: vaccinations are a government conspiracy to keep us sick, intelligent design is legitimate science, global warming is a hoax, etc.) In Schiavo’s case, the legitimate medical findings were simply ignored by her parents and their followers.

Terri Schiavo’s parents, devout Christians who understood publicity better than they understood anatomy, waged a brilliant campaign to keep their daughter ‘alive’. They enlisted the help of professional rabble-rouser Randolph Terry; he used them to raise a great deal of money, some of which probably went to the parent’s cause. Randolph Terry worked his way through the Florida Legislature and then into the governor’s office, finding politicians at every level willing to jump aboard his vote-generating carousel.

Terri Schiavo became a Republican cause, energizing the same angry ignoranti who ten years later would believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. First Jeb Bush and then Congressional Republicans stepped in, refusing to allow Schiavo’s feeding tubes to be removed, refusing to abide by the United States Constitution, and refusing to allow medical science and simple common decency to prevail. Congressional Democrats stood back, helpless to stop the mass necrophilia; the Democrats in Congress constitute the largest collection of eunuchs since Rome fell.

Republican politicians and right-wing commentators had a field day, claiming that Schiavo’s husband wanted to murder her, avowing that she was on her way to a full recovery, and endlessly replaying a three-minute tape of her lips moving in what looked like a smile. They played to the fears and anger of their core constituents, merrily ignoring the well-established fact that the short clip had been carefully edited from over three hours of footage of meaningless facial movements, and disregarding neurologists who said the ‘smiles’ were random muscles twitches caused by stray electrical impulses. As every high school student knows, a dead frog’s legs will twitch, too.

Most Liberal commentators and a surprising number of educated conservative clergy protested the prolonged torture of both Terri and Michael, but their quiet voices were drowned by the right-wing screamers.

In March of 2005, George Bush cut short one of his many vacations to fly to Washington, DC and sign emergency legislation keeping the Schiavo corpse alive. Bush couldn’t kill Bin Laden but he wouldn’t kill a dead woman.

Ultimately, three separate courts found the various legislative actions in Florida and Washington unconstitutional and Schiavo was allowed to die. During her autopsy, the extensive damage to her brain was documented. It was formally described as "irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons”. Medical science was proven correct but the politics of ignorance had scored a major victory. ‘Liberals’ were blamed for the death of a healthy human being. The ‘Godless’ had won another victory over the morally superior conservative faithful.

Schiavo attracted immense publicity while in a persistent vegetative state but little thereafter. Few who had passionately supported efforts to keep her ‘alive’ ever learned that they had been lied to by cynical politicians and pravda-esque talk show hosts. Years after her death, the execrable Tom Delay was asked what his single greatest success was while Speaker of the House. Delay flashed his mug shot grin and said “Terri Schiavo”.

Conservative voters thought they were participating in an heroic action to save the life of a helpless woman; instead they were sucked into a brilliantly executed battle for votes. And all the while, Democrats flopped fish-like on the deck of the enemy battleship, helpless. It’s what they do best.

The lessons of the Schiavo incident were absorbed by the soul-less Right and ignored by the ball-less Left. Barack Obama is a brilliant centrist with both soul and balls, but even he failed to absorb the real lesson of those Schiavo veterans who in 2008 endlessly called him a Socialist Fascist Nazi Radical Muslim. The lesson? If you repeat a Big Lie often enough, a significant number of people will believe you. Worse, they will take up your mantra. George Orwell was right.

All of which brings me to the health care bill. As of today (2-8-10) it languishes on the one-yard line while Demo-eunuchs decide whether to (A) show how accommodating they are by returning to the fifty-yard line or to (B) simply concede defeat to a small, unpopular Republican minority. Again, they are flopping about helplessly, and doing it brilliantly.

Two facts that are well-known and one that isn’t:
1. The United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care as does any other developed nation.

2. The United States ranks #37 in terms of outcomes, putting us behind Cuba, among others (Cuba?) In 36 countries, citizens live longer, babies die less frequently during childbirth, etc.

3. American business spends about one trillion dollars more on health care each year than its counterparts in the European Union. The gap is growing.
One trillion dollars a year. The perpetrators of this crime make Bernie Madoff look like a parking ticket scofflaw.

In 2009, we Americans spent 17.6 % of our GNP on health care. Europeans spent about half that much. American business faces an insurmountable disadvantage: we will not be able to compete with our closest competitor if we do not dramatically curtail this waste. The patriotic position is obvious: we must do whatever is necessary to lower the national cost of health care. However, this would hurt private health care interests. Big Pharma and health insurers would lose tens of billions of dollars. What would be good for the country will be bad for the special interests.

The annual waste of a trillion dollars was rarely discussed during the astonishing six-month public ‘debate’ over health care reform. Common sense was lost amid a carefully orchestrated campaign of lies about death panels and socialism. Special interests spent tens of millions of dollars, bribing politicians on both sides. They spent additional millions to erect circus freak side shows such as the Tea Party, a faux populist movement with few followers that gets headlines every day. (Note: are you thinking that you have seen footage of mass Tea Party rallies? Fox faked the footage. They admitted it, apologized, then faked it again.) And what has been the result of this massive disinformation campaign? Americans by the millions now support the insurance companies that rape them. They have been Schiavoed.

George Orwell was right about the Big Lie technique. It works.

The Big Lie works best on the gullible few - angry old misinformed white people – who are the most reliable voters. They are voters who enjoy a breathless disregard of the facts (most believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.) They are voters eager to forward any pathetic internet rumor as long as it supports their beliefs (they honestly think global warming is a hoax, despite footage of the Arctic melting.)

They are voters who vote for the people the professional liars tell them to vote for.

Individually, the gullible few are fine, upstanding citizens. Individually, they are some of my good friends. Collectively, they are as brain dead as Terri Schiavo. In 2012, they may succeed in electing Sarah Palin, a beautiful woman whose only demonstrable talent is the ability to cleverly deliver speeches written by other people. And if this happens, if in 2012 we elect a woman who campaigns by mocking ‘elitists’ because they are smarter and better educated than her supporters, then the Schiavoing of America will be complete.