Politics: Fiddling while Rome Burns
I can not fucking believe that while our economy lies in near-ruins, our debt is skyrocketing out of control, and our soldiers are overseas at war, the most important elected officials in the United States are wasting their time destroying 200 years of jurisprudence to overrule the husband of someone who's been in a persistant vegetative state for 15 years.
Sure, the helpless have rights, and the courts and laws need to uphold them. But you can't convince me that this hasn't escalated beyond the rational. In fact, the courts have already had their say. But, here we have it, instead of going all-out to save the livelyhoods of millions of American citizens, or going all-out to save the thousands of soldiers who will die in the desert, or going all-out to do something good for the billions of people in the world who are affected by the United State's governance, we're going to go all-out to save the life of somone who hasn't really even been a person for more than a decade.
I don't know what the actual motivation is behind this stupid political grandstanding, but I'm disgusted.
posted by Glenn @ 1:40 AM
6 Comments:
Hell, we'd probably be better off if they were intervening in the Michael Jackson case. At least the outcome of that might affect more than a handful of people.
Its the "Right-To-Life"ers trying to eat away at the edges of the law. This way they can use the vote (or non-vote - the Democrats avoided the issue in droves) to show they support life in all forms, especially brain death and vegetative states. Heck, its almost blackletter law now for federal intercedence to defend a potential fetus!
Apparently, the GOP sent a memo to senators saying how this would be a "great political issue". *sigh*
Well, it's not exactly a surprise, is it? I remember that that Dubya's first Faith Based Initiatives appointment resigned because the White House was way too 'political', in other words, doing things for the political effect and not for the policy outcome. So of course they'd jump on the issue. And it's not a surprise that congress does it too. After all, remember the campaign finance reform passed but vetoed under Bush I? Full public funding. When Clinton was elected and the Dems still had a majority, did the legislation come back up? Nope. It was just a stick to hit Bush I with.
I just think that this case, in particular, exposes some hypocrisy of the conservatives. They support the sanctity of marriage agianst the pernicious influence of homosexuals, but still intrude on it when things don't go their way. In other words, they are not into grand principles of behavior or logic. They are purely into particular results in the way they think and want to apply policy and that is a horrible recipe for problems in a pluralistic society like ours.
Around the UW, with the current controversy about the health service prescribing morning-after pills, I want to go up to the complainers and just say "Fuck you. If you don't want the pills, don't take them. But don't force your morality on people, especially if the funding isn't even public dollars. Hell, even with public funding the state has to act without regard for narrow sectarian intrests because it MUST be a secular state."
I'd love to put people who want religion dominating state policy under sharia law for a few months and see how they fucking like it. DAMN! I'm on a tirade now.
Yes, its wonderful when your religion is in the majority. I can actually hear Voltaire spinning in his grave from here!
The concepts of "tyranny of the majority" and "bread and circuses" keep echoing in my mind these days...
Well if you read the wikipedia article it shows that dubba's involvement is another Bush Family thing as his brother got to be involved last year.
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