Jon Stewart is planning a Rally to Restore Sanity on the national mall in Washington, DC on October 30, 2010. Here's the speech I'd give if I could.
My personal political beliefs are strongly held, but right now? They're irrelevant. I'm here because I'm scared.
People will say that America has always been partisan, and they're right. But it's different these days. And what makes it different is the technology.
Not only has the technology made it cheaper and easier for anyone to rent a soapbox and reach a national audience, but it's multiplied the choices we all have when we pick what to read or watch and escalated the battle for our attention to unprecedented heights. To get our attention - and our dollars - the loud voices need to get more excited, more outlandish, more combative. Sophisticated pollsters and marketers and behavioral scientists get paid big money to come up with new and clever techniques to make us mad - because that means we'll watch their shows, or vote for their candidates. Yelling at each other makes "good TV," which was something CNN discovered on the Mclaughlin Group in the eighties. Now anyone with an iPad can be Pat Buchanan.
Normally this would be welcome - marketplace of ideas, free speech and all that. But our culture hasn't caught up with our tools. Facts are everywhere, but incomplete and contradictory. Expert analysis is compromised by paid-for advocacy and rumored agendas, and in any case most of the lessons of the past seem hard to apply to the present. High pressure business models provide a ravenous maw for the "outrage of the day," but people can't tell the difference between showboating and passion. Righteous posturing is telegenic. Crazy looks like fun.
And the problems we have to solve? They're a bit tricky.
As far back as Bush v. Gore, I believed that the country was more purple than red or blue. I could laugh at the shenanigans of the crazies on both sides, because I knew they didn't matter any more than the hobo on the streetcorner talking to his belt buckle.
But these days, up in Boston, I'm hearing scary things. Not only do normal people routinely invoke Hitler to vilify their political opponents (on both sides, I might add), but they've taken to using violent rhetoric and nihilistic proscriptions. A stranger at a professional event in Cambridge told me casually that Palin supporters needed to be "rounded up." Personal emails compare bipartisan compromise to "giving in to the gas chambers." Talk radio commentators threaten mob violence if elections don't turn out their way. And NO ONE WHO'S LISTENING SAYS ANYTHING. These things are usually said to those assumed to be of like minds, who usually just nod and agree.
When it becomes socially acceptable to threaten righteous violence against your political opponents - and your listeners laugh in agreement - things have gone WAY too far.
It's not funny anymore. It doesn't matter what your beliefs are, or whether you think the Tea Party or MoveOn.org is out of control. You can believe anything you want - be mad at whoever you like, in private. In public, we need to start acting like adults, not children throwing temper tantrums. And the crazier you get, the more you energize the crazies on the other side.
I've found myself asking the extremists in my midst this important question, and I hope we all start asking ourselves this from now on: where is this all going? Close your eyes and picture the end of the era of hyperpartisanship. Your side won.
What happened to the losers?
We need to stigmatize crazy again. When you hear someone talking crazy - make them feel uncomfortable - not for their opinion, but for their rhetoric. EVEN IF YOU AGREE WITH THEM. It won't work - not at first. But if we all do it it might start to stick.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have laundry to do.
