Yes Diane, parents losing a child are rarely reasonable. Losing a beloved one is sheer horror, and it is very difficult to think straight. I tend to be forgiving there, or rather commiserating.
Indeed, the Christianists are the evil ones here.

“…the same world-class medical care that Charlie Gard got, regardless of the financial standing of the parents.”
Coel, that whole last paragraph is so much to the point, the ‘regardless of’; I hate to use the expression but: ‘spot on’.

“The way this [tragedy] was politicized in the US appalled me too.”

Really? Is that not precisely what’s happening here? This particular tragedy is moot, and too many words already have been spun on all sides. Yet apparently it will do as an excuse to score points and indulge prejudices. Is that not as ugly as anything else that has occurred?

“It was framed as government deciding who lived and who died…”

That’s an accurate account of many Americans’ concern about this case — but of course this completely undermines the claim that it was a religious issue.

Regarding “abusive messages”, one has to be curious about the actual evidence that (a) the alleged volume exceeded what would be expected for any widely reported public controversy in the digital age; or (b) has been shown to be linked to an organized so-called “Christianist” nexus. I don’t find anything in the citations about “Christianists weighing in”.

More importantly, one has to wonder as well: how many of the people you demonize do you know personally, and have engaged in honest, open-minded dialog?

Well, that’s welcome news.

Rickflick,

I have also been to Henley (the Regatta, that is, and dressed properly for the occasion, and had no problems). If you were given the cold shoulder at the Henley Rowing Club because you were dressed as tourists that is almost certainly because you failed to follow the dress code and the members considered that to be extreme rudeness on your part. There are very few places left in this country where there is still a dress code, but Henley is one of them (another is Royal Ascot, at least in the Royal Enclosure and the Queen Anne Enclosure).

If you were invited to attend a formal state dinner given at e.g. the White House, would you turn up in jeans, tee-shirt, trainers and baseball cap? Would you be surprised if the other guests considered that to be rude – that you just couldn’t be bothered to dress properly for the occasion?

If you think that there are still Victorian attitudes in Britain, you are greatly mistaken. Most people here have probably never even heard of Rudyard Kipling (he is no longer read in schools as his writings are considered politically-incorrect). Very few people now go to boarding schools (hint: the Fifties ended almost sixty years ago), and there are very few hereditary peers left in the House of Lords: although unelected, the majority are life peers who are appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister, or on the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. The idea is that they are people of intelligence, good conscience and proven attainment who will do a thorough job of reviewing proposed legislation regardless of political affiliation.

Richard: Yes I have traveled in England and Wales. My experience was overwhelmingly positive. I love the place. But, I did have one experience that supports my conjecture. Since my wife and I enjoy the rowing sport (crew), we decided on the spur of the moment to visit the world famous Henley Rowing Club. As we entered the facility we noticed everyone was dressed in suit and tie. We were dressed as tourists. We were given a very cold shoulder and noticed no one greeted us and no one spoke to us. Compared to almost anywhere in the US, I took this to be a remnant of British snobbery, which I think must be a product of the long class history.

I mentioned the monarchy only to hint at the continuing influence of the past on the present. What I’m referring to is the potential for Victorian attitudes toward class to be felt in modern Brits. My father’s parents, for example, were from England and settled in Canada. Dad was impressed in the Canadian schools(1930s) with the notion that, “the sun never set’s on the British Empire”. He memorized poems extolling the greatness of the British people, and the white man’s burden. When it came time to write his will, he revealed affinity for the idea of Primogeniture, which privileges the eldest son. Now, this is a second generation Canadian. I can well imagine similar feelings in Brits as well, although I’m sure this attitude is fading fast. The British parliament has a House of Lords, which if I’m not mistaken, is not elected. As recently as the 1950s Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins were a product of boarding schools and Cambridge’s historical mores which emphasized a chosen, educated class.
Connecting all this with the Lords is just idle musing on my part, and I don’t want to defend them necessarily. Perhaps there is nobody left in the current generation that feels any influence on the class system, but that would surprise me.

The way this was politicized in the US appalled me too. It was framed as government deciding who lived and who died and used as a reason to oppose a single-payer system. The reason Charlie was getting such world-class, very expensive, treatment in the first place was because that treatment is available to everyone in the UK via the NHS. It’s the same in NZ, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Cuba, most of Europe, and many other places around the world. It would not be available to a baby born with the same condition in the US unless the parents were wealthy or had unlimited (i.e. no lifetime limits) health insurance.

I would agree. The British monarchy gets much bigger crowds of support in the US than the UK. The opinion of what having a monarchy means is very different in the UK than what many in the US think.

I read articles that indicated that what little response Charlie had was to painful stimuli. It was a big part of the case the doctors presented in court. The level of medication required to suppress the pain in such a tiny body would kill him.