A bit of sanity never hurt

As I read the coverage of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive, I am reminded of a deeper truth of people and politics and all the rest, today.

'Rally to Restore Sanity' Unite to Offer Pretensious Whining

I find the criticisms of these rallies as whiny and self-involved and disingenuously serious as I did the criticisms of Stephen Colbert's brilliant performance for Congress on matters of immigration.

The truth is these assholes hate the fact that these guys are clowning them. And, worse. That they are dead on in much of their satire. It bothers them that John and Stephen have their number. And even when I disagree with these guys, which is often enough, they get taken more seriously exactly because they don't take themselves so seriously. And bring some needed humility to political discussions, right now.

I love these guys. I disagree with them often. But I love the much needed humbling and levity that they bring to a political world all-too-seriously-committed to its various worldviews and policy positions.

What I love about Stewart and Colbert - Stephen a bit more, just for the record, because he's goddamn brilliant as all shit and has some of the more thoughtful conversations taking place anywhere that anyone else can see, right now - is exactly that they do not take themselves so seriously.

This world would be a far better place if more people - Jesus and Buddha and Mill and Twain and King and Ghandi and all the rest included - did not take themselves and their random opinions so goddamn seriously. It is mindboggling, sometimes, just how ugly and foolish we all behave, this strange, self-involved, solipsistic species, in the name of our all-too-certain opinions about this and that and whatever tickles our momentary fancy.

The goddamn tragedy of the world is that people are so unrepentantly and self-centeredly serious about All Matters That Make Them Look More Important Than They Or Anyone Deserves.

And that so many people are killed or imprisoned or variously bullied and treated in ugly fashion because of this perpetually irrational attachment that the whole goddamn species has to its various thought processes.

It's a goddamn tragedy. And you can either cry about it. On end.

Or you can laugh. Big and hearty, if you can.

At what a sad, stupid, lame, oft-self-centered and mean-spirited, always bumbling and foolish, species we so often choose to be.

All in the name of pretending to be smarter and better and whatever else that any of us could possibly ever be.

All of which only further demonstrates just how stupid and petty and small-minded and everything else that we all really are.

And, the sad, comic irony of the whole thing is that it's still all OK. We just have to pick up from there.

Because what the fuck else are any of us going to do, for God's sakes?

Other than maintain this mindless, mean, damn fool mess of an existence.

An existence that would be far better, for everyone involved, tragically and ironically, the more love and freedom - the very virtues that our fears persistently betray - we make available in the world.

About goddamn time we finally faced up to that little tidbit of life as we know it.

A little sanity never hurt anyone.

Least of all any of us.