Untitled

Recommended reading:
The End of Reason
http://www.alternet.org/story/21641
Organized religion elevates superstition to an entirely new level, so let's call its institutions by their proper name: superstition-based institutions.


I have had a lawyer draft what she assured me was a legally valid and binding "living will" expressing my wishes in case I should become incapacitated and unable to communicate them at any time in the context of a condition from which I’m not expected to recover, and I have duly executed (what lawyers call the act of signing; yes, I know; "signing" is a perfectly legitimate word, but why use a common word when you can substitute jargon and charge several hundred dollars for it?) such will in the presence of two witnesses, and all those signatures were duly notarized as prescribed by law.

I have also told and discussed the above mentioned directions to and with all my relatives and friends I could hold within my hearing long enough to do so, particularly my spouse, who is executrix of my will and has a full power of attorney to act in my behalf and implement my wishes. Such power of attorney comes into effect when I should be incapacitated and unable to communicate my decisions.

If and when I become unconscious and unable to communicate and if this appears to be an irreversible condition I DO NOT WANT MY BODY TO BE KEPT "ALIVE" by any extraordinary means, including but not limited to artificial respirators, feeding through tubes inserted into my stomach or any other diabolical devices I can't even imagine the medical profession may have invented to drain the finances of its victims and create an illusion that they are defeating death.

Consider the sentence above repeated three times with increasing emphasis.

If I should get into one of those delightful situations so common in medicine in which physicians are "not sure" what my chances of recovery are or whether I have ANY chance of recovery at all -- not that I am suggesting that physicians don't know everything, of course, but sometimes it seems to me, untrained layperson that I am, as if physicians don't know anything except how to charge inappropriately called "patients" more money for telling us they don't know than any other "experts" get for producing appropriate and accurate solutions, explanations and remedies for the situations they are called upon to examine -- I direct that any such "doubts" be resolved in the sense of letting my body die.

Poor Terri Schiavo (an Italian word meaning "slave" and pronounced Ski-ah-vo, NOT Sky-ay-vo, as I have heard broadcasters say it) has finally died; may she rest in peace.

I have no words to describe the revulsion I felt at the spectacle of troglodyte right-wingers invading her privacy. At the same time they have invaded the privacy of all of us who contemplate being one day in a situation similar too Ms. Schiavo towards the end of her life.

Ill-intentioned lawyers spurred by prospects of financial or political gain can question the validity even of the most iron-clad legal document, and I am horrified at the thought of my spouse having to fight the US Congress after I've become a vegetable (used in a figurative sense with all due respect to vegetables, who in fact ARE probably able to communicate, but not in ways we can -- yet -- understand) in order to implement my wishes.

One of the purposes of this blog entry is to provide further evidence of what my wishes are against potential actions to counter my wishes by followers of some superstition according to which such wishes are taboo. The followers of such superstitions are causing much grief to this country. Is there anyone who thinks that the sacred freedom to follow one's own superstitions also implies permission to try to force others to follow the tenets of such superstition?

I realize what I’m writing implies that I will be among the first to be killed when the fascists finally have their way as they did in Germany barely seventy years ago. But I don't want to live under a fascist dictatorship and I am too old and disabled to fight it.

I was born in Argentina in 1940. Physically far from Germany,, but still a fascist dictatorship (Perón was a great friend and admirer of the Nazis, and provided shelter in his country to many escaped German war criminals after the war).

The US is now, in many respects, the most advanced country in the world. So was Germany in the nineteen thirties. Some people say "it couldn't possibly happen here". So they did in Germany in the nineteen thirties. A superstitious extremist minority has grabbed power through electronic voting manipulation and the ignorance, apathy and stupidity of many voters. With the exception of the electronic voting manipulation the same thing happened in Germany in the nineteen thirties. The comparison between the two countries in terms of finances, employment and other issues I leave as exercises for the reader.

The US, with all its faults, has been a shining miracle in the history of humankind. Future historians -- if any, I’m tempted to say, but I’m sure there WILL be some somewhere in the universe -- will be astonished that it lasted as long as it did.

History also teaches that tyrannies always fall. Eventually, at least, and not without much struggle and suffering. The US saved the world from the fascists in the nineteen forties; who will save the world from the US? Stay tuned, I guess. As for myself, I've already seen plenty; now I’m increasingly wanting to go home and sleep.