An outrage worthy of attention: Why the Schiavo story is important

One of the serious problems of life in the age of Bush is that we are on outrage overload. As much as many of us who were adults back in the eighties didn't like what Reagan was doing, he never got us to this level.

This is in response to those who believe that the Schiavo story is a distraction from the more serious sins of the Bush regime and no more worthy of national attention than celebrity trials or children missing from white suburban homes. The question is whether the Schiavo story is really worthy of our attention. I maintain that it is, although for reasons that go far beyond the life and death of woman in a persistent vegetative state.

The affair in Pinellas Park is yet another outrage on many levels. In this case, the right wing religionists in the White House, Congress and the Republican Party establishment have conspired to impose their narrow views of where human life fits into the cosmic scheme on those of us who don't share them; they have further used federal power to interfere with the state government after not being satisfied with the settled decision in state courts. Ironically, they got nothing better in the federal courts.

In addition, the sheer demagoguery of the right's appeal in the Schiavo case should appall anybody who believes in the rule of law. Having lost in the courts and even in public opinion, the politicians have resorted to appealing to the rabble.

Our vigilance is required to protect democracy from those who would undermine it for selfish purposes. Bush seldom acts but in a way to enhance his power at the expense of the rule of law and American democratic traditions. The Schiavo story highlights a new and menacing tactic in his striving to satisfy his lust for power: the direct appeal to the rabble. This is an outrage worthy of our attention.

While I am an advocate of democracy, which I define as a system of government based on universal and equal citizenship, I am wise enough to heed the critics of democracy who assert that it opens the dangers of mob rule. Alexander Hamilton, one of America's founding fathers, was no fan of democracy and quite outspoken on this point. Hamilton mocked this as mobocracy. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French visitor to America in the 1830s, was more sympathetic to democratic principles but still raised concerns about what he called the tyranny of the majority.

The American experiment in government has been one that attempts to temper popular will with the rule of law. Traditionally, those who favor erring on the side of the rule of law are called conservative, a word much abused in the last thirty years.

The events now transpiring in Pinellas Park lay bare that the Republican Party is based not on democartic or even conservative principles but a right wing ideology. There is nothing conservative about the appeal of demagogues like the Bush brothers, Tom DeLay and Bill Frist to the mob of cross-bearing vigilantes who have turned the last hours of a dying woman into a political circus. It is purely right wing. It is outrageous.

The mob rule which they are inspiring is not even democracy at its worst. For it to be that, the mob that is attempting to rule should at least represent a majoritarian view, which they do not in this case. With about three out of four Americans believing that further government interference in this matter is wrong and that Mrs. Schiavo should be allowed to die quietly, as most of us believe she would have wished, this can hardly be called the tyranny of the majority.

What we see in Pinellas Park is not democracy, even in its ugly aspects, but an attempt to impose a religious-inspired fascism on America. Those demonstrating in front of the Pinellas Park hospice do not respect the views of others. They feel that they are ethically superior to the rest of us, and that they should have more say in what government policy should be than we who are not so enlightened; in short, they believe that they should have more rights as citizens than those of us who do not share their views Man's relationship to God. It is theocracy, not democracy that the rabble in Florida seeks.

That elected (or presumably elected) government officials are encouraging this mob is outrageous and it is an important development in the sordid chronicles of Bush's America. Up to now, Bush and his political allies in Congress have undermined American democratic institutions with secret hearings, abrogated treaties, legislation that infringes on the rights of the accused to be represented by council or even to a trial of any kind, the use of torture (approved by executive order), the stretching and breaking of parliamentary rules, and the employment of voting technology that will make rigging elections easier. In all this, the right wing ideologues, led by Mr. Bush, have been a threat to American democracy.

Now they dare to threaten us with lawlessness. That is the real outrage that makes this story important and worthy of our urgent attention.

so many other issues, as can be seen by the divisive posts here on DU.

GREAT POST.
Nominated

I can't believe this has become such a wedge issue! I am just in awe at the power the right has over us! I have never seen so much 'in-fighting' as I have over this topic! I am DISGUSTED!

I am not a member of the "culture of death" because I believe the tube should be removed. It was her wish! Her husband has declared it! Where is the sanctity of marriage?

I have always been raised to believe that "your rights end, where my nose begins." So why the fuck are we all arguing whether the damn tube stays or goes?!! IT GOES! Those are HER wishes as communicated by her husband! I am sick of people saying he is not her "real" family. I am sick of people inserting their fucking religion into this. I am sick of people failing to see the forest for the trees! The right-wing and Rethugs FUCKED UP! Why are we wasting energy attacking one another, instead of them?!?!

I am so sick of all of this! This poor woman is a pawn by those who think their morality is superior to all others and I wish they would all just FUCK OFF!

Whew! Rant off!

You might want to look at Cuban Liberal's thread. He feels differently about this matter than most at DU. In a short sub-thread in which he and I exchanged views, we agreed to disagree on the matter of whether the tube should be reinserted, but agreed that better legislation is needed to make more clear when the next of kin can request that the tube be removed.

The difference between Cuban Liberal and Randell Terry is that Cuban Liberal realizes that, as a Roman Catholic, he is a member of a religious minority in a pluralistic nation dedicated to religious freedom and the separation of church and state and that has no right to impose his religious views on the rest of us through the power of the state. He may try to influence the state, but will accept what the state decides. He indicated in our sub-thread that a written directive to pull the plug should be honored.

That's a lot different from those who don't care what the rest of us think because, unlike us, they talk to God and know what eternal truth is.

points very well. I agree with everything you say.

OUR mob is MUCH BIGGER than their mob.
If one is going to appeal to the "mob", one had better be sure that they have the "mob" behind them.
Even most fundies do not agree with this level of government involvement in their lives.
'puks LOSE big time on this one all the way around....

and YES, I agree that with your post that this is the crux of the Shiavo situation.

I think we should be very afraid.

You might want to look as some of the threads concerning the activities of a New Jersey right wing radio personality named Hal Turner in the past couple of days. Mr. Turner has advocated:

• Using force (not necessarily government force) to "rescue" Mrs. Schiavo;
• Killing anybody who interferes with the "rescue", apparently including police officers;
• Truck bombing the hospice.

Our right wing politicians are playing with fire. They have encouraged a mob that they may not be able to control.\

Even if our mob is bigger than their mob, the cost of subduing them will be high. This is a place we really don't want to go. It is something to fear.

become.

I hope that no violence comes from this case, but if it does, I think the backlash will be cathartic. Clearly, the majority of Americans do not side with the radical Right on this issue. I also think they have overplayed their hand. They thought they could steamroll the public with Congressional action, but the reverse has happened. If they want to raise the stakes of mob action, they will sow the seeds for their own destruction.

They are like a boil on democracy...it's festered for years and it's about ready to burst. Then the healing can begin.

The American people have about as much regard for the far right after any violence in Pinellas Park as we had after the Oklahoma City bombing. And we will be asking what the right wing politicians did to prevent it.

The vast majority of them are martyrs. The 50 or so nutcases gathering in Florida couldn't exactly storm the Tuilleries.
It's the individual nutcases around the country I worry about. Their fragile brains won't be able to take the strain.

It's those individual nutcases who do. Together they form a mob.

When I participate in large anti-war demonstrations, I always notice some kids in capes (they all look like high school students) running around inviting the rest of us to take part in an unauthorized breakaway protest later. This might involve plans to break a few shop windows downtown. Fortunately, the police are always ready for them.

One point is that those who organize a demonstration like those can't be expected to keep these elements out. International ANSWER does an excellent job of organizing anti-war demonstrations and co-operating with the authorities to keep incidents like that to a minimum.

However, and this is another point, the authorities other than the Pinellas Park police are giving the impression that they support to the demonstrators and not the rule of law. If Jeb Bush, his idiot brother or Tom DeLay have said anything about the importance of keeping order, I've missed it. On the contrary, Governor Bush sent state troopers to Pinellas Park in what appears to be an effort to defy the court. This gives the impression that he isn't going to respect the rule of law. This is dangerous. It could be taken as a signal to some of those individual nutcases that whatever they do is okay.

Meanwhile, right wing radio host talk righteously about using violence to bring the matter to a resolution that they will find favorable, regardless of how the courts have interpreted the law. Have those charged with keeping order said anything about how ill advised that would be? It bothers me that they haven't. This can be taken as a further signal to those individual nutcases that whatever they do is okay.

Their fragile brains won't be able to take the strain.

Don't count on that. Bo Gritz is an ex-Green Beret. I have served in the army and knew Green Berets. I'd show more respect for the kind of strain somebody like Gritz can take if I were you.

to be moved, in the sense that Turner has crossed the line by advocating violence but clearly no one is banging down his door.

Moving against someone like Turner would at least show that there are some things beyond the pale in this case. It's not like he hasn't made specific threats. I saw it his website yesterday:

(Pinellas Park Police officers) deserve to have the shit kicked out of them, and that Hospice ought to be blown up by a truck bomb.

That is a call for a specific action, violent and unlawful on its face, against a specific target.

Not moving against him sends the wrong message. We should be concerned.

I do wonder if that is part of their plans in whipping up the extremists into this violent passion. Someone is going to be killed, and I'm not talking about Terri Schiavo, who died 15 years ago. Is this what they want?

They certainly want to destroy any check on their power by the judicial branch of the government and they already have pretty much demolished the power of the legislative branch. They are after a theocratic fascist dictatorship - and I'm wondering if viiolent mob uprisings are part of their strategy.

has a bigger mob. Mobs aren't good, period. No one is safe with mob rule regardless of which side you're on.

I've written on several posts this morning that I always thought the people who thought the US Gov't was comming to get them were just nuts! After hearing about Jeb mobilizing the State Police last night scared the shit out of me!!!

I now admit, I was very wrong and naieve in not recognizing just how woutrageous this gobernment really is...on all levels!

You have put in words very eloquently what I feel. I love your reference to Hamilton and de Tocqueville. Nominated and bookmarked.

but this is exactly what Hitler did. There were only 4 million Nazi's and yet they were able to create the impression that they were the majority via media manipulation.

This created the FEAR of going against the majority and did silence dissent.

They created a convenient focus via the Jews, that silenced the real source of their economic woes which were graft and corruption via the plutocracy.

While I generally have a distaste for comparing Bush to Hitler or for calling the Bush paradigm fascist as if there were no difference between what is presently happening in America and classical fascism, this is a fascist trait.

As I was writing the post, I considered making a comparison to Kristallnacht, but, unless and until there is actual mob violence, that would seem inappropriate. Even then, it may not be entirely appropriate unless Governor Bush sits on his hands and does nothing while the mob storms the hospice or openly encourages it.

So far, he hasn't openly encouraged the mob. What should bother us is that he has done little to discourage violence in this matter.

Here is a snip from the Miama Herald this morning:

_________________________________________________________
TERRI SCHIAVO CASE

Police 'showdown' averted

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER

cmarbin@herald.com

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''

In the end, the squad from the FDLE and the Department of Children & Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.

''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' said a source with the local police.

''The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,'' said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. ``When the sheriff's department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.''

The incident,known only to a few and related to The Herald by three different sources involved in Thursday's events, underscores the intense emotion and murky legal terrain that the Schiavo case has created. It also shows that agencies answering directly to Gov. Jeb Bush had planned to use a wrinkle in Florida law that would have allowed them to legally get around the judge's order. The exception in the law allows public agencies to freeze a judge's order whenever an agency appeals it.
_______________________________________________________________



I wonder what situation will come up next where they try to use their private police squads to circumvent the constitution. John Negreponte has a well established history of resorting to this sort of thing in Central America. Perhaps they are setting the stage to do it here...

Jeb is ready to defy the courts. He is abusing his power as chief executive of the state of Florida in order to substitute his will for the rule of law.

Will he allow vigilantes to attempt what the Pinellas Park PD would allow state troopers to do?

Nominated

First the good news, and it is not bountiful. The curtain has been drawn back a little further exposing the rw and their base.

Now the bad news, which is plentiful. The administration & their minion Congress feel strong enough to overtake & subvert the Judiciary. No more checks & balances, folks, we know what is best for you. The attack on the Constitution continues, and we must believe that these monsters will not be stopped until they have completely replaced it with their own theocratic version of it. Regardless of polls showing that an overwhelming majority of citizens strongly object to the governments handling & medaling in this issue, their whore media continues their drumbeat of attempting to convince us why we are all so wrong.
Andrea Mitchell, substituting for Chris Mathews on Hardball last night, covered the hypocrisy of the Texas bill that * signed into law. MSMBC's coverage was worse than no discussion on the matter. Never once was it mentioned that a person could be cut off of life support if they had no ability to pay. They totally made it sound as if it were a bill/law allowing the hospital to decide who is the family member who gets to make the decision about treatment options/pulling the plug.

JR, thank you for a wonderful, thoughtful post. Nominated

It sounds awful. Surely there would be a question if the hospital decided the baby Sun's mother wasn't next of kin.

I agree that the curtain has been drawn back a little and we are able to see how far these people are willing to go. In recent American history, this is an unprecedented appeal to mob rule. Not since the Jim Crow South when the irrational fear that poor whites felt for blacks was exploited by demagogues have we seen anything like this.

One might expect some backlash against the right over this that would temper agenda with regards to the judiciary, but when did public opinion ever have an effect on these guys? They have their agenda and it's not based on the will of the people. They figure they can raise enough campaign cash to get enough votes to squeak by (and then call it a "mandate" as if it were a landslide) and, if that doesn't work, fix the vote count (and still call it a "mandate" as if it were a landslide).

Any one who is interested in how the media is being used as a tool to form & shape the debate, opinions & information disseminated would find the transcript an interesting read. And oh, BTW, Andrea Mitchell is the wife of Alan Greenspan. That little nugget may be relevant to the conversation since he has whored his responsibilities to promote * policies, perhaps it is all in the family.

Your writing, besides being dead on & eloquent, is also full of imagery. Picture this political cartoon:

A steam roller with the words GOP written on the side is driven with Rove, Delay (wielding a large cross), & shrubya. They are steam rolling the lady justice, the Constitution. <<insert ideas>>

is distorted, incomplete, and controlled by the government and its minions? . . . can there really be democracy when news has been replaced by propaganda? . . .

Actually, the press is controlled by the same people who have foot the bill for Mr. Bush's political career. That is one of the important distinctions that need to be made between what is happening in America today and what happened in Europe three-quarters of a century ago. There is no government censorship, but the result of having the media placed in fewer and more homogeneous hands is really the same: a public that by and large knows only what those in power want it to know.

Although we are not be being served well by the mainstream media on this matter, we are being served by them better than we have been in other matters, such as the war in Iraq.

Since the media is controlled by transnational corporations, and they are most concerned about making sure we remain good consumers of their products, there is a better discussion of gay rights or right to life/choice issues in the media because those matters really have no affect on their bottom lines.

However, if they tilt Bush's way even on these social issues or aren't as critical of him as warranted, it may be because they have an investment in him that they are protecting. On the other hand, he won't be running for re-election (or re-selection) again, so they have less interest in keeping him propped up now than they did this time last year.

Nominated for Greatest.:thumbsup:

is important.


The one incontrovertible fact is that Teri has no cerebral cortex, the cortex that was once there is now fluid. She is not someone who is in a coma with an intact brain who by some twist of fate will wake up. I have been truly baffled that this one central fact gets so easily ignored, I'm am especially baffled by DUers who treat this fact as if it were simply conjecture on the part of those who want Teri dead.


That people aren't letting facts get in the way of their arguments is very upsetting.

The nation is on outrage overload. There is so much to be outraged about - which stories do we concentrate our outrage on...for there are so many.

I posed the question that perhaps Bushco was using this as a deflection to what is happening in the middle east. You suggest that only now they threaten us with lawlessness and I would pose that they have already set a precedent with the invasion of Iraq....undermining international law and the UN charter, violating the Geneva convention etc etc etc.

Only now with the Schiavo story, the lawlessness has direct and immediate consequences on Americans in her own backyard. I am sure you are aware that Bushco is already calling international judisicsm a sort of judicial terrorism if it stands in the way of the American empire. A tool of the weak, according to Douglas Feith - he calls it terrorism just the same.

The flagrent disregard for law has always been there....if it stands in the way of their goals. And now we know it is not limited to international laws, codes and treaties.

So perhaps the Schaivo incident with be THE cathartic event that draws back the curtain so to speak. And then you will know what many of us have suspected for the past 5 years...American democracy is over.

Your earlier thread was about the Sgrena shooting. This thread is based on my reply there.

Even in the context of the Iraq war, the incident a few weeks ago at the Baghdad airport checkpoint seems of little note. That's saying a lot; it was pretty outrageous, even if one assumes it was just a royal screw up. Nevertheless compare it to the Guernica-like attack on Fallujah, the torture at Abu Ghraib or Bremer's 100 decrees and it almost doesn't count.

I am convinced that history will not be kind to Mr. Bush. I am also convinced that, if his tenure in office were terminated tonight, history will record that of his many abominations the very worst was to launch a colonial invasion of a sovereign state predicated on a pack of deliberate lies. Seldom in human history does one see anything more outrageous than taking one's nation into war based on such falsehoods as those.

Nevertheless, there is a difference between that kind of lawlessness and the kind with which he and his brother are threatening us in Pinellas Park. Invading Iraq as he did or dismissing any concepts of international law as he does are acts of tyranny. As far as this goes, one can apply Plato's definition of a tyrant from The Republic to Mr. Bush. To Plato, a tyrant is one ruled by passion rather than reason, one who will break any bond or oath, no matter how sacred, in order to satisfy his lusts. He had the power to seize Iraq's oil fields and he used it.

What we are seeing now is a willful disregard of two chief executives, both named Bush, to do their duty to enforce the law. They is quite possibly endangering public safety by encouraging the mob outside the hospice and giving them no reason to believe that either of them will lift a finger to stop them from anything that mob might try. Governor Bush even sent state troopers down in what appears to be an attempt to defy the court order. It seems that at the moment the only real law enforcement is the Pinellas Park PD.

There was a thread up earlier today asking members to send an e-mail to Chief Dorene Thomas of the Pinellas Park PD thanking her and her police officers for their efforts in this difficult time.

When Ultra-Conservative Supreme Court Justice Scalia and Conservative Baptist Judge Greer do NOT fall into lock-step with Bush Co. on this issue.

I wonder if Scalia will enjoy any more duck hunting trips with Cheney in the future? <eg>