It really was pretty disorienting last year, having the television tell me that the thing I wanted from politics was actually happening. I didn’t know how to handle it. The guiding keel of my cynicism ran up short on a beach of unexpected joy.

It wasn’t really a beach, of course: it was a sandbar. Now, as we watch the you-know-what bill being painstakingly converted from a mild rebuke for the insurance industry into a roaring engine of fellatio, it’s almost soothing. Yes, yes. This is what it’s supposed to be like.