{"id":58702,"date":"2012-06-28T22:56:06","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T02:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=58702"},"modified":"2012-06-28T23:14:38","modified_gmt":"2012-06-29T03:14:38","slug":"a-good-day-a-very-good-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/fe-911-2\/a-good-day-a-very-good-day\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Day. A Very Good Day."},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is June 28, 2012, the day my niece Felicia turns 24.\u00a0This is the day that News Corp International owner Rupert Murdoch moved FOX News <\/a>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.<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0Now\u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n

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For those unfamiliar, the Overton Window<\/a> 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.\u00a0Over 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,\u00a0capitalizing on that fear.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0So 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0As Venus begins her forward motion with her new companion Jupiter, and Uranus is squaring Pluto, so too we move forward.\u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/em>\u00a0As 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

And the seasons they go ’round and ’round
\nand the painted ponies go up and down
\nwe’re captive on the carousel of time
\nwe can’t return we can only look behind
\nfrom where we came
\nand go round and round and round in the circle game.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is June 28, 2012, the day my niece Felicia turns 24.\u00a0This 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}