The Light Is On The Left Side Of Your Head

Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.

—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

So far as I can determine, Darth Cheney has always been controlled by Fear.

He grew up—a child—in Caspar, Wyoming. Staring across the endless wastes. Where there was nothing. Nothing at all. Least of all: him. Amidst all this nothingness. Young Darth. He became Afraid. So lonely. So cold. Just . . . so lonely.

And then, his corporeal container, it failed him. Utterly. And early.

In 1978, when Darth was but 37, a massive real-bad heart attack, attempted to carry him away. This he, somehow, survived. Six years later, he had a second heart attack. A third came after four more years. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery at age 47. In late November of 2000, while waiting for the United States Supreme Court to complete its judicial coup, and thereby elevate Darth, and his minion George II, to the vice presidency and presidency, of the United States, respectively, Cheney was hit with a fourth heart attack. A fifth struck in 2010.

In the many meantimes, Cheney underwent coronary artery stenting, urgent coronary balloon angioplasty, the implantation of a cardioverter-defibrillator. Etc., etc., and etc. He also had fitted this and that and the other, and more, pacemakers.

In the spring of 2011, amid desperate and extraordinary attempts to extend his life, he became a man with no pulse.

Basically, Darth Cheney is a roboman. Nature, it tried to carry him off. And many years ago. But technology. It keeps him keepin’ on.

Which is fine. As I wrote here, in an earlier red Darth piece:

I can’t bring myself to believe in an afterlife, so I can’t remain indifferent to the suffering and end of any person: because this life is all that any person has.

So I’m fine. That Darth is still alive. Long, even, may he run.

What is not so fine, is that from Darth’s place of Fear—which, apparently, began as his Caspar birthcurse, and which has since been exacerbated by the never-ending assaults on his own mortality, by his own body—Darth carved out a world-view ruled utterly and absolutely by Fear.

In the World according to Darth, Bad Things, ceaselessly, are trying to Get Him.

And how could Darth, not, perceive the world this way? When his own body, is, indubitably, trying, forever, to End him?

And so, like a typical human, Darth projected the assault on his self—by his own body—onto the wider world.

And there determined that the world was alive with beings bent on his destruction. Or the destruction of people just like him.

White. Godly. American.

And so, once he was elevated to a place of real power, he was not only able, but driven, to press his Fear, upon other, and even innocent, human beings.

Who, some of them, in the event, died.

Because Darth, in the administration of George II, was the man who, from his life and place of Fear, devised the “One Percent Doctrine.” In which, if it was determined that there may be even a 1% chance that a person might visit grievous harm upon somebody in the United States—somebody, natch: white, godly, American—then that person should be subjected to, among other things, torture. Unto, even, the last extremity.

And so, from Darth’s Fear, did many human beings suffer. And die.

And now, in recent days, we learn that, so controlled by Fear was Darth, so governed by his “One Percent Doctrine,” that he was Convinced that “the defibrillator implanted in his chest could be used by terrorists to kill him.”

Cheney had [the defibrillator] replaced in 2007 and his doctor, cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, had the device’s wireless function disabled so a terrorist couldn’t send his heart a fatal shock . . . Cheney was watching an episode of the Showtime hit Homeland, in which that terrorist scenario was woven into the plot. “I was aware of the danger that existed; I found it credible,” he responds to Gupta when asked what went through his mind. “I know from the experience we had and the necessity for adjusting my own device, that it was an accurate portrayal of what was possible,” says Cheney.

So sad. That Darth believed he would be a victim of a TV show. Of terrorists. Fibrillating his sad, weak, failed, broken heart.

How, different, be Darth Cheney, from Christina Green. A young woman who lived a life of heart open and love.

Until the day her life was extinguished. With a bullet through the heart. Fired by a mind-melted man fully capable of laying his hands on weapons all and every. Because of United States firearms policies. Secured by the likes of Darth Cheney. Because, in the World according to Darth & Co., there must be Fear. Here even within the nation’s borders. Fear, always, of the Other. In case he Slips Through. In which case, the people—White, Godly, American—must have access, to all firearms, at all times. To Do, what Must Be Done.

For Darth, his “One Percent Doctrine,” it does not, so sorry, go to serve, girls like Christina Green.

In January of 2011, Christina Green was nine years old. And she was going to be a ballerina, and she was going to be the first female professional baseball player. And she was meanwhile interested in electoral politics; she was not disillusioned; she believed that great good could be accomplished, in the system.

The system in which Darth Cheney, for more than 40 years, had played such a part.

And so her friend and neighbor, Suzi Hileman, drove Christina to a Tuscon Safeway supermarket. So Christina could meet her congressmember, Gabrielle Giffords.

And there a scrambled man put a bullet through Giffords’ brain. And another bullet through Christina’s heart.

The first to arrive [at the trauma center at the University of Arizona medical center] was Christina—still getting CPR, still not responding.

By normal standards, a gunshot victim who is unresponsive after 15 minutes of CPR has almost no hope of surviving and can be declared dead. Christina had already received 20 or 25 minutes, according to a report radioed in.

“This was a 9-year-old girl,” said Dr. Randall S. Friese, 46, a trauma surgeon. “Even though she had CPR beyond our guidelines, I decided to be aggressive.”

“You decide, and you do,” he said. “It’s a personal decision, and I decided to be aggressive, because she was 9.”

He tried a desperate last-ditch maneuver. Within about two minutes, he had cut open her chest, inserted a tube to fill her heart with blood and massaged the heart with his hand to try to start it beating again.

“I had her heart in my hand,” Dr. Friese said. “We filled it with blood. It still didn’t want to beat.”

He told the resident assisting him to fill Christina’s heart and try once more to make it start beating again.

[T]he resident tried, and failed. Christina was gone.

A priest had just performed last rites.

Dr. Friese does not remember seeing any of the patients come through the doors of the trauma center last Saturday—except for Christina.

Five days after the girl’s death, his secretary told him he was invited to Christina’s funeral. He did not ask from whom the invitation came. Was it from the family? Or did the nurses planning to share a bus to join the thousands of mourners seek him out? It did not matter. Without hesitating, he decided he would go.

When he showed up at the funeral in his blue scrubs and his white surgeon’s jacket, police officers helped him move through the overflow crowd waiting outside the church. He was ushered right in.

It was the first time he had ever attended a patient’s funeral.

Christina Green’s father, John, is a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. He’d hoped that someday he could scout his own daughter. For though Christina was a dancer, a ballerina, she was also a baseball player, and a good one.

In November of 2010, the Dodgers held a baseball-memorabilia auction to benefit PJ Carey, a Dodger scout, and his wife, both of whom had been stricken with cancer. John Green and his wife contributed items autographed by various baseball luminaries, which they accumulated and drove to the auction.

Christina Green came along too. She sat behind the display table, munching on cookies and smiling, as she told a volunteer how special it was to skip school for a day.