getting serious and fun in Rolling Stone

In the library yesterday, I happened to pick up the January 22 issue of Rolling Stone which had two great (and very different) articles.

First, Paul Krugman wrote a well-thought out he is a Nobel prize winner, after all) open letter to President Obama. Interesting stuff in there about the current economic crisis. I found it very helpful. I just hope that Obama does the right thing.

The second is not for those few of you who love and admire George Bush. But for the rest of us, Matt Taibbi has a scathing satirical "exit interview" with the former president. I laughed pretty hard.

Inauguration--undercurrents

Millions of people in DC today. I’ll watch on TV. The kids' school is making a big event out of it, and all the kids will watch. I don’t recall the country ever being in such a buzz about a political event in my lifetime.

I wonder about the undercurrents of today that are more than just the overt joy at something going right for us racially, socially—after all, who would have ever thought that a black man would be elected president in my lifetime? Not me. I like being pleasantly surprised by America. And I'm grateful that my children will see this day while they're still children.

However, is there also an electric tingle at this peaceful surrender of power--the Left has been so mortified by the Bush administration and its grasping for power for so many years now. Today feels like a reminder that, even with the economy in the tank and two wars underway and corruption and confusion rampant, maybe things aren’t quite as bad as we thought. Maybe the fundamentals of the American system are sound, and we really are all pulling oars in the same boat. We feel the great tidal pull of history sucking the feet out from under American hegemony, and as we teeter in the waves of uncertainty, we’ll watch the inauguration of this man who has vowed to bring people together (knowing full well that his predecessor made the same promise) with a kernel of hope in our hearts. Maybe he can really help pull it off.

Beyond inspiring hope, though, Obama has showed an ability to motivate people to take action. Now is an opportunity for a leader to emerge who can inspire positive action forward. In the end, of course, it’s really all up to us. But maybe he can remind us of this fact and help guide us in a positive way through the tough changes we face ahead. We’ll see.

Voted

It was a beautiful day here in Boston. 60s and sunny, perfect fall day. I got to the polls around 11:15 and it took 55 minutes to get my voting in, which didn't feel too bad. It was the longest I'd ever waited to vote, by far, in Massachusetts, or anywhere else we've lived. This morning the lines were longer, up to 90 minutes (this is in Brookline). This afternoon, around 3pm, there were no lines anymore.

Folks in line were clearly excited about the vote, and no one spent much time complaining about the vote. Someone ahead of me gave up, but maybe she came back later.

At a social gathering a few weeks ago, a drunken argument was made to me that votes should be apportioned by the amount of taxes one pays. Perhaps, instead, voters who have to wait in line for four or five hours (as has happened in LA and Georgia), or who have to trudge through floods and snow, should get an extra bonus points on their votes. I felt like I didn't have to suffer much to vote today, but I did get a little satisfaction from at least having to wait a little. Often, voting can be discouraging, because no one is there, and I worry that no one really takes this all very seriously. Today's crowd definitely gave me cause for optimism.

Tina Fey as Palin

Okay, you've probably all seen this, but I thought I'd put it up anyway. As far as I can tell, the only positive of Palin getting elected would be getting to watch Tina Fey play her. But I can live without it.

What I'm Watching: Sicko

Tracy and I went to see Sicko yesterday and were not disappointed. It definitely generated plenty of discussion and some serious thinking about where our country is headed and where we'd like it to go, and how we might make a difference. That seems like a pretty successful film to me.

I wish he'd talked a little more about exactly how we got into the health care mess we're in, and offered a few more ideas for how we might get out of it. But it's funny, entertaining, moving, and thought-provoking. Certainly not a perfect film, but that's not what I was looking for.

We've been pretty lucky with our health care coverage so far, but we've also had to fight with our insurers to get various tests for our son covered--some of those fights we won, and some we lost. People complain about long waits in countries with socialized medicine, but we've experienced that here, too (waiting more than a year for some evaluations). We've been lucky to have some resources to pay for tests that insurance wouldn't cover, but it's definitely been (and will continue to be) a strain on our budget. Lots of Americans aren't as lucky as us.

Expect to see the establishment come out hard against this film, because Moore's not just saying that socialized medicine is a good idea, he's also saying that there's lots of things that other industrialized countries do/offer (like better childcare for working families, more vacation time, cheaper college education) better than ours. People with money and power get what they need and more, in our country, but access for the working man is highly restricted. And oddly enough, there is no true labor party in our system (the Democratic Party is far from being such an entity).

It seems strange to me is that the discussion of politics, not just party politics, but real political ideas and viewpoints, seems to be mildly taboo in our culture. I don't know if it's just me who feels this way, but this seems a very dangerous thing.

Moore has me thinking about the big issues confronting the United States at the moment. My list would be:

• The war in Iraq and our outrageous military budget (we spend more on defense than all other industrialized countries, COMBINED. This week's issue of Newsweek lists our 2006 military budget at $560 billion. After us comes: UK $57.6 billion, France $55.4 billion, China $35.3 billion, Russia $24.9 billion, India $22.4 billion, Israel $11.3 billion. Why do we need to spend so much more?
  
• Our idiotic healthcare system. (A national healthcare system makes total sense to me. A for-profit, insurance-based system seems an idiocy that enriched a few people and corporations, with little incentive for actually making people healthier.)
• Race relations. (I actually spend time working on this already.)
  
• Money in politics. Campaigns should be publicly funded. Corporations should be banned from campaign contributions altogether, ASAP. The campaign finance system we have seems incredibly corrupt.
• Rising class divisions. The concentration of increasingly large amounts of wealth in the hands of a few people seems likely to cause increasing instability in our society.
• Global warming, use of fossil fuels, and our industrial food chain. These link pretty closely together for me.
• Our current paralyzing culture of fear.
  

In Sicko, a retired member of the British Parliament talks about how a people who are healthy, educated, and confident can be difficult to govern. I'd like us to be all three of these. Sadly, I feel like I'm poorly educated as to how I make those things happen. I'm pretty good at writing plays and novels. I've even written some political plays, but I can't say they've had a great impact yet. I need to think of ways I can use my talents (and limited time) to get more actively involved. It feels like our country will actually need a revolutionary change (hopefully peaceful) in order to solve these entrenched problems.

Anyway, go see the movie. It might get you thinking.