Wednesday, March 2, 2005

In Florida, obsessions turn mindless


By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Nothing so stupefies a human as an obsession driven by blinding "moral" compulsions, and in Florida, obsessive behavior has become a perfectly acceptable way of life for thousands whose fixations have become mindless.

Consider the striking similarities of Florida's two most notorious obsessions—keeping comatose, brain-damaged Terri Schiavo alive for 15 years with feeding tubes, and 40 years of futile attempts to topple Cuba's Fidel Castro.

The overbearing, predatory compulsion to keep 41-year-old Terri Schiavo alive is almost barbaric. Courts have twice approved her husband's right to remove life support to end her medically diagnosed "vegetative state." Judges also have rebuked Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's unconstitutional single interest legislation to keep tubes in Terri.

Yet, a motley collection of small bore politicians, President Bush's brother, opportunistic evangelicals, lawyers from Christian groups and predictable rightwing media demagogues continue to refuse to accept legal rulings or medical evidence and busy themselves to keep her hooked up. Talk about legal activism.

Even now, this rabble is conniving more mischief to block the March 18 removal of life support approved by a Florida judge. Desperate evangelical attorneys rashly accuse husband Michael Schiavo of abusing his wife; Gov. Bush has ordered a state investigation of her treatment after all this time, and her parents are spreading false hopes she can be roused from her hopeless condition.

None who want to keep her alive like a Frankenstein creation have offered to pay legal costs of their malicious intervention, of course. Nor have they offered to care for Terri and all her medical expenses.

It boils down to right wing demagogues grotesquely using Terri Schiavo for their cynical agenda.

Then there's the implacable Fidel Castro, a pipsqueak Marxist who survives despite denunciations, embargoes, a paramilitary invasion, trade sanctions, assassination attempts and economic strangleholds of eight U.S. presidents held hostage by obsessive Cuban-Americans whose votes U.S. presidents prize more than common sense.

No matter how much tighter the noose on Castro the Cuban-Americans demand of each president, Castro remains.

The humiliation for the United States is not only that Castro survives such strong-arming, but that American presidents continue to repeat 40 years of bankrupt strategies to mollify senseless obsessions of Cuban-Americans.

Even politics runs thicker than family blood: Cuban-Americans have demanded President Bush crack down on Florida relatives sending dollars to struggling families in Cuba, and Bush, the self-touting "compassionate" president, has agreed to help make life that much more miserable for ordinary Cubans.




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