Welcome to the civilized world

Good morning, America, and welcome to the civilized world. I'm rather glad that I didn't stay up last night to watch the vote because it sounds like it would have been like watching Scotch pies being made, but I woke up this morning, saw a heap of news updates and for once the country seemed like it was slightly better. Naturally it's still worrying that it passed by such a narrow margin and had to be hammered through with a shoe-horn, but I'm hoping that support will increase when it turns out that the whole thing works and people find that they actually enjoy having decent healthcare. It's just a shame that so much of it only happens in 2014 - and that there are so many bits of it still to come, but this is an important landmark in finally getting something done.

It took its time coming, and there were multiple times when I thought that it was dead and it just wasn't worth expending the effort to push it on to people who vote so firmly against their own interests, but it suddenly rose from the ashes to boldly go where every other country has gone before. Maybe after months of visible dithering and fruitless debate among one side of their political spectrum good for infighting and another which is good for nothing, this will restore confidence that the administration can have any effect at all, and maybe that the American people won't be so irrationally scared of misinformation and meaningless words.