Some seventy members of the Centre College community went to the Rally to Restore Sanity (and/or Fear) on the Mall in Washington yesterday. The crowd was huge - well beyond what the organizers had prepared for. Nonetheless, the mood was friendly, helpful, and moderate all day. The signs were not angry - many were witty, and all that I saw were properly spelled and punctuated.
Jon Stewart gave an excellent closing speech about working together, keeping a sense of proportion, and not promoting fear. Standing on a stage that framed the Capitol, he said
We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is—on the brink of catastrophe—torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!
The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV.
Go Sanity!
14 comments:
Perhaps you missed this sign:
http://msnbcmedia2.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/101030-sanity-hmed-10a.grid-6x2.jpg
You are right, I did not see that sign. And only a couple of others like it. Since Stewart's model for a sign was "I may disagree with you, but I am pretty sure you are not Hitler," these guys clearly didn't get the memo.
I might have gotten it wrong, but I took the sign to be a satire against the ubiquitous obama mustache sign with 'afraid yet' being a Colbertian reference to the fear-mongering of the Hitler comparison.
That is the problem with satire. You can't tell when other people at a satirical event are, themselves, being satirical.
Yeah if you guys (the left) do it it's satire. If the right does it it's hate.
How many of your of members went to the Beck rally?
There are more options than left and right. I am neither.
I find it difficult to take a political rally seriously which is organized by a half-wit comedian and an actor whose best role up to this point was his brief run as Mr. Goodwrench.
That said, I'm sure that I agree with you that many of those who support the Tea Party in its various manifestations aren't the brightest bulbs in the bunch. Where I disagree, of course, is with the notion that a bunch of smug, self-satisfied pseudo-educated lefties are any better. I'm with Bill Buckley on this one. I'd rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty bozos at Harvard (or any other such place).
In any case, I seem to recall the Democratic Party offering paeans to the intellect and virtue of 'the people' only two years ago. I can only assume that all of those people followed me to Canada.
I will be forced to lose respect for you unless you can admit your bias toward the left.
I will be forced to lose respect for you unless you can admit that you don't care what will make people on the internet lose their respect for you.
Polarization distorts reality. Maintaining a sense of the nuances of political positions is important. At the least, I think we need to keep a sense of how each standard deviation from the mean, both left and right, are different from one another. There are not just liberals and conservatives.
People within the first standard deviation to the left of center are somewhat different from the people within the first standard deviation to the right of center, but not in ways that prevent them from working together for the good of the country.
Of course everything will work out just fine for you and your wife, given your credentials and background. Why rub it in?
I think everything will work out just fine for the nation, and even the world. Most people are not polarized from one another, but do want to work together. Our problems are serious but not impossible. Our nation's strengths are many. Nearly everyone in bad circumstances now will be better off later.
Anon 12:06
Beau can speak for himself. See he did.
Flo, you see how hard it is to get satire on the internet?
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