This paper explores the psychodynamics of public life with special reference to the debate over the Affordable Care Act in the US. Emphasis is placed on: (1) the emotional resonance of the idea of care and ambivalence about the need for and source of care; (2) issues of loss, especially loss of a world in which we feel at home; (3) the way in which ambivalence about care fosters the use of public policy as a way of validating a fantasy about the capacity of the child to thrive in the absence of care; (4) the role of destructive impulse in public life; and (5) the attack on reason and thinking in public life.