Everybody, Stop, Listen, What's that Sound?

As the Stewart/Colbert Rally begins to draw near, the main stream media is beginning to pay some attention to it.

I would suggest a very critical listening/reading to the media reports that you may hear. The few I have read on both sides of the left/right divide have got it very, very wrong.

The right is saying this is just a bunch of liberals who are trying to make fun of Glenn Beck's rally. They say his rally wasn't political, but offering hope and asking for a return to Christian values. They say the participants in the Rally to Restore Sanity are pot smoking, beer guzzling college kids looking to get laid. That we will trash the Mall (they are already saying there wasn't one speck of trash on the ground after Beck's rally. This is technically true: once the park employees came in and cleaned it up, it was pristine).

The left is making light, making fun. It's all just a silly reason to go and have some silly fun. Ha, ha, ha. Wheeee! What a laugh riot this will be. Surely, something begun by two comedians can't have a lick of meaning to it.

Well, it may have started as a joke. There are some immature people who haven't quite gotten the point that the purpose of this rally is not to get back at anyone.

But now, it seems to have taken on a life of its own, a meaning that goes beyond the silly names (Restore sanity? March to keep fear alive?).

No, this is beginning to be a platform for those of us in the vast middle ground who are appalled at what those who claim to represent us have been saying about "the others".

This is beginning to be a platform for those of us who are sick and tired of mudslinging, talking points, and the corruption of the election process. Those of us who realize that America is facing serious problems and we need to all sit down and have some serious discussions about how to fix these problems before it is too late.

Those of us who are attending are saying, let's step over the lines in the sand that our left/right leadership has drawn for us and reach out to each other.

The truth of our situation is that the problems facing us are neither of left or right making. They are the makings of those with money and power who want to keep amassing that money and power. The downfall of the middle class is not the fault of the poor, it is the fault of the richest 5% of Americans who want the status quo to remain. So they spend billions on anonymous corporate PAC's to buy politicians' influence. They buy up radio and television companies, magazines and newspapers to continue to fuel the left/right wars that keep the poor and middle class at each other's throats so we won't notice what they are doing to us all.

That is what this rally is about. The moment where the silent majority who are sick of seeing the same games and names being thrown about stand up and say "stop it!"

Not to the left, not to the right, but to each other. Because the enemy is not the liberals or the conservatives. The enemy is the current political structure, the current electoral process.

Until we have publicly funded elections, those with the most money will pay to put their candidates in place and the needs of the American people and our nation as a whole will always come second to the needs of those with the money to make or break politicians.

This is what will be on my mind while I'm there: