Wings Over the Pyre - March 22nd, 2005

05:58 am - Podcasting Is Hard

Technorati Tags: Redoubt, podcast, podcasting, rockabilly

It really is. But I've cranked out another Squid's Redoubt Top Ten Podcast tonight, just on time.

Be sure to tune in and enjoy.

Current Mood: creative

08:47 am - Cresting the Wave

Technorati Tags: Redoubt, music, shoutcast, icecast

Let the bells ring dear, let the skies burn black, let the celebration begin!

Squid's Redoubt actually hit 10,000 tracks today. (Actually a few more than that, but who's counting?)

Current Mood: pleased

09:06 pm - The Respect of Dogs

Technorati Tags: politics, law, Terri_Shaivo, life, death

I'm sick to death of Terri Shaivo. Sick to her death, if my preferences were to be known. Unlike most commentators, I'm pretty much completely unhindered by questions of the value of human life (as I don't believe it has one, inherently; in my mind, its solely what you're doing with your life that makes the difference and Terri's not done anything with hers for a decade and a half), nor am I possessed with some perverse belief that my morality instantly trumps that of everyone I come in contact with or even imagine might exist somewhere (since I don't particularly embrace morality, replacing it with a rationalist ethos which actually works).

So, I'm about to quote a comment that I stumbled over on another blog that pretty much captures the nexus of my thoughts on the issue, wraps them up in a nice, religious, moral statement, and puts my thoughts behind a front that is almost entirely unlike anything I'd be expected to say:

Terri does have a living will, of the traditional sort. It's called a 'husband'. If the circumstances were reversed, she would be Michael's living will. That's what marriage is. That's why it's important. They chose to bind their lives together and give each other this extraordinary power over each other in dire circumstances. Terri would only need a written living will if she did not trust Michael to do his duty by her and act in her interests in this matter.

That pretty much goes to it. Involving the government, worse the federal government, is not only stupid, its wrong-headed, not the least reason being that they have no Constitutional jurisdiction over such dispensation. If anything, its a matter for the States to be involved with, individually, and the smarter among the readers of this blog recognize exactly why its stupid for the States to be involved in the direct, intimate, personal lives of the citizens, anyway. To wit:

Assume, for a moment, the current government is in direct opposition to your life-choices, rightly or wrongly. Do you really want them to be able to dictate your intimate life acts based purely on the vehement opposition of those who disagree with you? Do you want others to pick your religion? How you teach your children? How you have sex? Whether you can be allowed to die if you're in a brain-disabling state?

That's where we're going, and supporting the position that the government has to "do something" is the same imbecilic position the religious voices in this country have taken for decades, and one of the primary reasons I'm glad there's at least a paper thin divider between Church and State in this country. These are the same morons who scream in anger when nativity scenes are prohibited from the front of schools, despite the fact that these are exactly the powers they keep clamouring to give to the State.

The control of the intimate is the power to make you live how others want, and that's, ultimately, what the folks getting up in arms about Terri Shaivo truly want. They want power. The power to tell you what you should do in your life without you having the same influence over them is what it comes down to. And if you are one of the people so totally outraged about the Shaivos that you think your emotional trash should trump my rationality, I have a wonderful solution for you.

If you are horribly outraged by Terri Shaivo's treatment, allow me to arrange to have you put in an extremely long-term coma. I'm not guaranteeing that you'll emerge from it unscathed, intact, or even as mentally flexible as you went in. I'm not guaranteeing you'll come out at all. What I am guaranteeing is that I'll be billing your next of ken for well over a decade, and as long as they're willing to put out the dough to keep you hooked up to the machine that pings. I'm not guaranteeing your husband won't find someone he'd rather be with but feel bound by that funny "'til death do us part" thing to divorce you and dump the costs of keeping you hooked up on your parents. I'm not guaranteeing anything, but that you'll be, for all intents and purposes for an onlooker, less capable than a Sea Monkey. Maybe you can eat and your limbic system won't be entirely offline. Sometimes. Occasionally. You might be mistaken for someone in a deep sleep, so long as we don't actually look for solid REM or check your EEG. Possibly.

Unless you're interested in being my experimental donkey for this little trial, please, proceed to shut the fuck up about Terri Shaivo and her right to life. If a dog were in the same state as Terri Shaivo, I certainly wouldn't keep it in that state for over a decade on the vague hope my best friend and protector would snap to and everything'd just go back to being like it was. Hell no! I'd give it a couple days, and if there weren't any positive signs, I'd have that sucker put down gently and go get myself a new dog.

Terri Shaivo isn't even getting the respect and consideration from those bastions of "respect for life" that a wounded dog earns from me, an avowed inhumanitarian.

Go forth and ponder the irony.

Plus, I'm bloody damn sick of Michael Shaivo being referred to as "that bastard Michael Shaivo" or "that asshole Michael Shaivo" (indignant terms that Rachael at BlueEyedInfidel seems inordinately fond of and not some few others in the blogosphere as well). You know what? I don't care if Michael Shaivo is an asshole. By all reports, Terri was a bullemic strip-brained cunt before she decided to starve herself offline in the first place. Seems to me that they deserved each other.

Which, in a sense, brings us full circle, to the comment I quoted at the start. Asshole or not, whatever his motivations, Michael Shaivo is legally responsible for his wife's state of care. Not her parents, who lost that legal right when she married, no matter what they think of the man. Not the state of Florida, no matter what clamour rises outside the courthouse. Not the US federal government, no matter how much posturing lets them try and court voters. Any act that intervenes in this particular little drama is a clear abdication of the speaker for the right to make their own decisions about the intimate details of their lives, and should be transparently perceived as such.

Ultimately, the thing that disgusts me the most about this is not Terry Shaivo's treatment, or the lack thereof. Its the fact that the various factors involved think its better to keep feeding an organ-repository than it is honourable to give her the treatment the condemned get and grant a painless chemical cocktail train-ride to oblivion. That's disgusting.

Current Mood: angry