Pulling the Plug on Grandma

The word spread quickly, “They pulled the plug on grandma today.”

Such news traveled seamlessly through the wireless gossip channels of tiny American communities. It sent a chill of fear and loathing, mixed with the bile of disgust and helplessness, throughout the land. The books of Orwell sold in prodigious quantities, attesting to the angst and anger of an aging and impotent citizenry. Who would be next? There was a collective shudder throughout the land. It knew…them!

Even now the ghost of grandma hovers in the sterile and heartless corridors of the halls of Congress. Grandma, so easily dispatched with a wink and a nod by “The Panel”, roams the hills long after the last mourner has departed the pile of red clay littered with withered flowers.

You see, grandma was a victim of the merciless decision of “The Panel,” an appointed advisory group of bloated bureaucrats set in motion by a cruel and mercenary administration in the year 2009. Its ruthless and lethal legacy has not abated through countless generations to the current time. No one is safe from its capricious conclusions on the issues of life and death for individuals.

A bit of history will help. Burdened with a $17 trillion budget deficit, an atheistic think-tank of career bloodsuckers on the American Treasury designed an insidious device for paying down the reparation deficit. It was called QYAL, which in turn was implemented by an appointed “advisory panel,” the CER (now referred to as “The Panel,” the word death having been dropped early on as divisive.) It was the “Court of Final Appeal” by citizens desiring medical assistance to prolong life. Its rulings were non-reversible, a “death warrant” one might say, and its directives were sent to the appellant’s attending medical staffs.

Of course, Americans have long endorsed extreme measures of extermination. Public hanging was the favorite prior to 1888, supplanted thereafter by electrocution. Apparently public lynching in the South inflamed the nation’s conscience and retribution moved from the streets to the death chamber where “Old Sparky” sat, a subtle reminder of the torture that would be meted out to malcontents and murderers.

But it was itself a form of supremely severe punishment, as was attested by the first “test” case, Bill Kemmler, who was subjected to two jolts of 2,000 watts of AC current lasting 17 seconds each. He finally died, but not before he lit up red, convulsing, with flames shooting from his mouth and ears, blood gushing from his head and arms. “They’d done better with an axe,” one witness exclaimed.

The process improved with age and proved a financial boon to lawyers begging courts for appeals to this cruel and unusual punishment. In time this hideous torture was later replaced by lethal injection, a more humane treatment, but having the same result.

But back to grandma. “The Panel” had denied her plaintive pleas with insolent indifference and mocking condescension, glancing at their watches, thinking of the juicy steak lunch that awaited them in the Senate dining room. Besides, what possible reason did this shriveled and desiccated skeleton have to substantiate her appeal. No, she had ceased to add to the GDP, and only became a drag on society. She was no longer an “economic unit,” the sole criteria for judging longevity now. “Request Denied.” The words echoed from the empty room. “Next case.”

And so it goes these days. Yet government-speak has successfully disguised this capricious euthanasia, making it acceptable by a compliant and government-dependent populace. This sleight-of-hand was drawn from a portmanteau of the past, when a new word for “electrical execution” was coined to placate adversaries of the death penalty. The word? Why, “electrocution.” Clever, huh? Almost humane. Almost!

The appropriate euphemism has yet to emerge from the current process of population control, but it soon will. May I offer a simple suggestion of the harmless combination of the words euthanasia and execution, forming “euthocution.” Who, then, will be to blame for grandma’s passing? No one…the patient died of natural causes.

And perhaps the tombstone might read, “Here Lies Grandma, Unplugged.”

Bud Hearn
August 20, 2009