Kites vs. Tea Parties

Two weekends ago, Tea Party activists gathered at the Capitol (photo at left by Rebecca Jones) to protest the consideration of new health care legislation. They threatened (symbolically or otherwise) violence, decried the tyranny of elected officials, called Representative Barney Frank a faggot , John Lewis (who still bears scars from the beating he received on the Edwin Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday) a nigger, and spat on at least one other member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri. It was an ugly coda to what has been an exceedingly long and ill-tempered legislative battle, but, at the very least, this battle had a happy ending—the House passed the Senate version of the bill along party lines, effectively enacting the most essential social welfare legislation in most Americans’ lifetimes.

The bill, to my mind, is deeply flawed—it doesn’t do nearly enough to attack the roots of irrepressible costs in the sector, lets the private insurance industry off too easily, and falls short of universal coverage—but it represents perhaps the best bill possible given the current political climate in this country. It certainly represents a formidable legislative achievement—Obama and the Democrats finally displayed the mettle to go hand-to-hand in the trenches with the Republicans and their weapon of choice, demagoguery, a fight for which they have seldom displayed the fortitude in the past. For their efforts, 32 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured will gain coverage by 2019, and all Americans will be able to purchase affordable insurance regardless of their pre-existing conditions. This bill, despite its flaws, resumes a broken line of expanding social protection afforded by the U.S. government to its citizens, one that began with the New Deal and ran through the Great Society. It is a modest renewal of the liberal dream of a society in which all citizens have an equal opportunity to grow and achieve regardless of economic circumstance. For all of these reasons and more, it should be celebrated.

And yet the sordid specter of last weekend has lingered. Perhaps it’s the concatenation of intimidation and petty violence attached to the bill’s passage—death threats, faxed images of nooses, bricks through office windows, cut gas lines—that make it difficult to fully enjoy this historic moment. That many Americans are angry about the bill’s passage is evident, but whether that anger, as it is currently being expressed, is justified is entirely debatable. The truth, as E.J. Dionne has explained, is that the health legislation that finally passed Congress was essentially a free market, Republican bill—no public option, fortification of the private insurance industry with millions of new customers—and yet the cries of “Socialism!” and “Government takeover!”, far from abating following the unceremonious yanking of the public option from discussions late in the fall, if anything reached a crescendo of vehemence last weekend. And why? Quite simply, Americans have been deliberately misled. Spin is a game all politicians and pundits know well; mendacity is a darker sport. Republicans and their ideological champions in the media have twisted the truth in inciting their shock troops to oppose passage; for good or ill, those chickens are coming home to roost.

What a difference a weekend makes. On Saturday, I made my way to the Mall unable to forget what had happened a week prior—video taken by my girlfriend of Tea Partiers and counter-protesters screaming jaw-to-jaw, jabbing fingers in one another’s faces (photo again by Jones), nearly coming to blows, replayed in my head. Civility, respect for the other, respect for the workings of the government, had all been thrown aside for the opportunity to impugn without discrimination, to condemn without reflection, to vociferate without pity. It had been a blot on the tradition of reasonable democratic discourse in this country. But last Saturday, the mood on the Mall was something else entirely—the Smithsonian Kite Festival kicked off, and insouciance reigned.

When I arrived, hundreds of kites already dotted the sky surrounding the Washington Monument, fluttering and swooping unpredictably in a desultory wind like butterflies, their tails coursing behind in jaunty mimicry (I heard a young man exclaim on his phone: “There are kites everywhere!”). The heavens, overrun, evinced a dreamworld quality. The grounds of the Monument swarmed with families, young and old. It was a polyglot, diverse crowd—white, black, East Asian, South Asian, Latino, Eastern European. Everywhere children ran and laughed and were generally transfixed by the infinite kinetic possibilities of a piece of nylon or tissue paper stretched over a wooden frame, caught up in the breeze. Parents laughed too, to see their children so captivated, so eager to help, in their own clumsy way. Lines tangled and kites plummeted in awkward places, but no one groused—collisions were all part of the fun. It was a cutesy scene.

The very act of flying a kite seemed the antithesis of raging, of condemnation. It was as peaceful, easygoing, unconcerned an act as screaming maledictions bulgy-eyed was grave and blood-boiling and bile-raising. It seemed the softest possible rebuke to the rabid Tea Partiers—life goes on, the sun shines, the wind blows, and something funny and wonderful and innocent takes flight. No one at the Kite Festival seemed in the least concerned by the state of the Union following a bruising, often ugly year-long policy debate; I needed that blitheness too. So I soaked it in. And after all, the health care bill had passed. Why not enjoy it?