Searching for some bad guys . . .

Twenty years ago the Berlin wall tumbled. And I'd like to suggest left a sizable number of us discombobulated. Not openly discombobulated, of course. Just discombobulated in our heart of hearts. Who were the bad guys now? Or more importantly, what group allowed us to define ourselves as the good guys?

Before that day, we Boomers who like our politics black-and-white had never not had a clear-cut bad guy. You want bad? Look no further than the Communists. Any and all of them!

How well I remember a report I did in the sixth grade on Russia. In this report, I pointed out that the Communists had actually improved living conditions there for the average citizen--not hard to do when you're working with  a feudal system last updated in the Middle Ages.

When I finished I realized that my teacher was tight-lipped, terse-worded mad! At me! At a sixth grader, whose source was the World Book Encyclopedia, for daring to suggest that the Communists had done any good, anywhere. McCarthy was dead, but the clarity of his viewpoint persisted in 1959 among certain of the citizens of Greensboro, North Carolina.

When the Berlin wall tumbled, the stature of the current bad guys tumbled with it. Suddenly the Commies looked like pretty puny bad guys, which--in our rare moments of introspection--we realized made us look comparatively puny as good guys.

Ever since, those of us who need bad guys to make us feel like good guys have not really been able to settle. I won't bother to list the groups we've auditioned as  bad guys; just think of any group over the past twenty years stereotyped by shrill, mindless opposition. Omigod! the number is legion.

When I woke up this morning and realized that today was the 20th anniversary of the Wall's fall, I immediately thought of the current health care "debate" in this country. It has often seemed spectacularly shrill, uninformed and mendacious--all at the same time.

I'd  followed with interest Saturday's deliberations in the House of Representatives that ended with a late-evening vote to move health care reform forward. Dana Milbank's column on the day's often undignified activities (as well the undignified comments left by some of his readers from both sides of the political spectrum) made me wonder if  health care reformers haven't become a target for the bad-guy needers.

If that's what's happened, the really sad part of this is I don't know of anyone who's informed on health care who defends the status quo. But then, why would they? This, from a 2007 editorial in the New York Times.

Seven years ago, the World Health Organization made the first major effort to rank the health systems of 191 nations. France and Italy took the top two spots; the United States was a dismal 37th.

Our health care system obviously could use a little tweaking. And so surely uninformed, gratuitous, shrill opposition to the efforts of health care reformers from either side of the political aisle is about as wise as a fish eating its own tail. It may feel good at the moment, but it really does blight the future.

Personally, when I need to indulge in a little shrill, mindless opposition, I turn to sports!

Taking a break. . .

I grew up in a neighborhood of all boys--except for one girl who lived across the street and liked to play dolls and dress-up and other girlie stuff. As a tomboy, I fought (sometimes, alas, literally) my way into various games of  football, baseball, and cowboys. Is that why I grew up grooving on competition? Who knows? Who cares? All I know for certain is that if give me a good sporting event to watch, or in which I can participate, and I am a happy woman.

Last night was sports fan nirvana. First Juan Martin del Potro upset  and unseated the reigning king of tennis, Roger Federer in five sets. Then pro-football quarterback Tom Brady, after being sidelined for an entire year by an injured (and subsequently infected) left knee, lead the New England Patriots to a one-point victory over the surprisingly tough Buffalo Bills. Scoring 14 points in the last 2-or-so-minutes, no less. Brady, evidently, is baaaaack!

I was for both of last night's winners, but that's incidental. The joy of sports for me is that I get to divide what's happening into good people and bad people. There are no nuanced feelings, no even-handedness demanded of me. So for  a few hours last night, I was a partisan. It was soooooo intellectually and psychologically restful.

This morning, rested and refreshed from an exercise in non-irresponsible partisanship, I turned on Morning Edition, and listened to  nuanced explorations of racism in politics, the water supply in Los Angeles, the war in Afghanistan and assorted international fiscal dis-ease with a clear head and a rested heart. I had gotten any need for partisan wallowing out of my system watching sports last night. Now, I'm ready to think again, to attempt to understand all sides, to listen. In short, I'm ready  to accept the inconvenient truth that citizenship is not a partisan experience. And that I'm an irresponsible citizen if I treat it as such.