Sanity Restored

This is a quick, but serious post. I'm really not into politics - I believe that these people on Capitol Hill just keep arguing back and forth and nothing really gets resolved. It's all a waste of time. The healthcare bill was passed and now it sounds like the Republicans will repeal it. It's all a power struggle that to me seems to go nowhere. Our government also wastes it's time with congressional hearings about steroids in baseball instead of other, possibly more pressing, matters. Like hunger, jobs, safety, terrorism, etc.

Anyways, Jon Stewart hosted his "Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear" campaign last Saturday. I watched some of it. Most of it was too dumb for me to handle. But Stewart's closing speech was a honest commentary on our country's psychological state. There's a transcript here, but I'll paraphrase. Please read the transcript though, as I won't really do it justice.

Basically, everything that we concern ourselves with - the economic/terrorist threats/war/etc - is really self-created. The 24 hour news networks has instilled this fear on each other that nobody's getting jobs and we're all at risk to die from an imminent attack and the stock market hasn't crashed but there is no money anywhere and everyone will get swine flu and cell phones will give you cancer if you hold them to your ear too much. Clearly, I'm a little extreme, but it's to prove a point.

We've created this symptom where we want to be on high alert all the time. Yet at the end of the day, everybody is okay. We all work together - most of us strangers - to succeed in our everyday life. Your happiness shouldn't stem from what goes on in Washington D.C. or what Katie Couric tells you; it still rests in your family, your friends, your everyday life. We need to stop worrying about the nonsense that is (or isn't) going on. Sure, the economy isn't the best, but we got in it together, and we'll get out together. It doesn't really matter our individual beliefs or values, in the end we'll do it together. Somebody will walk all over us and we'll walk all over somebody. It's just the way the world works.

It's amazing what Jon Stewart has been able to achieve. A comedian making fun of the government and the news networks that he mimics, and he's risen as the somewhat voice of reason for our country. Hell, his whole rally is making fun of Glen Beck's rally.

It's refreshing to hear people of power - although no 'governing' power - make actual sense of it all. To stop the noise, take a step back, and really understand what is going on. The sad thing is that it's not so simple. It will take a joint effort, but it can happen. This is the change that we were supposed to get. It's up to us to make it happen.

Change you can believe in.