It’s finally over.After close to a year of bickering and fighting, it’s done. We’ve slogged through months and months of partisan gridlock and political grandstanding. We’ve trudged through a mountain of arguments and counter-arguments, through enough fear-mongering and finger-pointing and mudslinging to make even the most hardened political junkies grow weary.Health care reform is passed. As of yesterday afternoon, it’s law.Yes, there are still some die-hards rallying around the flag against the bill. They’re crying for repeal, for constitutional battles and court showdowns. As long as they have a voice they will fight it, and, like blind generals rallying the few haggard survivors of a civil war, they continue a wage war long after there’s been any chance of change.They, like the vast majority of our political intelligentsia, don’t see the damage their actions are inflicting on the people they represent.They don’t see the deep scars the divisiveness preached by pundits and politicians has worn in our collective psyche. They don’t see a country slowly tearing at the seams. They don’t see the damage done by the all-out war between conservatives and liberals, and they certainly don’t see the ruined no-man’s land in between — where the rest of us sit voiceless and frustrated.It’s no secret that involvement in our political process is low and getting worse. The only time anyone shows up to vote is the big elections every two years, and then we only show up because we’re angry at the people in charge and want to throw them out.It’s become the driving force of our political process – anger.And if it isn’t anger, it’s apathy. Even for historic elections like the last one, we can barely muster half the population.The conventional wisdom is Americans are content and pampered and lazy. And our generation, growing up the richest kids in the world, is the worst embodiment of the resulting apathy.Maybe. But it’s also probably because we’re already tired of it all.We’re tired of being perpetually played against each other for political points. We’re tired of the horribly inadequate labels of “conservative” and “liberal,” tired of being grouped in nice, easy, one-size-fits-all ideologies and party identities.We’re tired of being told that there are two Americas  — conservative and liberal — that cannot and will not be reconciled. We’re tired of being told that people that don’t think like us are ignorant or stupid or evil.We’re tired of government being a game, where winners and losers are more important than people and policies. We’re tired of watching a few dozen old white men in expensive suits telling us what “Americans” think. We’re tired of seeing them bicker and struggle under their vaunted ceilings and in their palatial estates while our health care system spirals out of control, while we emerge from a foundering education system into a crippled workforce.We’re tired of hearing about what we can’t do — what people who disagree with us are going to destroy — rather than what we can do, and what we as one united people are going to build up.We don’t want to hear how the other guys aren’t going to fix anything — we want to hear about how we are going to do something ourselves.The debate about health care reform has ended.  One of the most sweeping legislative changes in history just happened.We don’t know if it’s going to work or fail miserably. But, honestly — few of us except for the most radical care anymore.We’re just plain damn tired of it.I don’t know if this is how people felt after Medicare was passed. I don’t know if this is how Americans felt when the South rejoined the Union.This may be the way it always is, the way it’s always been.But if it is, it’s a sad, sad thing, and it can’t be the way it has to be. 
Matthew Albright is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on  Twitter @TDR_malbright.——————Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]