Fears can divide and threats can hold people in place. But what if those boogeymen are cast aside even for a little while? What if the curtain is drawn back and the worst fears are never realized?

The biggest worry that his enemies have had about President Obama from the very beginning isn’t that he would fail but that he would succeed, that he could present a plausible alternative to the harmful reality most Americans have been facing since the start of the Reagan revolution. And we’ve stayed there thanks to the use of wedge issues and demonizing. But the President wanted to transform that. Time, technology and demography are on his side.

What if health-care reform makes our lives better while costing us less money? What if gay marriage isn’t harmful to the moral fabric of society but actually improves it? What if women having control over their lives makes for a healthier, more secure country? What if all the things that we’ve been told are un-American actually make for a stronger America? Once we know the truth, how will lies ever work again?

A brief explanation from Paul Krugman, if you missed it on this Memorial Day holiday, of the potential of Obamacare in action:

“Still, here’s what it seems is about to happen: millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all. And as contrasts emerge between the experience of states like California that are making the most of the new policy and that of states like Texas whose politicians are doing their best to undermine it, the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious.

So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.”