Sometimes, it seems like we’ve got it under control. Women get the right to vote. A New Deal ensures prosperity for all. The Civil Rights act guarantees equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court guarantees a woman’s right to autonomy over her own body, and grants same-sex couples the right to marry. We elect our first black President, and appear on the cusp of electing our first female one, and our collective, pre-existing case of what now calls itself the GOP, the host in which our worst nature seems to have currently taken root, regresses into something annoying but manageable: the rosacea that flares up right before your wedding; the migraine that ruins your anniversary trip to Palm Springs — the kind of things Alanis Morissette might have written a whole song about, if she wasn't Canadian and entitled from birth to universal health care. Then the election happens, and the House votes to take the health insurance away outright from at least 24 million fellow citizens, to curtail it for another 129 million, and possibly, just possibly, make every single man, woman and child in the country effectively unable to access meaningful care with the exception — of course! — of themselves, their staffs, and their families, and you realize that the pain you’re feeling in your side isn’t lingering discomfort from an old hernia operation, but in fact Stage IV pancreatic cancer that will kill you inside of three weeks if you can’t receive immediate treatment. Which you can’t, because you’re now uninsurable.