Spring Waxing Awakening Moon
Moon viewing. We don’t do it much here, except as a casual thing, a walk outside, look up, oh a nice moon tonight or shine on harvest moon for me and my gal then on to the drive in or what’s on your play list dude? In Japan they take the moon viewing a step further, ok, a whole nighttime stroll longer. They build moon viewing platforms, have parties, and produce some wonderful art that features the moon. Tonight the waxing awakening moon hung just above the trees in the west, behind a scrim of clouds, a faint glow surrounding the upturned crescent. It is a moon to remember.
This crescent awakening moon will now memorialize for me the day the Democratic party got some balls. Obama wanted to pass health care reform. I saw a representative, I don’t know his name, with silver hair, looked about my age, get up and say, “Before we were born, reform of the health care system was begun, just waiting for this day.”
This is not a victory for Democrats, however, it is a victory for the American people, a victory for those who have lived their lives in fear of a cough, a broken leg, a child’s fever. In this country, which can bail out billionaires and support subsidies to bank robbers, that is, banks that rob, to have 32 million people with no health insurance has been a crime of long standing, a crime that has produced serial deaths over and over with no fear of prosecution.
It is my hope that Republicans will understand that many of the folks who swallow the tea party line are the very people who will wake up some time soon with health insurance, health insurance they have never had. If you don’t believe me, just look at the Gallup map below and consider it with an overlay of the Bush and McCain presidential votes.
Obama has won a victory here, a hard fought victory and he should get his props. He should also get more credit for calming the Great Recession and ushering in a period of up ticking economic news. I imagine we will see more such substantive wins for him as his presidency continues.
Hurray for the red, white and blue!
Now a moment on partisan politics and post-partisan politics, the so-called third way. Yes, our politics have become so polarized that it is difficult to recall the times when it wasn’t. Yes, there is acrimony and ill will and yes, it does make governance more difficult than it needs to be. Here’s the thing, though. In the end it is politics. This clumsy, broken, dysfunctional process is the way we have chosen, and keep choosing, to mediate our substantive differences. I read a very compelling argument for changing the system of representation in the Senate where 10% of the states have 90% of the population, but have only a tenth of the votes. The author of the argument went on to say that fixing this dysfunction was not possible and that we needed to work with the system we have.
It’s not ideal, but there is no system for managing the affairs of human societies that is and ours is better than most. This vote proves it.
