President Obama and the congressional democrats just passed the greatest progressive victory in 45 years. It stands comparison even with the legislative achievements of my American hero, FDR - who, remember, had gigantic majorities (about 80% of all house and senate seats at one point). With smaller majorities, and facing the most disgusting, hypocritical, and negative political opposition in more than a century, Obama has done what progressives have been fighting for for more than 100 years: established the principle of universal health coverage in the USA.
I first fell in love with the USA studying American literature at Cambridge, 30 years ago. The tragedy and the greatness of the country was revealed to me through the writing of Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Whitman, Fitzgerald, Baldwin, Bellow. When I moved here 8 years ago, at the start of the worst presidency in the nation's history, I wondered what had become of the country whose image I had fallen in love with as a very young man.
Today brought back to me that first rush of admiration for a country that, despite its flaws, almost always finds a way to remember its better side.
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