There’s a reason I don’t dress up anymore for Halloween. I’ve finally reached an age in which, if I want a candy bar, I can just go out and buy one for myself. I don’t need to dress up in some silly costume and parade myself around for someone else’s amusement in order to get free candy that hopefully won’t stink because I wasn’t the one who got to pick it out. The act of Halloween used to be the grand litmus test for adulthood in this country; maturity not only came with the financial liberty of a paycheck, it came with the liberty of character—you could be yourself instead of costuming up in that horrible pink bunny suit that Aunt Linda thought you’d just “look so cute in!”
And therein lays the perfect metaphor for this weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. There are Americans who want their government to back off so they can make the decisions and then there are Americans who want their government to back off and make the decisions for them. Both are sets of characters with pretty interesting wardrobe choices. For instance, some choose to wave the flag, while others choose to turn it into a pair of parachute pants. As for the audience at the Rally, all I can say is, I hope Stewart & Colbert’s wranglers brought a lot of candy.
One of the proposed goals of the rally—held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.—was to be “non-political.” Let’s just say that the organizers and commentators succeeded in being as “non-political” as the ladies on The View.
Critics love to claim that Glenn Beck’s 8/28 was a Tea Party rally. Since they’ve felt the need to pit 10/30 against 8/28, it would then be logical to claim that 10/30 was a Progressive rally. But, since 10/2 illustrated the powerful uselessness of the term “Progressive” when it comes to attracting people to rallies on the National Mall, the mainstream media instead decided to paint The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear as the “rational” choice to Glenn Beck’s “radical teabaggers”.
Wait—let me get this straight: a rally of middle-class families waving American flags is extreme in comparison to a rally filled with middle class singles and DINKs (Double-Income-No-Kids) dressed in Halloween costumes waiving random signage ranging from punctuation critiques to the now age-old comparisons between Bush and Hitler.
Yeah.
I will say that the content of 8/28 was definitely more “Rally traditional” than that of “Stewart’s Sanity Tour 2010”, featuring performances by, among other artists, The Roots, Ozzy Osbourne, Kid Rock, the formerly-known-as Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam, TV’s Mythbusters, and R2D2. Then again, according to one Rally-goer, "'Some people were disappointed that Stewart didn't ask people to vote or that there wasn't more politics. But Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert recognize that they're entertainers,' said [self-proclaimed Socialist] Bill. 'And that's pretty cool.'"
Wait a minute. Even the socialists are happy with a glorified free rock concert now? What would Stalin think! Apparently Huffington Post writer Raj Patel thought of the former socialist dictator/opera hater when he commented that Stewart and Colbert’s humor was “impotently polite” and that he “…suspect[ed] that it's through Bill’s…brand of political understanding, rather than Kid Rock's, that change will happen.”
Way to be non-political.
But, then again, Raj, like any true Marxist, can turn history on its ear to serve his own agenda when he has to:
“Reasonableness is, however, genuinely under threat. The Tea Party understands the US Constitution as a divine document. In so doing, they pine for a pre-Enlightenment politics where God -- not reason -- is the ultimate arbiter of political life.”
Apparently Arianna Huffington needs to spend a few more bus-dollars on some professional development courses for her staff, beginning with History 101. If it weren’t for the Enlightenment—the intellectual move against the notion that a monarch is Divinely appointed—America would not exist:
Many of the most distinguished leaders of the American Revolution--Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Paine--were powerfully influenced by English and--to a lesser extent--French Enlightenment thought. The God who underwrites the concept of equality in the Declaration of Independence is the same deist God Rousseau worshipped, not that venerated in the traditional churches which still supported and defended monarchies all over Europe. Jefferson and Franklin both spent time in France--a natural ally because it was a traditional enemy of England--absorbing the influence of the French Enlightenment. The language of natural law, of inherent freedoms, of self-determination which seeped so deeply into the American grain was the language of the Enlightenment, though often coated with a light glaze of traditional religion, what has been called our "civil religion.”Moron.
Oh, wait, I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to be “demonizing” anyone during political discourse. After all, according to Arianna, that is what the Rally to Restore Sanity was all about: “We can disagree with each other without demonizing each other.”
Is that why Rally attendees:
Dressed as the Grim Reaper carrying signs that read “Death Thanks to the GOP”
Carried signs referring to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin as the “Asses of Evil”
Referred to Glenn Beck as comparable to a “Nazi-Commie-Socialist-Fascist” and a “crazy ass”
Wore shirts that said “Glenn Beck is a Moron” and “Fox Keeps Fear Alive”
Claimed that “If there should’ve been a Hitler sign on anyone, it should’ve been him” referring to former President George W. Bush ? (So much for trying to enact Godwin’s Law, Stewart.)
Is that the kind of anti-demonization, community-loving, centrist attitude you’re talking about, Arianna? Or are you talking about the attitude of the Rally organizers who invited Yusuf Islam to sing his infamous song Peace Train while carefully forgetting the fact that he, at one time, backed a fundamentalist Islamic fatwa against author Salman Rushdie? After all, we wouldn’t want to call someone a “Marxist” or a “Terrorist” unless they really were Marxists or Terrorists—and you can’t be a terrorist if you didn’t drop the bomb, just like you can’t be a Marxist if you only chose to hang out with Marxist professors.
Robert Reich, jumping on Arianna’s post-Rally community spirit bandwagon, proceeded to skewer anyone right of the HuffPost while opining, “We don't believe in winning political arguments through bullying, name-calling, lying, intimidating, or using violence.” Yes, the Progressives are the saints of the political world; they may drop an unkind word here or there, they may show up at polling places to tell voters to keep their “husband’s agenda going," but they do let their lackeys do all the really dirty work. As for lying, well, what was that George Costanza used to say? “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”
A Communist professor once said to me, “Everything is political.” It didn’t take much delving into Marx to realize that, to the “Nazi-Commie-Socialist-Facists” of this world, politics is the religion through which they live. For a people who scream so loudly and so often for the “separation of church and state” they have absolutely no problem creating a State Church of their own. (How very un-Enlightened of them.)
Perhaps that is the point; perhaps that is how they can claim a lack of political affiliation. After all, if a message is preached often enough, it simply becomes an unquestioned way of life.
The most patronizing aspect of the Rally is not the signs carried or the messages spoken by the attendees, but the fact that their ignorance is encouraged by those they look up to as leaders. What could have been this generation’s “Ask What You Can Do For Your Country” moment was nothing more than “A gigantic-scale put-on laced with sincerity.” The sincerity—about their country, their government, and their future—was as palpable for the costume-garbed audience about whom one reporter wrote, “… it was easy to imagine those wearing American flag T-shirts were doing so ironically.” More than one writer commented on the pot-laden ambivalence among the throngs; the D.C.-based Blaze correspondent noted, “Attendees at this rally seemed to have a lot to say about absolutely nothing,” and “no one seemed particularly politically motivated.”
Religious leaders always did prefer their sheep to be blind.
Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri, described as a “Rally for Sanity cheerleader in the media” encouraged the apathy of her generation when she recently wrote, "Call us Generation I. I for irony, iPhones and the internet… Sum up our lives in a phrase? The Importance of Never Being Too Earnest." According to the UK’s Guardian, “the atmosphere [of the Rally] was one of irony and humour; of mocking those in power, not seeking to replace them. That fits the role that Stewart and Colbert play the best. They are the court jesters at the palace of the real power players in America. Their job is to point out the hypocrisies of the great and the good, not to oust them.” Why? Because if Stewart and Colbert “ousted them”—whether they be liberal politicians or the mainstream media, which Stewart vaguely blamed as the problem-causer—they’d be out of jobs?
The real message of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was extremely political—in that “Two legs good, four legs better,” sort of way. “We’ll keep telling you what to think, and we’ll even throw you a concert, get you a free bus ride, and let you smoke all the pot you want,” the message read. “But here’s the deal: When we use your faces and voices, your talents and abilities to promote our political agenda, don’t talk back.” Hence, unlike 8/28, Jon Stewart’s 10/30 may have entertained its audience, but it did not enable them to do much—except “take it down a notch.”
American politics was never meant to be this sedate. Perhaps that is because, while examples do exist, there is nothing truly American about a political machine seeking to de-politicize an entire generation:
“For decades, the Soviet Union, under Stalin, put the brakes on world revolutions, subordinating all other struggles to the supreme goal of defending "socialism" in one country, and more specifically, the privileges of the Soviet bureaucracy. Under such conditions it was imperative to sedate the masses throughout the world and quell their revolutionary aspirations. By making dialectical, revolutionary transformations look as if they were something that happened to the masses rather than something they undertook, a subtle suggestion was being transmitted to the masses that they were to remain passive so that events could unfold according to their own logic, which, in fact, was aimed at maintaining the status quo.”“Keep calm and carry on,” indeed.
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