Hypocrisy Follows the “Expanding Universe Model”

I like to read articles about astronomy and physics, and many of the articles I’ve read try to answer the question of whether the universe is expanding, and if so, if that expansion is accelerating. Well, based on the evidence I’ve seen in the last five years, I think that in the Hypocritical Universe the answer to that question is an unqualified yes. Each week I am amazed at how rapidly the universe of hypocrisy has expanded.

This item is not only the hypocrisy of the week; it may be the hypocrisy of the year. Rep. Tom Delay of Texas, AKA the Hammer or the Exterminator, took up the fight two weeks ago to have Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube reinserted. Even though a dozen judges have consistently ruled that the husband’s decision to cease life-prolonging treatment was within his rights as her guardian, Delay and his colleagues in Congress decided to intervene to “save Terry.” Delay said “what God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo”…. apparently to battle against death-loving liberals who kill babies and pull the plug on anyone with anything as debilitating as a cold.

Over the weekend, one of the blogs I frequent linked to an LA Times story that revealed Delay himself faced a similar family tragedy several years ago. This story has since made its way into the other major dailies and onto the Internets. Bill Saletan discusses it today in Slate.

No, you are not hallucinating – Saletan talks about how Delay’s family decided against prolonging his own father‘s life when he slipped into a persistent vegetative state. So what happened in the intervening 16 years to not only change Delay’s viewpoint on the issue of a family’s decision to cease life-prolonging medical procedures, but also to use the power of the US Congress to intervene in a state matter and attempt to overrule state courts?

Is it that Delay found Jesus and had a change of heart about such things?

Is it as Saletan argues that Delay sees Terry Schiavo differently than he saw his father because he’s looking at her from a politician’s standpoint while he looked on his father as a son would? Quoting Saletan:

Why the difference between then and now? Maybe because DeLay saw his father as a human being. He speaks of Schiavo as something more and less….

This is what happens when you approach a tragedy as a politician rather than as a family member. You see quality of life as a slippery-slope abstraction, not as a reality affecting someone you love. You find it easy to impose a standard of documentation that would have forced your family to break the law. You second-guess a spouse in a way you would never second-guess your mother. You challenge people's competence and impugn their character. You perceive the afflicted person more as God's tool than as God's child.

A tool Saletan says! So, is it that he found an issue he thought he could work to great political advantage (D’oh!), enabling him to deflect media attention from his myriad of ethical and legal problems while at the same time beating up on those death-loving, baby-killing, godless Democrats?

I look at Delay’s antics over his career and what I see is a corrupt politician who cares nothing for the well-being and dignity of people like Terry Schiavo. His only real passion is for power and dominance over others. If this issue is so important to him morally, then wouldn’t he have been discussing this case for a period longer than the last two weeks? (Can anyone find a mention of it by Delay previous to March 2005? I can’t.)

Saletan covers for Delay by suggesting that because he’s looking at Schiavo as a politician and not as a family member he loses touch with the human tragedy of her and her family’s predicament. That justification doesn’t really cut it for me – it assumes that Delay is simply misguided and that he really has good intentions. Saletan seems to suggest that Delay’s religious beliefs motivate his perception of Schiavo as a tool for furthering the cause of the right-wing Christian-fundamentalists – causes that in their minds (and according to Saletan, also in Delay’s mind) are just and worthy. I would argue that Delay’s moral bankruptcy and totally corrupt thirst for power motivates his perception that the religious right is a tool he can use to maintain his grip on power and that this particular case is just one more string he can tug to manipulate his puppets in this voting bloc.

Tom Delay is a man whose hypocrisy knows no bounds – I sincerely believe that he would use any cause, any ideal, or anyone’s misfortune to feed his own appetite for power. Sadly, he isn’t the only one – there is plenty of competition for the power that exists in this country. If there wasn’t, Delay wouldn’t be fighting so hard to hold it for himself. As long as citizens allow vast amounts of influence and power to consolidate in so few people, Delay and those like him will continue to thirst for possession of it and attempt to destroy those standing in their way.

This consolidation of power is dangerous and runs counter to basic tenets of American democracy. Our founding fathers warned us many, many times against the danger of excessive power – George Washington warned us in the most symbolic ways by refusing kingship and leaving the Presidency voluntarily. Thomas Jefferson’s warnings came through his many elegant writings. My friend pinkgator is right, as usual – Jefferson did have beautiful penmanship:

But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. -April 22, 1820

We have ignored their warnings, believing in our arrogance that we could handle this power responsibly and justly. With Tom Delay, George Bush, and their corporate masters, we are now witnessing what can be unleashed when power is entrusted to lesser men.