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Last updated on: December 12, 2004 at 11:59 am by Barbara Nicolosi

2004-12-12T11:59:00-07:00 Barbara Nicolosi

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

THE NEXT THING IS HERE

The thing with evil is, it never relents. It never sleeps. It never retreats. It never pauses to catch its breath.

That’s what I was thinking last Thursday while watching the last half of ER which featured an absolutely compelling and iron-clad dramatic defense for euthanasia. While, we all are catching our breath from having held the barricades against same-sex marriage on election day, the left marches on, advancing a new front.

I don’t believe in media conspiracies, but it is amaziong how everybody in the worlds of mainstream media and entertainment seem to get “on message” so fast. So, this week, for example, on Wednesday, I heard House minority leader Nancy Pelosi note on CNN that there really isn’t any looming crisis in Social Security, and that the whole thing has been raised by the GOP to scare young people. Then, most of Wednesday and Thursday, AOL has the lead headline, “Bush says There is a Looming Social Security Crisis.” “Hmmmm…” I thought. “Since when, don’t we all agree that Social Security is in trouble?”

Then, I catch the ER episode on Thursday night, and I started to see the next horizon. It all fits together for anyone who wants to see it.

The segment on ER – which was, SUPER-ironically the Christmas episode! – has the Chinese female Dr. Chen, selflessly and secretly caring for her father at home. He is a proud man who has now been reduced to the terrible suffering and humiliation of some kind of crazy seizures. The shots of his skinny naked legs flailing around in the air were all about getting the audience to the conclusion, “Good grief! No one should have to live like that!” From those sequences, it was just a short segue away for Dr. Chen to compassionately end her father’s suffering.

It was stunning. A lead character, on a prime-time show, ends her father’s life with an injection. This is the kind of action that previously was reserved for guest-actors, who didn’t have to be safely sympathetic. At some point, the folks at ER and NBC decided, killing your sick parent with drugs is not something that would ruin a character’s sympathy with the audience.

But there’s more here. And that is the fact that the act of euthanasia styled as so very compassionate on ER unfolds as a daughter killing her father.

See, there is one way for there NOT to be a Social Security crisis in fifteen to twenty years. Do you see it? There will only be a crisis in Social Security, if we are not courageous and compassionate enough to euthanize our elderly.

My sense is, the temptation for Gen Xers to euthanize their Baby Boomer parents will be rationally irrestible for many. After all, Gen X is the group whose siblings were terminated so that Baby Boomers could have complete unfettered lives. What ever goes around…

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