{"id":30273,"date":"2010-10-30T19:21:35","date_gmt":"2010-10-31T00:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=30273"},"modified":"2010-10-30T19:53:13","modified_gmt":"2010-10-31T00:53:13","slug":"jon-stewarts-rally-to-restore-sanity-andor-fear-closing-remarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/jon-stewarts-rally-to-restore-sanity-andor-fear-closing-remarks\/","title":{"rendered":"Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity and\/or Fear Closing Remarks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many thanks to Fe for getting these remarks into the blog. More photos and a live blog chronology of the rally can be found here<\/a>. Did any Planet Waves readers make to the event? – amanda<\/em><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t control what people think this was.\u00a0 I can only tell you my intentions.\u00a0\u00a0 This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear.\u00a0 They are and we do.\u00a0 But we live now in hard times, not end times.\u00a0 And we can have animus and not be enemies.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart at today's Rally to Restore Sanity and\/or Fear. Photo: Drew Angerer \/ The New York Times.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But unfortunately one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.\u00a0 The country\u2019s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder.\u00a0 The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.<\/p>\n

If we amplify everything we hear nothing.\u00a0 There are terrorists and racists and Stalinist and theocrats but those are titles that must be earned.\u00a0 You must have the resume.\u00a0 Not being able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers or real bigots and Juan Williams and Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people but to the racists themselves who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate.\u00a0 Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe not more.\u00a0 The press is our immune system.\u00a0 If we overreact to everything we actually get sicker and perhaps eczema.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And yet with that being said I feel good — strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false.\u00a0 It is us through a fun house mirror and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin and one eyeball.<\/p>\n

So, why would we work together?\u00a0 Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin-assed forehead eyeball monster?\u00a0 If the picture of us were true of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable.\u00a0 Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one\u2019s humanity but their own?\u00a0 We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is — on the brink of catastrophe — torn by polarizing hate and how it\u2019s a shame that we can\u2019t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do.\u00a0 We work together to get things done every damn day!<\/p>\n

The only place we don\u2019t is here or on cable TV.\u00a0 But Americans don\u2019t live here or on cable TV.\u00a0 Where we live our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.\u00a0 Most Americans don\u2019t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives.\u00a0 Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do — often something that they do not want to do — but they do it.\u00a0 Impossible things every day that are only made possible by the little reasonable compromises that we all make.<\/p>\n

Look on the screen: this is where we are this is who we are.\u00a0 (points to the Jumbotron screen which show traffic merging into a tunnel).\u00a0 These cars — that\u2019s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high.\u00a0 He\u2019s going to work.\u00a0 There\u2019s another car — a woman with two small kids who can\u2019t really think about anything else right now.\u00a0 There\u2019s another car swinging — I don\u2019t even know if you can see it — the lady\u2019s in the NRA.\u00a0 She loves Oprah.\u00a0 There\u2019s another car — an investment banker, gay, also likes Oprah.\u00a0 Another car\u2019s a Latino carpenter.\u00a0 Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman.\u00a0 Atheist obstetrician.\u00a0 Mormon Jay-Z fan.\u00a0 But this is us.\u00a0 Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief and principles they hold dear — often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers.<\/p>\n

And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, 30-foot-wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river.\u00a0 Carved, by the way, by people who I\u2019m sure had their differences.\u00a0 And they do it.\u00a0 Concession by conscession.\u00a0 You go.\u00a0 Then I\u2019ll go.\u00a0 You go then I\u2019ll go.\u00a0 You go then I\u2019ll go — Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car?\u00a0 Is that an Obama sticker on your car? Well, that\u2019s okay — you go and then I\u2019ll go.<\/p>\n

And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute, but that individual is rare and he is scorned and not hired as an analyst.<\/p>\n

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light we have to work together and the truth is, there will always be darkness.\u00a0 And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn\u2019t the promised land.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s just New Jersey.\u00a0 But we do it anyway, together.<\/p>\n

If you want to know why I\u2019m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me.\u00a0 Your presence was what I wanted.<\/p>\n

Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder.\u00a0 To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine.\u00a0 Thank you.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many thanks to Fe for getting these remarks into the blog. More photos and a live blog chronology of the rally can be found here. Did any Planet Waves readers make to the event? – amanda I can\u2019t control what people think this was.\u00a0 I can only tell you my intentions.\u00a0\u00a0 This was not a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}