Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Rally for Sanity a Very Pleasant Surprise

When my two daughters asked me if I would like to go to the upcoming Stewart and Colbert Rally for Sanity it was an easy answer. No way was I going to travel the 65 miles to DC to hear Jon Stewart make jokes about the Tea Party and Sarah Palin. I hate listening to all that self-congratulating laughing and applause that comes with every lame joke told to a mass liberal audience.

But early Saturday afternoon I decided to turn on C-Span so I could intelligently criticize later. To my surprise there was a very large and lively crowd. It appeared to be larger than the Beck rally. The rally was publicized as aimed at calming the anger and fear that has taken control in today’s politics. The rally was true to that goal. There was music, singing, and Stewart and Colbert comedy skits directed specifically at that objective. The selections and speakers were patriotic. No ranting and partisan accusations. It was truly apolitical and filled with patriotism.

The media coverage has focused on the theatrics and essentially ignored the underlying principles of the rally. In this post I will focus on the values they were presenting without trying to reproduce the theatrics. You can find a summary of the show aspects in this reference. A full copy of the important closing remarks by Jon Stewart are here.

The basic principle is that we are all loyal Americans who must put aside irrational anger and fear and calmly face our real problems.

We must resist manipulated by the irresponsible media. To feed a 24hour news cycle it is saturating us with warnings of an infinite number of possible bad events which are very divisive and unlikely,and will probably never occur. Some will happen but they are solvable if we focus on those that are reasonable problems.

The anger and fear is further exaggerated by expanding the causes for problems from specifically identified individuals to much larger groups. This is being done without the required accompanying analysis.

It is important to realize that we are now one big mixed country of almost 300 million. We can expect many diverse opinions and consequences on issues that affect many groups differently. We must eschew one line insults to each other and try to reach reasonable solutions while showing respect for other's views. This does not mean we cannot aggressively address the causes of our problems. We should show strong aggression to the specific individuals behind the problem but be careful about extensions to a generalized congregate that will extend and magnify the problem.

If you have the chance, watch the video that shows media clips of both liberals and conservatives violating these very simple and common sense rules. You will recognize the faces.

Of course,calm discussion isn't "in" with the media so they have given the rally a big thumbs down.

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