You’ve heard about the terrible trouble being had by Haitians because of the recent earthquake. You’ve probably heard about Pat Robertson’s analysis of the causes of said trouble.  If not, check out NPR’s reporting. If you need a shot to your irony-meter you could also watch the youtube clip below. If you don’t have an irony-meter, you might want to avoid the clip since it will just make you mad. If you watched it anyway, then there is a anti-toxin you can take. I suggest an immediate dose to prevent cerebral melt-down. Read this. It should set you back to rights.

I was reading The Daily Beast earlier today. In it there is an article called “Summer of Hate: 25 signs trouble is brewing.”  It’s just what the title implies: it lists 25 events in the American world since June of this year that seem to point toward a (probably) immanent explosion of violence like, perhaps, the one we saw in 1968 (which the article briefly mentions). It’s a nice title, since it gets its power from mocking the 1967 Summer of Love.

I remember 1968.  I was 12 and had moved from the northeast of the US to Houston, Texas. When Martin Luther King was shot, I had been in town less than a year. I didn’t know how to comport myself in the place. I didn’t know it wasn’t OK to let my dark-skinned neighbor child (a Mexican foster kid staying with a white foster mommy) into my house, and that based on that transgression, my neighbors’ parents wouldn’t let them play with me.  I didn’t know that my voice (with its faint British accent) would arouse such suspicion.  I didn’t know that it was OK for the white teachers in my school to reduce the Mexican-American Spanish teacher to tears by refusing to allow her to sit in the teachers’ lounge.  I was pretty stupid really and because of that I was kicked out of the sixth grade. (It was my first, but not last, expulsion.) I probably deserved it; I was terminally insolent.  I have to admit, to them, I was probably a really nasty little brat.
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I watch Rachel Maddow, and recently I saw a clip called “Making Painful Decisions.” The clip below starts at 3 minutes 56 seconds and goes to the end.  Essentially it is a clip of the lawyer for Terry Schiavo’s husband speaking to the fear being drummed up against living wills by some Republicans as a way of trying to impede health care reform. Right near the end George Felos says “the only thing this bill does is say we will pay the doctor for the conversation. That’s it.”

He is, of course, refering to the conversation a dying person should have with their family and health care provider about what they want done for them and to them at the end of their lives. This conversation is what some Republicans are saying is a plot to kill the elderly. Bah. If its a plot at all, it as a plot to get people involved with their families, to talk to them, to open lines of communication, to speak to each other about the hard stuff.

The earlier segment of the clip shows that the principle opponents of the living will provision have a history of supporting exactly what they now oppose. I sure hope Mr. Felos is right when he suggests that the political downfall of some of those who used Mrs. Schiavo’s end to bring themselves political attention is something that will repeat itself with respect to some of these current conspiracy “theorists.”

It takes a mean spirited person to add to the pain and confusion that dying brings with it and that is what they are doing by trying to kill such a simple provision: help people speak to their doctors and families about what they want their death to be like.