The Squirrel Parade

You can call an acorn a baby oak, but a nut is still a nut

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

03/27/05

http://zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/nuts.htm

This is about the Terri Schiavo case, but I’m not going to say much more about that poor woman’s long-deferred death. It’s well-trodden ground, and my readers know where they stand on the issue, and don’t need me to repeat where I stand.

It’s just that since I wrote about her last week, her case has mushroomed into a minor constitutional crisis. Just to give you some idea, the Miami Herald reported, somewhat incredulously, that Governor Jeb Bush thought that the Florida Supreme Court taking the Schiavo case under advisement on Thursday somehow created a window of opportunity in which he could legally send troops to forcibly wrest Schiavo from the Hospice and take her to a nearby hospital where doctors could be forced to reinsert her feeding tube. The police who are guarding Terri and the Hospice from all the chanting lunatics out front were lined up, prepared to face off against the governor’s cops. This confrontation, one unheard of in American history, was averted when the hospital made it clear that it would not treat Terri without an explicit court order, and Bush backed down.

The nuts out front of the hospice have been sending their own children in to be arrested. A seven year old girl, carrying a plastic glass of water to give to Terri, seemed to be under the impression that her husband should be in jail for "being bossy." I wonder if that poor kid’s parents, who cravenly hung back among their fellow crackpots, knew that if that kid had somehow gotten to Terri Schiavo and tried pouring the water in her mouth, Schiavo would have almost certainly drowned? If they did know, then horsewhipping them is too good for what they did to their poor daughter.

One guy in North Carolina was arrested the other day. He offered a quarter million dollars for anyone who would kill Michael Schiavo, and fifty thousand for anyone who would kill Judge Greer. By now, somebody’s probably gotten around to mentioning to the guy that soliciting to commit murder is good for up to 30 years in jail, but soliciting for the murder of a judge can get you executed in the south. Another clown, intent on assassinating Judge Greer, tried robbing a gun store to get a gun, using a club as a weapon. Apparently it never occurred to him that the owner of a gun store might be armed.

Killing judges seems to be the latest fad among these nuts. I have a friend who is a retired judge, and when we have lunch together, I think I’ll ask him to sit a few tables over from me – fifteen feet will do – and we can communicate by tossing paper airplanes with notes to one another. It’s a reasonable request, considering. I’m sure he won’t mind.

I refer to these dangerous, dishonest and brutal nuts as religious extremists, but not as Christians. Most of my friends and much of my family are Christian, and they don’t behave like these people. They don’t manufacture lies, they don’t threaten people who disagree with them, and they don’t try to overthrow federalism, or separation of powers, in order to get their own way. No matter how much jeezusbleating they do, or how much they claim to be saved or born again, these animals are not Christians.

The rabble that has been howling about Terri the past few weeks are really a nasty, disgraceful lot. The threats and the contempt for rule of law and American freedom are bad enough, but the deliberately manufactured lies are just appalling. For example, they passed around the internet an image, supposedly of a medical report from 1991, indicating that Terri Schiavo had evidenced multiple signs of ongoing physical abuse consistent with beatings. Unfortunately, the people who created this document decided that they needed to point out the really nasty stuff in red type, something no medical transcriptionist would do. The document is a fake. But the trash religious right wanted to paint Michael Schiavo as an abusive husband.

There’s the matter of Michael Schiavo supposedly being in it for the money. In a malpractice suit against the doctor who missed diagnosing the potassium imbalance that cost Schiavo her mind, the Schiavos were awarded $700,000 for Terri’s medical care, and an additional $300,000 in damages. Aside from the fact that the money is long gone, some fool businessman in San Diego offered Schiavo one million to drop his efforts to have the tube removed. The offer was immediately rejected. Doesn’t sound like a man who is in it for the money, does it?

They also tried claiming that he wanted Terri dead so he could marry his girlfriend. Never mind that he could have gotten a divorce at any time, and indeed, her parents offered to pay all costs associated with the divorce. Never mind that he moved in with his girlfriend years ago and they now have a family, so it’s not like he’s sitting around rubbing his crotch and moaning about how badly he needs a woman.

Nor did he deny her rehabilitation treatment. She underwent vigorous rehabilitation efforts in the year following her collapse, and other experimental remedies were tried, which included flying her out to California and Mexico at no small expense. One of the nastier claims coming from the religious right was that the husband appropriated the money to have Terri killed, but in fact, he was spending the money, awarded in 1992, on rehab, and it was the parents, who decided AFTER the court ruling that Michael was not a good guardian, who sued for control of the money, and brought all the cases that caused much of it to vanish into legal fees.

Incidently, who is paying the fantastic costs the parents are incurring in their endless fight?

And of course, there’s the stuff about how Terri, minus a cerebral cortex, is saying things like "I want to live" and other items. A couple of nurses tried making that claim, along with claims that there was a conspiracy to murder Terri for reasons unknown. Those two were so nutty that even Terri’s parents won’t have anything to do with them, but the religious right have been quoting them incessantly.

Oh, and let’s not forget the ongoing claim that Terri was denied due process. After 25 court hearings involving over 30 judges, she’s probably had more court representation than anyone who was actually in a position to notice!

Half of the religious nut jobs don’t even know what the fight is actually about. I saw one character waving a "free Terri" sign. Yeah, that’ll work out well for her. Be sure to give her a glass of water on the way out. Another got on CNN to bitterly denounce Jeb Bush for watering his office plants, but not Terri. Why CNN was giving this nut face time on the air is a complete mystery.

The biggest lie from the religious right is that they are pro-life. A week earlier, a baby was taken off a breathing tube and allowed to die against the wishes of the mother. It was a heartrending case, since the mother (like Terri Schiavo’s parents) was convinced that her baby might improve and even recover. But the Texas law – signed into law by then governor Bush – permits doctors to end medical care in hopeless cases, against the wishes of the family, and based in part on the patient’s ability to pay. These religious crackpots didn’t have a word to say about that case.

As I type this, they are sitting around, doing a deathwatch, and watching "The Passion of the Christ" to cheer themselves up. They are comparing Terri to Jesus (I’m surprised none of them have tried sneaking in a sponge soaked in vinegar in yet), even though Tom DeLay has made it clear that he has a lot more in common with Terri than Jesus did. (Neither are Jewish, and liberals want to kill both of them, according to Bug Spray).

One Republican strategist, Carl M. Forti, brilliantly portraying the shallow indifference and hard cynicism of his party, said that in a month, Terri won’t matter, and by the time the next elections rolled around, Terri would be irrelevant. For the safety of the country, I hope he’s right. For the danger of the country, I think he, and his masters in the GOP, and the minions in the irresponsible and dishonest right wing media, underestimate the allies they believe are their pawns.

You see, these people to whom the GOP pander so shamelessly are dangerous. They are contemptuous of the rule of law, they hate freedom. They are much closer in spirit to the people who attacked the twin towers than they are to America and democracy.

And they will revolt and destroy America, given the chance. They’ll do it in the name of Jesus, and destroy Christianity while they are about it. They are insane, they are haters, they are vicious.

America sensed it, and in huge majorities, pulled back from them, and from the GOP for supporting them. Most people understand, if unconsciously, the danger of uncontrolled religious demagoguery.

How much longer will people like Putsch and DeLay use this vile mob to try and further their own agendas? Do they not understand that these people are as dangerous to them as they are to the rest of us?

Or do they just not care if the religious nuts run loose and destroy America, so long as the people Putsch and DeLay represent can successfully make off with the nation’s wealth?