Today is June 28, 2012, the day my niece Felicia turns 24. This is the day that News Corp International owner Rupert Murdoch moved FOX News to News Corp’s entertainment division — done to save News Corp’s lucrative FOX News from the millions in legal damages his British tabloids have wrought on the company from UK’s unfolding Hackgate scandal. In other news, Russia has purportedly downed a NATO aircraft and Attorney General Eric Holder was voted in contempt of Congress by a majority of mostly Republican legislators for upholding an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms program started by the Bush Administration.
Oh, and today, in a little matter related to the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts — the Chief Justice appointed by George W. Bush at the recommendation of Karl Rove — upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, the landmark signature legislation of President Barack Obama’s first term in office.
Yes, it’s been quite a day. Any one of these stories could have been covered in a column of mine, but the Supreme Court decision today has a definitive energetic ping. As a whole, it has made it a very good day. Now I could be wrong about this and there are many conspiracy theories out there about what happened, and what could happen from today’s decision, but as of today — at least as far as domestic policy is concerned — I think the Overton Window may have been moved slightly off track.
For those unfamiliar, the Overton Window is a term used in conservative political theory as taking a concept once thought unthinkable and radical and building the perception of it as sensible and popular, ultimately making it policy. Over the last ten years or more, we have seen the window ‘shift’ radically. It began with the lurch toward dismantling the New Deal with attacks on Medicare and Social Security by people fearful of change and their enablers, mostly from their wood-paneled boardrooms, capitalizing on that fear.
The Overton Window was pushed solidly to the right, so much so that what we once called ‘conservative’ policies ten years ago are seen as ‘moderate’ or ‘liberal’ today. We can see it with conservatives attacking female reproductive freedom via legislated misogyny coming from state capitols across the country. So imagine my pleasant surprise today to find Karl Rove’s groomed Supreme Court appointee John Roberts had actually read the Constitution enough to not only leave the Affordable Care Act alone, but to write the court’s decision in its favor.
We may not feel so much trust right now about what happened today. Was what happened good? Will it somehow be reversed? We may even forget what happened today because of the noise that will bombard us in the days and weeks to come from pundits and politicians who will trivialize and attack this decision — on both sides of the aisle. It is, after all, an election year.
But today really does mark a beginning. Not an explosive one like the Twin Towers of Sept. 11, but a dissolution, the breaking down of an old and rigid way of being. The crystalline forms of thought that have stagnated and polarized this country into regression and stasis are, I believe, starting to break. As Venus begins her forward motion with her new companion Jupiter, and Uranus is squaring Pluto, so too we move forward. I think enough people are fed up with the way we were heading, and tired of the foot on their neck. Enough people raised their children to expect more of our society than what we’re given today, and I am foolish enough to believe that is what is going to make the difference.
We have a line we use in our theater company, the Medea Project, which describes the poignant moment we are at in our collective history : So afraid of where we’re going, so in love with where we’ve been. As hard as our opponents are going to try to convince us otherwise, as hard as they are going to threaten and rant and rage to move us back, today’s Supreme Court decision is a victory in moving forward.
But the battle and the war are certainly not over. Not for improved health care with access for all, and not for opponents of any sort of government mandated health care — a sin associated with the dreaded menace socialism. With an election day landing right on a Mercury station retrograde, anything can happen, just like today, and the opposition is fierce, unyielding and wildly irrational.
Now, even in the Sixties there were days we could not quite believe were happening. Yet they did. College students shot on campus while protesting the draft, a millionaire’s daughter kidnapped and re-programmed by a revolutionary peaceful militia for the poor, and news anchors changing the national opinion about an escalating and unnecessary war. They were difficult days, we lived through them, and are much better for it. It’s going to be about what we will make of today and the days afterward that will keep us moving forward.
It’s in the spirit of these days where anything can happen, good and bad, that I leave with a song whose refrain kept coming into my head when I first heard this morning’s news. It’s a refrain through which, bless her beautiful Pisces heart, Joni Mitchell allowed us to feel the cycles of history as the river that we all float on — ever forward:
And the seasons they go ’round and ’round
and the painted ponies go up and down
we’re captive on the carousel of time
we can’t return we can only look behind
from where we came
and go round and round and round in the circle game.
It is time to take notice, feel the ground move once again. It is shaking as we stand. The river of time is flowing beneath us, moving us out to the sea.
Jann:
I hope you watched Rachel Maddow last night. She went on to say that it had to be the President describing the benefits of the bill instead of all the shouting that took place in 2009 that led to the Tea Party taking over Congress — using fear of death panels as motivation.
Yes, the Republicans are going to glom on the tax aspect of this for the election, and they would be right, but the cost-benefit ratio of actual health care versus emergency room care would help take care of that. As they say, even though they may stir up their base with “No More Taxes”, their opposition would say “why do you want people to die?”.
The other funny thing, as Eric reported, is that the plan was drawn up by the conservative Heritage Foundation, and used successfully in Massachusetts by the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney in his term as governor.
Unfortunately the best parts of the bill won’t start until 2014. Maddow correctly reported those components, if enacted early, like 2010, would not made the cost savings needed to get the majority of Blue Dog Democrats to vote for the bill.
It’s ugly, this sausage making, but those were the tools the Democrats and the White House had to work with. It’s actually a miracle any health care bill happened under such polarized circumstances as we face today. Which makes this ruling even more striking. Not even the Democrats believed it would pass. And we actually need to push HARDER to make the bill better, single payer, and using a Medicare-for-all model. But this bill needed to get past this hurdle of the Roberts court first. You need a good foundation in order to build and perfect the structure.
“In one way it will de-mystify the “move forward” as contrary as that may sound, however it is the Pisces mystique that facilitates what you referred to as a beginning. ”
be:
NEPTUNE! You hit on something so right I could feel it actually flow viscerally. And yes, the timing alone makes this act by the SCOTUS far-reaching. We are all a little dazed by the ruling.
Fe! Can’t believe I missed this yesterday but I’m still on a high from the Supreme Miracle. Almost as excited as when Obama won his election even. These “breakthroughs” can seem few and far between when one compares it to all the seeming setbacks we witness.
In 2007 when I first felt the creeping anxiety about “2012” it wasn’t hard to let my imagination, combined with the normal Cancer Sun fear factor to put me into a doomed mode of thinking. I bought a book called Apocalypse 2012 by Lawrence Joseph and read it. I never dreamed there could be so many things, mostly natural events, that could destroy so much so quickly and so soon. I say this only to make the comparison between the “billions and billions” of people who live with that kind of apocalyptic fear, fed daily by the Fox News genre, and those of us who have come to understand what the Earth (and all who live on her) is actually going through. Evolution. I always knew that human beings had an enormous capacity for being stupid but I had not, until then, realized how much fear contributed to that state of mind. We Americans run the gamut of lifestyles, backgrounds, awareness and belief systems and are inclined to not be too sympathetic toward those who differ from us a great deal. But I’m forced to relate to those Americans, based on how I felt after reading that book and before I wised up; those who have been manipulated through their fears to go against their best interests. It seems that no amount of patient explanation can get through that wall of defense that has been built up against Pres. Obama and all he stands for. It probably will take something apocalyptic to “break through” that defense system. This decision to allow the affordable health care act to LIVE is the crack that will lead to a break through the fears that so many are experiencing unnecessarily.
There is no doubt in my mind that Neptune is equally as important in the pattern which started in the 60’s as is Uranus and Pluto. All through that period he maintained his sextile with one or the other or both. This “small step for mankind” that Chief Justice Roberts enabled yesterday has totally convinced me that the myopic view of Uranus doing battle with Pluto only adds to the paralyzing fear of change unless we can broaden that view to include Neptune’s participation. In one way it will de-mystify the “move forward” as contrary as that may sound, however it is the Pisces mystique that facilitates what you referred to as a beginning. Not explosive like 9/11, “but a dissolution, the breaking down of an old and rigid way of being” – that quality of water and mode of mutability that is Pisces is the beginning of the end. Looking forward to the battles that lie ahead!
be
Thanks, Fe, for another perspective on yesterday’s ruling by the Supremes. I wish I could be as optimistic as you are about it, but my cynical perspective is that it is a continuation, more of the same jackboot on the neck. The rationale to justify upholding ACA was that it is a tax that can be imposed, not that health care needs to be provided; not that the health care industry needs to be changed; not that the insurance companies need to be accountable. No, it’s another tax. (And Grover Norquist must be livid.) I sense Neptune in this decision. But, I’ll take heart from your words, and strive to believe that the camel’s nose really is in the tent. Or somewhere. I’ll also try to convince myself that Joni’s circle game is just a game and not a circle jerk.
“It is time to take notice, feel the ground move once again. It is shaking as we stand. The river of time is flowing beneath us, moving us out to the sea.”
Lyrical words. We are blessed at PW to have the eloquent writing of you and Len, among others. Thank you.
JannKinz
Oh, and happy painting!
Thank you for this stunning and uplifting piece, Fe. I love the parallels you make between the 60s and now, it’s so good to have your take on this moment. You are right about the cycles of history, and your quote from Joni Mitchell was perfect. Love this “The crystalline forms of thought that have stagnated and polarized this country into regression and stasis are, I believe, starting to break”.
Think I’ll listen to that song now…
Thank you, Fe, truly. It has been quite the day indeed. When that nugget of news popped out of the PC this morning I was amazed. It seems as if the black curtain is rising, and more people are becoming aware of just how far off the track we’ve gone, and how the corporatists have been the ones to take us there.
A very nice day.
Thanks, vince. I hope we can see our way through the fires this time around.
Amazing piece.