Image via WikipediaIn any case, here I am, writing once again. What brought me back? Two things: the knowledge that I would eventually come back to this personal sandbox of mine, and my desire to comment on something that has me deeply interested at the moment.
Last week, Stephen Colbert announced in the Colbert Report his Keep Fear Alive rally, which comes as a 'response' to Glenn Beck's own "God-mandated" one. I think it goes without saying that I consider Glenn Bleck a clown of the saddest variety, and the fact that he even gets an audience makes me lose faith in democracies in general. For, if the most developed and most free of the world's democratic societies can engender enough mindless gits to follow Beck's virulent idiocy, what can we expect of the rest of the world, who like it or not look up to the US as a pattern to follow? I won't dwell on the fact that many a reputed economist points out that the USA is no longer the land of opportunity and economic freedom it once was, that torch being clumsily handled nowadays by countries like Chile, of all places.
Colbert and Jon Stewart have launched a campaign to, quite literally, slap Americans on their collective faces and make them come to their senses (Stewart's "Restore Sanity" rally couldn't be more appropriately named). That goes both to the misguided followers of Beck and to those who ignore the growing threat these movements pose. They send a signal to politicians, whom we know will do their best to get cozy with the largest number of potential voters. Whether they share their views is besides the point. And Beck and his clones can deliver the crowds, as they have shown.
Well, hopefully so can Colbert and Stewart.
In olden times, court jesters held a kind of power in court as they were the only ones who, through comedy and satire, make the ruler see the error of his ways. In a democracy, the people are the rulers, so it is perhaps only fitting that two comedians who have made their name in TV now offer the American people the same service.
But two comedians won't restore the US to the economic powerhouse it was twenty years ago. That has to be done by the government and the people. So far, it seems they have forgotten how to do so, and the US approaches more and more the kind of society where everybody lives in comfort but where stagnation of many kinds is the unseen threat to their continued existence.
I mentioned that countries like Chile now are trying to wield the torch of economic freedom, but are so far doing so clumsily. Yes, clumsily... but with a clumsiness that stems from learning the ropes. And they will learn, and then master. And then, hopefully, show the US how it's done, and the US will remember. And remember that they used to be quite good at it.
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