Sunday, October 21, 2007

date night

yesterday evening, Beloved and i went out for dinner as is our habit once a week. we have three or four restaurants we tend to visit in turn, and last night we went to a place where the tv in the bar is always tuned to cnn.

as i was slathering the butter on my bread, i saw the headline announcing the president's "victory" over his opposing party. the issue is children's health insurance. (somehow we have learned to equate the idea of health CARE with health insurance, but that's another rant.) the "victory" means that children aren't going to have access to health care.

because that's the bottom line, that's what it MEANS in terms of human cost. and we, i've heard people claim, have the best - healthcarelegalsystemeconomy - in the world.

we should be ashamed.

we should be ashamed that money is being spent on war while children go hungry, while old people go without medicine. the pope who protected pedophiles is on the fast-track to sainthood. we have a president who both looks and sounds exactly like a puppet. we should be ashamed of the world we live in. but if we are, not yet enough to change it.

i sat in that place where the food and the wine and the laughter flowed like perfumed oil and something twisted deep inside me. the last pope made me ashamed to have been raised catholic. this president makes me ashamed to call myself american. thank goddess i'm a woman, i thought.

i couldn't eat anything else. i wanted to stand on the bar and scream - does this not offend your soul?

but i too, keep silent.

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