Sitting at the Thanksgiving table last night, there came a time, perhaps inevitable, where some friends started asking me about the latest developments in the healthcare debate. Where are we at? What’s going to happened next? Will they pass a bill? Will we get a public option? What if we pass a bill, but it sucks?

On the one hand, I deal with this stuff all week, reading practically everything you see here, and plenty you see somewhere else, and I really don’t need to spend my leisure time going over it all again. But, on the other hand, I feel extremely fortunate to be involved at this level, to have the time and responsibility to get so immersed, and to have the opportunity to help in the fight for a better system, and so I am glad to share what I know.

Or think I know. . . because, of course, when you have to explain a subject to someone else, you reveal to not only some relative expertise, but also the deficits in your knowledge. So, while I responded to question after question, many with answers far too full of caveats and qualifiers for my taste, we all kept coming back to one difficult follow-up after another, all with the same underlying theme: What we will get, if and when a health care reform bill is signed (and I believe something will be signed), will be less than we want, less than some expected during the 2008 campaign, and quite possibly, less than good.

Then what?

I am given to fretting about the consequences awaiting Democrats in the 2010 midterms if they pass a narrow bill with many reforms pushed past 2012; given to worrying what happens when Mr. & Ms. Voter look at their bank accounts and their medical bills and says, “This? This is what we all worked so hard to get? This is what we were supposed to hope for?” The promise of change delayed will look an awful lot like change denied.

And then what will happen? Well, I saw it, even last night, at the dinner table. You see, for everyone that might have been interested and engaged in this discussion, there were about as many who were not. Some were simply disinterested; others were actively hostile.

Some of them were opposed to discussing any of the ins and outs of this absurdly complicated process because, as they said, we all know what the best answer is, the best answer is single payer, Medicare for all, and why are we fighting for anything else?

Others exhibited an even less engaged form of active hostility (if there is such a thing): Nothing ever happens—we keep getting told if we work hard, things will change, and then they don’t change; all sides are just part of some ugly game—stop trying to make me play.

I have my specific arguments for both. If you want a Medicare-for-all bill, go out and organize for it. Demand your representatives commit to it, if they won’t, work like hell to replace them. We have had since the mid-‘90s to regroup and strategize; it is no longer enough to be “right”—not sure it ever was.

And I find cynicism just plain selfish. You might be lucky enough to have a ball that you are just going to take and go home, and maybe you can afford to do that, but I don’t think that absolves you of responsibility for what happens. There are too many in this land of plenty that don’t have a “ball,” that have to spend all of their energy (to extend this metaphor maybe one step too far) just trying to stay on the field, and if you don’t instinctually feel some compassion for their potential suffering, then at least acknowledge that your relative success is in part sustained by the struggle of so many others.

But all of this disinterest seemed to have something larger in common, and through all of the questions from those who were interested, I think I gained a little bit more understanding of it because I found myself thinking and then saying something a little odd.

With apologies to George Lucas, who really stole it from Russ Myer, I came to say: Don’t be; try.”

This is not a steady-state universe, nor a unidirectional march to enlightenment. It is not enough to be right and call it a day. As exhausting, frustrating, and infuriating, as it is, you have to try to make it right. And then you have to keep trying. Because the system is broken in many places, and it will be very hard to get it all “right” with one effort.

And, in a country as large as this—in a world as intricately interconnected as this—what is “right” is bound to change. . . sometimes very quickly. Which is perhaps unfair, since changing “wrong” seems to happen very slowly—but I don’t see any other choice, how can you not try?

And that brings me to the seasonally appropriate part of this musing. Next week, I will mark a year here as editor at Firedoglake, and because it is hard to keep trying to change things every damn day, I know that I would not have lasted this long without the support of so very many: from Jane, and the great writers, editors, administrators, moderators, and techies, who prop me up every day and catch me every time I start to fall, to some very special people who have nothing whatever to do with FDL, who tell me to hang in there, or just put up with me and my ridiculous schedule. And, of course, because I believe that it is not that a tree falling in a forest does not make a sound, but that it doesn’t matter without someone to hear it, I am thankful for all the readers, commenters, and activists who are part of this FDL community because without all of you, there would be no be, and the trying would be very much harder.

Good tidings—and good “tryings”—one and all.