Just what is going on in America?

“One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America,” proclaimed Tom DeLay on Palm Sunday at a meeting of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group, his expression so convincing one could almost sense emotion in his cosmetically frozen face.

I’m reminded of a story that Tammy Faye Baker once told an interviewer. According to the Pentecostal queen of mascara, when she was an up-and-coming evangelist’s wife, one of her older, wiser counterparts told her to always keep a piece of raw onion in her handkerchief so she would be able to cry on cue.

Just what is going on in America?

Is it astronomical deficits? Corporate welfare programs that allow the gulf between the haves and the have-nots to grow ever wider? Maybe the intentional dismantling of Social Security by Republican plutocrats? Or the wholesale outsourcing of millions of jobs – including torture – to foreign countries?

The gross, criminal mismanagement of billions of dollars by the vice-president’s former employer, Halliburton, who was awarded no-bid contracts in Iraq, and who overcharged, lost or failed to account for billions of tax-payer dollars?

The passage of bankruptcy “reform” that benefits the multi-billion dollar credit card industry and penalizes anyone who – God forbid – is forced to file bankruptcy due to medical catastrophe or loss of employment, while allowing the wealthiest of Americans to shelter assets from collectors?

Is it the fake journalist who got daily access to the White House, who moonlighted as a gay escort, who plagiarized news stories for a GOP front group, or is it one of the other six journalists whom this administration paid to tout its policies in their columns?

The attempt to eliminate a Senate parliamentary procedure, the filibuster, a move that would effectively eliminate debate and create a de facto one-party Senate?

Is it a Republican leader – DeLay – so mired in ethics scandals that the House leadership rewrote the ethics rules and replaced members of the ethics committee – including the Republican chairman – with members who had contributed to his criminal defense fund?

Or the hypocrisy of Republican moral crusader – again, DeLay – who referred to pornography as “a destructive force in society,” yet collected over $20,000 of porn profits into his campaign coffers?

The attempts to rewrite the Constitution to legalize bigotry or the efforts of the Christian Taliban to replace the Constitution with a Christian sharia, while President Bush and other Conservatives decry the same form of government in Muslim countries?

The hypocrisy of a president who publicly calls Iran a member of the Axis of Evil while his vice-president’s former employer continues to do business in that country or calling Syria a supporter of terrorism while we send people there surreptitiously to be tortured?

The nomination of a man to be attorney general whose own writings endorsed torture and displayed a gross and callous disregard for the Geneva Conventions?

Could it be the intrusion of the executive and legislative branch not just into the bedroom, but also into the hospital room? The shameless and unconscionable exploitation of a family’s suffering for political gain? (A move that prompted one Republican congressman to ask if his party had become a theocracy).

Or is it the talking points that the Republicans circulated encouraging fellow Republicans to jump on the Save-Terri-Schiavo bandwagon because, according to the Republican memo, “[t]his is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue?”

What about the hypocrisy of the Republican Party who rails against activist judges, but passes a law hoping that the federal judiciary will overturn the decisions that 15 other state judges – the most recent being a conservative Southern Baptist – had already made in the case? (Since the Republicans’ end run, a federal judge, a three-judge panel and a full appeals court have refused to hear the case.)

The hypocrisy of a party and a religious minority that extol the sanctity of marriage, yet ignore centuries of common law, two centuries of constitutional law and the very covenant of marriage itself by removing the right – nay, the obligation – of a spouse to follow the wishes of a spouse who lays in a persistent vegetative state, as attested to by dozens of doctors and upheld by 15 judges, including the United States Supreme Court, who already refused to hear the appeal three times.

Or a president who, invoking the “sanctity of life,” races back to the White House to sign a law that undermines the wishes of Terri Schiavo and the attempt of her husband to carry out those wishes. (This is the same president who, as governor, signed a law that allows hospitals to pull the plug on anyone – against the family’s wishes – if the family can’t pay the hospital bill, a law that allowed a hospital just two weeks ago to disconnect life support from six month-old Sun Hudson — against his parents’ wishes).

Where were Bush and DeLay when little Sun Hudson and his parents needed them?

Is life sacrosanct only when it provides capital — financial or political? What about the lives of poor Americans who cannot afford to pay exorbitant hospital bills – either because millions of Americans still don’t have insurance or because this president has cut funding to Medicaid and Medicare – are they not worth saving?

Just what is going on in America?

Last year following the reelection of President Bush, I wrote a column that suggested that those of us who hadn’t voted for Bush had a “clear understanding of what lay ahead.” Hopefully those of you who did now have a clearer understanding of what your vote has brought.

Paschal wishes to all!