Digital Analogue

Finally.

I'm irritated at all the self-righteous windbagging that has gone on, that brought me psychologically to the point where my only reaction when a person dies is, "finally!" That just shouldn't be. Relief, yes; there are certainly cases out there where the end comes as a blessed release from the suffering of a painful life. The current case started out that way.

But the blogs, the newspapers, the televisions, the churches, the political meetings, and just about every damn other place you turn, they've all taken this poor woman's situation and blown it into a full-on proxy war about everything from abortion to health care, when really all it ever was was an unfortunate family dispute regarding whether a spouse has total decision-making capability for the mentally unfit (or mentally departed, as the case may be). I was---we all were, I think---getting so sick of it. There was a dread in the pit of my stomach that a feeding tube would be reinserted at the 11th hour, a cruel and unusual treatment dragging the whole mess out for months or years more.

Now, it's over. I have no illusions that the publicity will stop, but I can hope that at least the rancour will settle down a bit, and it will become a more civil debate. And politicians will have to stop using it as a smokescreen for whatever new crap they're pulling this week.

"It's like the pull-out-and-pray method of birth control--really, it's one of the most sinful methods of birth control because it sucks at preventing unwanted babies, and the point of Catholic dogma is that life should be desired, not that our methods of preventing life must be shoddy." --Jonathan Prykop