While I was squeezing through the crowd on my way out of the National Mall on Saturday, my mind was marveling at the significance of The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. With the optimistic and celebratory crowds, it had felt eerily similar to Barack Obama’s inauguration. However, there was something distinctly different in the air that day. I have yet to identify the element.
A major purpose of the rally was to publicly recognize the true demographics of America. As Jon Stewart mentioned, when the political, religious, and ideological minorities monopolize the media, the voices of the moderate eighty percent are minimized. But for the day of the rally, "for one moment, the moderates will be the news." The comedic ways that Stewart and Colbert demonstrated this irony were pure genius. In Stewart’s speech, he poignantly reminded the crowds of the difference between healthy concern and irrational fear. At the end of Stewart’s quasi-serious or “sincere” speech, he said that he merely needed our presence to restore his sanity. However, I would argue that it did much more than restore our sense of sanity. The sheer number of diverse average “moderately concerned” Americans gathered on the National Mall to poke fun at ourselves is EXACTLY the image of America I want to be presented to the international community. Like Jon Stewart said, “We are living in hard times, not end times.” Our political rhetoric and our national image should reflect this reality. Given our class discussions on the relationship between irrational fear and national security, the significance of the Rally to Restore Sanity could go even further than sanity and affect Americans’ sense of security as well.
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