A creature was born, illegitimately, in 1913 in Washington, DC. It had been conceived three years earlier at Jekyll Island, Georgia. Today it lies brain dead in Manhattan, New York while we look on and wonder what to do next. The answer to the current dilemma is both as obvious as it is excruciatingly difficult.

 

We have become needlessly dependent upon what is and always has been a hideous, parasitical creature. It has been there for all of our lives and we can’t imagine life without it. Nevertheless, its fate is sealed and it’s only a matter of time until it finally succumbs to the inevitable consequence of its own excesses. They were, after all, our excesses as well. This is why we’re afraid to do the right thing now. We know the creature will take a large part of our lives with it. So we hesitate. We hope for a miracle. We wallow in denial.

 

Hasn’t the creature put a scare into us before only to bounce back and live on? Like when it was a young creature and nearly succumbed back in the ‘30s. Or the nasty episode back in ’75. Or ’81 and ’82. And who can forget that nasty fall in ’87? Or the last one just a few years ago. Hasn’t it always recovered?

 

Perhaps so. But, unlike what the creature’s sycophants tried to tell us nearly a decade ago, this time it really is different. This time it’s already dead and all the paraphernalia of life support only serve to provide it with the appearance of life, and us with the false hope that it will ever rise again. We revel in its death throes as though they were signs of recovery.

 

Almost daily now another organ fails and we try to compensate with another expensive machine… or a transplant... or a transfusion… or some other desperate measure. We can probably continue this way for some time, but we will only be prolonging the inevitable while further enriching the ersatz doctors with what little remains of our possible inheritance.

 

No, it’s time to grow up and face the facts of life.

 

It’s time to let go.

 

It’s time to pull the plug.