The Grim Reapublicker

The "Christian" right denies a whole lot about reality, including evolution, cosmology, the unsustainability of our current form of industrial civilization, the intrinsic nature and variety of human sexuality, and you can no doubt think of more examples. But for me, their weirdest denialism is denial of death.

You no doubt heard about Sen. Grassley claiming that under a universal health care plan, Sen. Kennedy would die. I've got news for you Chuck -- Sen. Kennedy will indeed die. And so will you, and so will I, and so will everything that lives, universal health care or no. According to Rep. Paul Brown of Georgia, countries that already have universal health care don't appreciate the value of human life, and they're busy "killing" old folks. (Of course, people in Canada and the UK actually live longer than people in the U.S. but since when did facts matter to these lunatics?)

This isn't anything new -- recall the Terry Schiavo circus. How very strange. These are people who believe their God voluntarily chose death at a young age, who are perennially enthusiastic about sending young men off to slaughter and be slaughtered in wars, and whose most essential belief is that death is illusory and will be followed, for them anyway, by eternal bliss. Nevertheless they see death as itself mortal, as an enemy that not only can be defeated, but must be fought tenaciously and relentlessly, with every resource society can muster, to the bitterest end; and that declining to do so is somehow profoundly evil.

This means that when people's brains have deteriorated to the point that they no longer swallow when you put food in their mouths, God almighty (who presumably brought them to that state) demands that you jam tubes down their throats and pump in a synthetic slurry of nutrients. If they stop breathing, you have to jam a tube into their windpipe and pump in air. If their body can no longer fight off infections, you have to stick a needle in their vein and pump in antibiotics. It matters not whether they are conscious, whether they can perceive or speak or know anything of the world around them. Their "life," their "human life," is sacred and of infinite value. Offering people the choice to decline such treatment is precisely equivalent to murdering them. Jesus said so. It's in the Bible, right?

Of course, that doesn't mean that the rest of us can be forced to pay for it. That would be socialism. But it needs to happen anyway. Somehow.

That's the "culture of life." That's the Christian belief. Weird, bizarre, and very very strange.

Update: There is no word in the language for stupidity so profound as this.