Reflection week 10

At the rally to restore sanity and/or fear on Saturday, I was so impressed by Stewart’s speech to close the rally. He managed to change the tone of the rally, previously comedic, to one of seriousness that conveyed a specific vital message. Stewart’s discusses the importance of tolerance, cooperation, and not conforming to an attitude of fearfulness.

One section of this final speech struck me as being particularly relevant to our class this week. In discussing terrorism, we touched on the overaggressive nature of combating it, and the exaggerated fear of terrorism in the world today. Stewart rightly stated “There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must be earned. You must have the resume. Not being able to distinguish between real racists and tea partiers… is an insult -- not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put forth the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims makes us less safe, not more.” This point rings true today, because when we allow ourselves to overanalyze everything, and live in constant fear of the unlikely, we just set ourselves up as a nation for attack and weakness. By having such heightened security to defend against the dreaded terrorists, we merely encourage the terrorists to be smarter, and discover new methods of evading our security measures. As well as pushing terrorists to be more innovative, focusing so much on terrorism is effectively placing blinders on the United States—allowing us to see only the threat of terrorism ahead of us, and nothing approaching from the sides.

Stewart also emphasized the influence of the media upon the current of fear running through America. The role of the media should be to report facts, updating the public on prevalent issues—not carefully cultivating frightened citizens and placing more weight upon stories instilling fear into those who learn about them. Had terrorism not been made such a news story to implant fear into Americans, who is to say we would not be equally afraid of car crashes or being shot on the street?