The politics of piety were transparently masked by Republicans attempting to make capital over the fate of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman who has been locked in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years and whose feeding tube was ordered to be removed by a Florida state judge at the request of her husband.
At last, the case that had been considered by 19 judges in seven courts and appealed to the supreme court three times, which refused to hear it, seemed resolved. But Republican congressional leaders and President George W. Bush seized upon the court ruling as the moment for "a great political issue," as a memo circulated among Senate Republicans put it. The Democrats, it declared, would find it "tough" and the conservative "pro-life base will be excited." The president, who had hesitated for three days before making a statement on the tsunami in December, rushed from his Texas ranch back to the White House to sign the legislation.
The Schiavo case is unique among all medical cases, including 35,000 other people in persistent vegetative states. It is the only one in which the parents, who are not legal custodians, have been granted by an act of Congress and the president a federal court review of state court rulings. Wresting jurisdiction from the state judiciary is an unprecedented usurpation, a travesty of the federal system, displacing the Constitution with an ill-defined faith-based "culture of life," enthroning by edict theology above the law.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
In 1999, as governor of Texas, Bush signed a state law permitting hospitals to cease artificial life support when doctors decide reasonable hope is gone, even if the patient's family objects. Now, two months into his second term as president, his major domestic initiative to privatize social security is doomed, his budget dead on arrival and his poll ratings down to 45 percent approval, his low point.
His brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, has campaigned for years on the Schiavo holy crusade and has hired a prominent religious rightwing leader as the lawyer to represent the state in the case. In their legal battle the agonized Schiavo parents have made themselves financial dependents of two conservative groups, one anti-abortion, the other whose stated mission is to "confront and challenge the radical legal agenda advocating homosexual behavior."
The Senate majority leader, Senator Bill Frist, is a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. For him, the Schiavo case is the beginning of the struggle for Bush's succession. A heart surgeon before his entry into politics, the nameplate on the front door to his Capitol Hill office reads "William H Frist, MD," and he signs correspondence "Bill Frist, MD."
Amid the debate, after watching snatches of video tape of Schiavo, he proclaimed a diagnosis that she was not vegetative, contrary to the neurologists who have personally examined her.
Several months ago, in a national TV interview on ABC, Frist refused to acknowledge that saliva and tears cannot transmit AIDS-HIV, one of the shibboleths of the religious right.
The house majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay -- thrice rebuked by the house ethics committee, who has paralyzed the committee in order that it not consider new, more serious charges against him, whose closest aides are on trial in Texas for corruption and who has taken measures to try to protect his power from being stripped if he is indicted -- explained the Schiavo case as divinely inspired to rescue conservatives from martyrdom at a meeting of a rightwing group.
"One thing God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo," DeLay said. "This is exactly the issue that's going on in America, the attacks on the conservative movement against me and many others ... This is a huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in ... and we have to fight back."
Like Frist, DeLay plays doctor.
"She talks and she laughs and she expresses likes and discomforts," he declared.
"Come down, President Bush," said the anguished husband, Michael Schiavo. "Come talk to me. Meet my wife. Talk to my wife and see if you get an answer. Ask her to lift her arm to shake your hand. She won't do it."
Terri Schiavo cannot speak or gesture, but to true believers, even though she is silent, she is making sounds only they can hear.
They see what they want in order to believe, and they believe in order to see. For the first time public policy in the US is being made on the basis of pitting invisible signs versus science.
As in tribal cultures, a confederacy of shamans -- Bush, Frist and DeLay -- have appeared to conduct rites of necrophiliac spiritualism.
Only the shamans can interpret for the dying and control their spirits hovering between heaven and earth. The public opinion polls show overwhelming disapproval of the Republican position. But these polls are just so much social science. In this operation, for the tribe, there is no way of proving failure.
Sidney Blumenthal was a senior adviser to former US president Bill Clinton.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
RSS