808 The Conundrum
Everyday I list 4 or 5 words in my notebook I'd like to use in a sentence. Usually, I find no topic or occasion to do so. These are not difficult words--stellar, daunting, irksome, culminated--just words I wouldn't ordinarily use. But yesterday I noted "conundrum" because I saw it twice in the Wall Street Journal. Then today when Answers.com popped up on my screen, it said "conundrum" was yesterday's word. Obviously, when Greenspan gave his Senate testimony and used that word, a lot of people looked it up.It's just a fancy way to say riddle or puzzle, and today I think I may have occasion to use it in a blog--and not just as a quote of Mr. Greenspan, or noting its use in another publication. I think the Terri Schiavo case is a conundrum because people seem to be deciding her fate based on liberal or conservative political views--it has almost become a red state/blue state conundrum. What ever happened to the "bleeding heart" liberal? Where is the liberal who is all for the little guy, and willing to spend my taxes to help him? I've wondered about this in the abortion dilemma too. Who could be smaller and more in need of protection from the government than the unborn, or the brain injured? People who will stand in the rain at midnight outside of prisons before an execution of a rapist/murderer, or who will demand that Iraqi prisoners of war in Guantanamo have all the rights of American citizenship when it comes to imprisonment and trial, will turn up their blue noses at a fellow American in need of their assistance. Really, a conundrum.
In some cases, there is no one to care for an invalid, but this isn't the case here. Terri's husband could divorce her, marry the mother of his children, and Terri's parents could either love her as she is or get her help (which her husband has refused). I visit two women in nursing homes who are in Terri's condition. Although it is painful for their families, the women themselves are not unhappy or distressed.
You can add your blog address to a group rallying to save Terri at Hyscience.
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2 comments:
It would make more sense if the let's-spend-YOUR-money compassionate lefties were prolife and anti-...what? turning off life support? If Terri's hubby wasn't such a pr*ck to begin with, I might say that he is looking out for what, in his loving judgment, she would have wanted. But he was, so I don't. I do say, though, that I would never want to be "alive" that way. It's just horrible. No one I know personally, no one in my family, would want it either.
I know we all say that--I wouldn't want to live that way--but then we see people struggling valiantly to hang on as Terri has done, so I suspect we really don't know until we're faced with it. ALS, Parkinson's, stroke, brain injury, dementia--some physical, some mental, some both--all are awful, but they are not death sentences. The victims are not criminals.
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