On March 17, 2007 I stepped off a packed bus and onto the ground of Washington DC for an anti-war protest. A group of bearded, leather jacket wearing hard-asses welcomed me to the protest with a hearty “outta the way draft-dodgers”. For the record I was negative 9 when the last military draft ended, but they were right in assuming I would have dodged it. Within the hour I was near a group of anarchists who were trying to decide where exactly to separate themselves from the march in order to give the police a real reason to be dressed in their finest riot gear. Needless to say it was a real who’s who for political rally stereotypes. The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear felt like the exact opposite to me.

The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear didn’t feel like a political rally as much as an outdoor concert or a state fair with political overtones. With no real prepackaged slogans and chants like your regular political rally, this felt more like a gathering of people rather than the usual gathering of sheep just trying to build up the confidence to attack the hand of a corrupt Shepherd. Something about the constant use of humor and irony seemed to undercut the heated and divisive passion that comes with such gatherings. The rally was more about a sense of “we’re not those people” in reference to the images of the politically active America represented in the media. Unlike the Tea Party who seems to do everything at their rallies to reinforce “we are those people”. To be honest, most Tea Party rallies seem like they believe they’re the ones who invented distrusting politicians and perpetuating end-time hysteria.

I was unable to see or hear virtually anything that was happening on stage at the rally due to the size of the crowd and how packed in everyone was. I opted to walk around and take in the people of the event. The signs seemed to represent people better than the signs at any other rally I’d been to with their constant references to our shared culture outside of politics. Most rallies in DC are based on giant political concepts; ending a war, restoring honor, fighting for civil rights, so much so that it is often overlooked how much else the attendees share and how much they share with those they are rallying against.

You could say the crowd was predominately white, but in America, so are most places. I saw all types of people in the crowd proudly proclaiming their pride for a country that has spoken out against them. For someone of Jewish, Muslim or no faith and of any sexual orientation or race the rally seemed to be more welcoming than most of recent times. What Jew wants to stand next to a guy holding a poster of Dachau victims that reads “Health Care Reform“? What Muslim wants to stand next to a man yelling “No mosque in my America!”? What gay republican wants to stand next to someone yelling “faggot” at Sen. Barney Frank? The fact is the right could never pull off a rally for moderates because they don’t care about appealing to them anymore. George W. Bush spent 8 years trying to prove that they didn’t need them. So to me being around a bunch of young, old, Jewish, Christian, atheist, Muslim, Indian, black, white, Hispanic and Asian people holding signs up with images of Chuck Norris, Zombies, Antoine Dodson, and all kinds of other cultural references felt like middle America to me.

I never believe it when someone says we live in a center-right country. It never feels consistent with how people respond to individual issues. I’ve always gotten the impression that America is a center-left country that tends to vote center-right. Conservative, capitalists always underestimate just how high apathy and disinterest reign in America. To me this is the Middle America that is always talked about in politics but so rarely actually considered. This is the America that overwhelmingly supported Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Barack Obama in 2008. They stood by George W. Bush after 9/11 but eventually wondered why we were still in Iraq. This is the America that thought the Monica Lewinsky scandal was no one’s business. This is the America that has been hunting but doesn’t think you should be able to get an assault rifle overnight. The kind of people who when learning that a friend is an atheist wonder “but they still celebrate Christmas, right?” instead of reaching for the Holy Bible. The America that knows Islamic extremists are as common to Islam as Christian extremists are to Christianity. The America that doesn’t want to be overtaxed but knows that taxes pay for the fire department, schools, and freeways. Frankly, it’s the type of base every party so desperately wants but doesn’t want to sacrifice lobbyists and the game of politics enough to actually get so they end up being split in half.

Of course Republicans will come out against the protest as a liberal event, which I wouldn’t argue that it wasn’t to some degree. Former Republican Representative Dick Armey said as much to Arianna Huffington claiming that Jon Stewart is the same type of pundit the rally was meant to warn about. From someone who had recently spent just under 30 minutes in an extended interview with Jon Stewart where he failed to sum up just what exactly the values of the Tea Party actually are. In light of that, Mr. Armey’s comments couldn’t seem more like an attempt to reinforce a false narrative that secures the “us vs. them” approach that has consumed and gridlocked our political system. As the author of “Give Us Liberty: The Tea Party Manifesto”, those comments couldn’t be more apparent that in the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Mr. Armey sees it through the perspective of the type of people who view politics as nothing more than a football game between Democrats and Republicans.

Frankly, Dick Armey has had quite a hand in the origins of America’s need for a Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. His organization Freedomworks was the backbone of the disruptions of the Health Care Reform Town Hall meetings over the summer of 2009. In a place meant to welcome debate on an important government initiative the group encouraged chaos over finding any common ground. These media-grabbing irrational outbursts were the real birthplace of the modern Tea Party movement. This was the same period where on more than one occasion the Daily Show praised Republican President Richard Nixon’s forgotten foresight on wishing to change the American Healthcare system.

Politics isn’t a football game where you root for one side over the other. To many people who couldn’t be further removed from that type of thing, politics is a very real line between the poor and the rich, the sick and healthy and the living and the dead. Every once in a while it’s nice to have a political rally that undercuts the politics and really makes it feel like you live in a country of regular citizens who are paying attention too close to be constantly thinking that every move by the federal government is the pathway to a homosexual immigrant-run Godless, Communist, Islamic Nazi Germany.

(As Featured on The Politicizer’s Spark http://spark.thepoliticizer.com/news/finally-a-...)