What Still Ails America (Mary Lyon)

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Mary Lyon, On The Left -- World News Trust

Sept. 10, 2009 -- Okay, full disclosure, up top. Liberal here. Progressive. Especially about the mushrooming health care crisis in this country. I like the idea of a public option. I dislike how hate radio, political partisans, and manipulated tantrum-throwers have spread lies and helped pervert the public discourse about a subject we ALL desperately need to be discussing at length. And with cool heads.

What I secretly yearned to see from President Obama during his speech on health care reform to a Joint Session of Congress was fire and brimstone from his podium directed toward where the Republicans were seated. I longed to hear him declare that their years of bad ideas, bad actions, bad policies, bad judgment, and bad leadership were why they lost last November and that it’s time to shut up now.

In that, I guess the President disappointed me a little. But leave it to Barack Obama to point out the real bottom line here. It goes beyond slogans. It goes beyond budgets. It goes beyond corporations and overpaid CEOs. It zooms directly to who we are as Americans, as far as why most of us now feel compelled as a country to address the health insurance crisis. I’ve written before about “the ‘Meaning’ of America.” What I meant by that was an America I really don’t recognize anymore -- one that’s just, well, nothing less than mean. We are meaner as a people now than I can ever remember, and I’ve got slightly more than half a century on my sidewalls by now. We are meaner, angrier, more intolerant, more aggressive, more rude, more bullying, and more ready -- even eager -- to lash out. Our worst addictions as Americans, anymore, aren’t drugs or alcohol. We’re addicted to attacking each other. To the point where some of us wear firearms to town hall meetings, heckle disabled women in wheelchairs, and bite actual body parts off people.

Leave it to President Obama to wrap up his speech about health care reform in a brief examination of the American character. True. For the love of God, somebody has to say something. Obama, however, did not see America the Mean. He talked about the America we all love and over which we still grow teary-eyed, in which we do not leave those with great need out in the cold. The America he was invoking to propel serious, genuine health insurance reform at long last was the America that’s anything BUT mean, the America that won’t allow someone to go bankrupt because they got sick. The America to which he was reaching out was the one that would not tolerate leaving even one of us to tell an ailing loved one that “there is help for you out there, but I just can’t afford it.” That we are mired there now is why we needed to hear Barack Obama speak on this night. It was the Barack Obama we loved best, whose words and stated convictions have stirred us and moved us profoundly and pulled us out of our myopic little selves, again and again. It was the Barack Obama who urged us to look at the biggest big picture, even while one of the smallest in the room thumbed his nose at courtesy and decorum and rudely heckled the President in the middle of the speech. That Barack Obama who rose above such a tasteless affront hopefully has been able to connect again with that part within the rest of us that may not be so very little.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/news/3676-what-still-ails-america-mary-lyon

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1. Kick For Mary

: )

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2. I'll go for that!

:kick: