Sanity

Why did 215,000 or so of us turn out to "The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" this past Saturday?  Of course, Jon Stewart has quite a following as the one newsguy who has helped many of us to laugh and not cry through these hard times.  Stephen Colbert humors us as well, allowing us to survive the almost unendurable scare tactics of the media by calling them out, one goofy newsclip after another.  Certainly Glenn Beck's ill-timed and ill-placed rally deserved a counter-rally.  I think the biggest reason most of us showed up, though, is that we believe in reasonable dialog when it comes to differences in opinion.  The public marketplace of ideas should be a place ruled by an ethic of mutual respect, where we use (as Colbert put it) "our inside voices," and where facts are upheld.  With reasonable exchange, it is possible that we Americans could all discover that we have much more in common than we thought, namely a desire to be healthy and live at peace.

As I prepared to go to the rally last weekend, I thought of what I would like to demonstrate about because even though this was a Comedy Central-sponsored entertainment event, free to the public, with big name appearances, I still felt there were a few things I wanted to say as an American.  The setting of the National Mall in DC inspires political statement; though it is used on weekday afternoons for Ultimate Frisbee.  There is so much to say, and most of it won't fit onto one poster.  It's hard to sum things up in a few words, but here's what I came up with.

Thankfully, my friend Tami was happy to go along with my idealistic sentiments and help me hold up the "LOVE" sign, stylized to my vintage, the 1970's.  I felt like all of that anti-healthcare reform rallying of last year deserved my own peaceful and quiet counter-rally via a quite unarguable sign, "Health for All."  You'd have to be a meanie not to desire the health of everyone else; though, certainly many seem to have such a hard time connecting health to healthcare, health of individuals to the health of our society, or moreover health of our healthcare system to the health of the overall US economy.  The low cost of prevention compared to the high cost of catastrophe management?  Not rocket science, folks.

The rally also amounted to my coming out as a pacifist.  Yes, I really do want to make the statement that going in a direction of loving our neighbors is better than regressing to the historical approach of settling conflicts or pursuing our economic passions through war.  I'm wearing my "Obama" T-shirt because he did at least get troops out of Iraq on time, but I would also challenge him to get us out of Afghanistan ASAP!  I don't really think the U.S. has fought a "just war" since World War II.  Even the famous pacifist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, joined a plot to try to assassinate Hitler.  I think I would have as well, given the options of that day; however, I can't really understand why we have become involved in any of the wars since WWII.  Ok, I'm not naive.  We are gluttons for oil and our economy might have died without it, but does the end justify the means?

Just to connect my two thoughts, the cost of the Iraq war, as per a recent Washington Post article well exceeded $3 trillion.  Even the conservatives cite the short-term costs of overhauling the nation's health care system at $1-1.5 trillion, less than half the cost of the war.  Sweeping health care reforms are necessary to stem the burgeoning cost of healthcare in the U.S. and ultimately, it is estimated that health care reform will result in billions saved.   So who, might I ask, are the big spenders?  Barack Obama did not shipwreck the U.S. economy.  The deed was done when he came into office.

"The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom, and six times that of Germany," and firearms were involved in 2/3 of the cases in 2008, states Jill Lepore in a recent article in the New Yorker.  Urban youth are disproportionately affected by gun violence, yet we sent our soldiers nearly halfway around the world to depose a despot for killing his own people and possibly hiding terrorists (while, of course, interfering with our oil interests).  Of course, because of doing that, there is simply not enough money left over to fund decent schools and give kids an opportunity to choose life and opportunity rather than violence and the street drug industry.  How is it that we so easily ignore the war on our own streets.  Why not have reasonable gun control laws?  Isn't it time to disarm?

What bugs me the most is that Christians are so often the ones leading the fray: warring against foes rather than loving them and praying for them as our own scripture mandates; suggesting that America get back to roots as a Christian country, even though the founding fathers fought the Revolutionary War in part to defend religious freedom; supporting gun "rights" even though one of the 10 Commandments is "Thou shalt not kill."  Worst of all, Christians have supported and defended people who take great license with the truth who, when they are not doing that, are outright lying!  So, that is why my rally signs had to proclaim, first of all, LOVE.  Love rather than war.  There are countless ways to solve conflict, other than going to war.  Finally health for all. That is a reasonable human desire.  It is sane to desire your neighbor's health, lest in ill health he should sneeze on you!