Sanity

I thought that the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was awesome. I thought the pre-rally festivities, with musicians and Mythbusters, was kind of slow and boring, but that's okay. I thought the middle portion of the event, with Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert sparring between sanity and fear, was excellently done. I especially liked that Jon relentlessly defeated Steven at every turn: it made it clear that the Rally really was to restore Sanity, and that in a sense Steven's character was just there for a combination of contrast and comic relief, and to provide some sort of conflict or struggle for the plot of the Rally to coalesce around. And I thought Jon's "keynote address" was spectacular. I thought, in particular, that the following lines were simply brilliant:

"This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or 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. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies."

"If we amplify everything, we hear nothing. ... There are terrorists, and racists, and Stalinists, and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned! You must have the resume! Not being able to distinguish between real racist and Tea Partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or 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. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more."

Simply brilliant.

However. (And I don't necessarily think Jon would disagree with what I'm about to say, but he likes to under-emphasize it.) Terrorist, racist, Stalinist, theocrat, those are titles, they must be earned, you must have the resume. But what is the resume? Well, terrorism is "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes," so it seems reasonable that a terrorist is one who either has committed an act of terrorism, so defined, or is actively planning to do so in the near future. Racist, Stalinist, and theocrat, on the other hand, are not about actions, but about thoughts, and therefore come in inherent shades of grey. For instance, a Stalinist is presumably one who agrees with the philosophy of governance advocated by Joseph Stalin. Stalin's writings are public record, and many of his actions as leader of the USSR are common knowledge as well; a Stalinist, then, is one who agrees with the overall sense of those writings and/or approves of Stalin's actions as a leader overall. But, theoretically, there are degrees of agreement. Stalin probably said something that I agree with, at some point. Does that make me a Stalinist? I meet the same standard with most political thinkers, really; possibly even Ayn Rand. It makes more sense to limit it to the more major, substantive elements, and also to notice that one can agree with a little bit of what Stalin said, much of what Stalin said, or most or all of what Stalin said, and these are different things.

Similarly with racism, there are those who hold zero racially prejudiced beliefs on one end of the spectrum, and David Duke and his ilk on the other side. In between there are people who don't hold explicitly racist views, but who might have some subtler subconscious prejudicies, or theoretically those who hold more "moderate" racist views. Likewise with theocrats. A hard-core theocrat would want the state run by the church; that is, have priests and ministers or Popes or ayatollahs running the secular government. A hard-core anti-theocrat wants zero influence of religion on the political sphere. In between we can have people who don't want a formal theocracy, but do want the government to enact religious laws, such as a ban on homosexuality, or divorce, or shopping on Sundays. Is someone who believes the government should ban homosexual acts because their religion teaches them that it is a sin a theocrat? Not the same way the supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran's government are theocrats, no, or at least not to the same degree, but they do want to make their view of "god's law" into the civil law. Are people who say that our laws are ultimately derived from god's law theocrats? Again, not to the degree that some people are, but there's certainly an element of theocracy in them. And within the context of a given society, they might very well be as far toward the theocratic side of things as anyone gets.

So yes, racist, theocrat, Stalinist are all titles that need to be earned. But they also come in varying degrees, and one can earn the title of a low-level racist fairly easily. And is it unreasonable to look at data like this and not conclude that genuine racism is a serious factor in the opposition to Obama and the Democrats this year? Not all Tea Partiers are racists, no, but a good many of them are, and I would be mildly surprised if very many of them would score a proud 0% on a racism test.

And finally, a word in defense of Keith Olbermann and his ilk, who were prominently featured in the clips Colbert showed of the media shouting at one another. Is it possible for a policy to be unreasonable? I certainly think so. Is it unreasonable to point it out when this is the case? I don't think so. Is it possible for one of two major political parties to hold vastly more unreasonable positions than the other? I think so. Is it unreasonable to point out when this is the case? Again, I hope not. The primary defense of Olbermann et al. in their vocal and vehement criticisms of Republicans and the Republican agenda is simply that they are correct, and O'Reilly, Beck, et al. are incorrect. Now, you can still argue that the use of terms like "unamerican bastard," which the montage showed Olbermann saying, is still sufficiently incivil as to be bad; fair enough. I'm not entirely sure what I think. But there's a difference between making passionate denunciations when you are lying and making passionate denunciations when you are telling the truth, and that is one thing that Jon Stewart sometimes tends to overlook or underemphasize.