Connor Coyne

I’ve been getting progressively more worked up each day the last few weeks and it finally spilled over into this letter I just wrote to my congresswoman and senators.

On consideration, I think the analogies here (trite as they seem) are worth sharing precisely because they are so very obvious and applicable. At any rate, I’m interested in your thoughts.

Dear Sen. Durbin, Sen. Burris, Congresswoman Schakowsky,

First, I appreciate your hard work and the good things you do. Please be aware of this.

Second, enough is enough.

Many in my family worked for GM for may decades, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to reflect upon the failings of that company and the odd sort of insight that you only get from not being in the thick of a situation. Isn’t it strange that the executives who ostensibly knew more about their company than anyone else missed the most apparent signs of its downfall? There’s some horrible disadvantage to being on the inside; one misses the obvious wisdom that consumers stop buying cars from an unresponsive automaker unconcerned with quality and changing needs. Ironically, the people building the cars understood these liabilities far better than those running the company.

Today, I have had a grand opportunity to observe the same phenomenon in the slow and incremental death of health care reform.

Now everybody and their brother who supports you (and has been supporting your career for how many years now) knows that the Democrats’ odds of surviving in November improve if you pass this bill. We all know that your chances are better the sooner you pass it. You seem locked in this idea that the independents — that precious margin that determines so many elections — are going to freak out if you are seen as having too progressive an agenda, while you miss the reliable and fundamental fact that the independents are more drawn to things that work than they are to political ideologies of any stripe. And today’s half-passed bill does not “work” by any stretch of the imagination.

Conversely, the senate is too blithe in assuming that the liberal base that has funded and supported the last two election cycles is going to have anything other than fury and resentment with an agenda that seems to turn its back on most of the issues we care most about.

In this case, the analogies are simple and apt:

Roger Smith, CEO of GM thought his restructuring of GM without changing corporate culture or quality standards would save GM. He was wrong, and it was obvious to everyone on the street.

Jeff Zucker of NBC thought that preemptive shuffling around of late night personalities without consulting the hosts or the affiliates would help NBC. He was wrong and it was obvious, and it was obvious to everyone on the street.

Now Rahm Emmanuel is sidelining health care and it looks like Harry Reid is going along with that. Guess what: They’re wrong, and it’s obvious!

PASS HEALTH CARE REFORM!

Pass it yesterday.

The sooner you pass it, the sooner it will start saving lives, and the sooner you can start taking credit for the good work you’ve done in the face of stiff opposition.

If you do not pass it, I assure you, and not without great sadness and regret, this November will be a calamity.

Respectfully yours…

Not silly stuff this week. But engaging and worthwhile.

Also: Watch this one on Facebook videos.

Dear editors,

Most Americans understand now that health care reform is necessary. Most of us, eighty percent according to some polls, support a public option. The economic analysis and historical precedents have been examined; nobody proposes we go where angels fear to tread. No death panels, and no debt inflation. The public option is, quite simply, the muscle. It’s what will make the reform meaningful. What will make it work.

So why does this option seem to be slipping further and further toward the horizon?

Quite simply, the insurance and drug industries have more money than the scattered public. These industries are better organized and have deployed their resources effectively. They have fought this fight with the same single-minded discipline with which they deny millions of legitimate claims.

What seems to be missing from the debate is the righteous anger and indignation that is the only appropriate answer to the outrages of the health care crises. People are dying out here. Careers are ruined. Health is lost. Long lives are cut short because treatable problems are unfixed.

John McCain rightly said this week that “elections have consequences.” If this is truly the case, then the public option should pass by wide margins. I urge all reasonable Americans, the Americans who have seriously considered the public option and know how reasonable and even necessary it is, to pick up your phones and write your emails. Give your representatives the pressure and the political cover to push this thing through, and to make it stick.

This issue is too important to leave at the voting booth. It needs to be heard and read. Share your anger. I’ve shared mine. Now it’s your turn.

Dear Senator Durbin,

I am a Michigan transplant who has been living and voting in Chicago for the better part of the last ten years.

I am writing you today about an issue that will supersede in importance the life of the auto industry; this is a bold statement for me to make as many of my family and many friends are or were employed by GM.

It is not enough to desire a public option in the effort to reform health care. We must *demand* it. Now I recognize that the diversity and recent development of the Democratic party makes consensus and coalitions difficult. But quite simply, this is what you were all elected to do, and your constituency is vastly in favor of the public option. I am reasonable, and I recognize that insisting on a public option will cause some risk to the entire reform initiative, and will entail short-term political liabilities. But this risk will be repaid with a robust and meaningful reform, just as immediate dips in the polls will be more than balanced by what will be increasingly seen as a historic long-term victory.

Not to be confused with the skeletal acquiescent “reform” increasingly represented by the proposal of Sen. Baucus.

A public option is essential. Any reform stripped of this option will not accomplish what must be accomplished, and the problem will resurface down the line.

Voters like myself, loyal liberals and Democrats with a variety of views have held out through the discouraging years of the Bush administration, when the slimmest of Republican majorities set a policy that we found as repugnant as it was regressive. With the strong numbers of Democrats in both the legislative and executive branches, this is a victory we insist upon.

Sincerely,

Connor Coyne

It is also the feast of the three Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

You can read more about it here.

One of the wonderful ambiguities of religious tradition is the way that what may seem from the outside to be a simple “symbolic” allegory is, in fact, multivalent and complementary. Michael is most popularly considered as a warrior and in a military light. He led the angels against Satan and threw him from heaven. Yet earlier traditions associate Michael with curative powers and healing, and to this day he is the patron saint of the sick. This is conflated with the role of Raphael, whose name means “God has healed,” and who is cited in the book of Tobit which features miraculous healing. In that same book, Raphael accompanies Tobias on a great journey, which has caused him to be associated with travel and critical junctures. We might think that these qualities would be better suited to Gabriel, who is the messenger and angel of the Annunciation, who first proclaimed: “Hail Mary, full of grace…” But while Gabriel is both a traveler and a messenger, his own work does not stop there. Gabriel’s own name means “strength of the lord” and he has been associated with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

It would seem, then, that the qualities and roles of these three angels are somewhat mingled, and I believe that this is a reflection of the interaction of their themes in the real world. You cannot really separate testimony from struggle and from healing. They all combine and take each other on.

To step for a moment into a “political” issue, I want to consider the current health care debate here. It is political but it also touches on religion and spirituality. The Health Care debate might fall under the province of Michael, since it is a question of healing. But healing itself is a fight and a struggle; the body fights off infection. Right now we are in the midst of a great fight for the health of our nation, and too many Christians (and too many Catholics) are looking at the issue within the closely inscribed boundaries of their own self-interest. They may sincerely ascribe their views to concerns over abortion or patient rights, but these issues have been resolved for the discerning witness and listener. And isn’t that our responsibility? Isn’t that an aspect of the faith we are called to observe? To be a discerning witness?

So I call on my fellow Christians to consider the sharing of roles and responsibilities of these three angels, and to take a stand for the public option in today’s debate. This is a case where our faith must enter into the realm of politics, but the argument that faith should make, based on both tradition and scripture, is solidly on the side of robust reform.