Advent of an age of reason: Moderates rally for cause

My life is insane. Being a Pre-Med Biology major and living in Harbin have forced me to accept that madness is par for the course at Georgetown. Yet this Saturday, as I stood in the midst of the immense crowd on the National Mall, I realized that this was not the way the rest of the country ought to be.
I’ve lived abroad for a good part of my life, but I identify myself as an American. Coming back for college, though, has made me realize that something is keeping me from totally qualifying as American. I have no need to be maddeningly confrontational.
In spite of the insanity of getting to and from the rally and the ridiculous size of the crowd, the central tenet of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear—spoiler: fear loses—was the need for moderation. To me, the rally showed the need for calm, reason, cooperation, and a 2010 update of “why can’t we all just get along?”
I wholeheartedly agree with Jon Stewart and his defense of sanity. Perhaps it’s because I went to high school in neutral Switzerland. But coming back I felt more than a little ostracized for simply speaking calmly about controversial issues. Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, Fox or MSNBC, the pros and cons of Leo’s and Lau—I’m not indifferent to these subjects. Just because I shy away from melodrama does not mean that I don’t hold opinions. I’m not going to hit you over the head with what I believe.
Maybe it was the neutrality, but something about living in Switzerland made me far less inclined to rely solely on the passion of an argument to win it. Not to say my reasoning is superb, but I have a certain amount of restraint when arguing, a sense of calm that keeps the dispute reasonable. When I came back to America, part of the culture shock I experienced was the vehemence with which people would quarrel.
I’m not saying that there isn’t discourse and disagreement outside the U.S. (Have you ever watched a video of the British Parliament in session?) Yet, there still is an Old World sense of respect that infuses discussions with a polite calm. There are those who try to fearmonger to support reactionary policies, like Glenn Beck or Stephen Colbert’s satirical character, but they do so with restraint.
Even the most radical Swiss political parties, whose major platform is kicking out all of Switzerland’s immigrants, don’t propagate their beliefs with any more vitriolic force than moderate parties do.  Their most radical advertisement consists of hands reaching for a pile of Swiss passports. Imagine that—conservative ads without explicit racism. Where are all the Swiss versions of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck? They don’t exist (or at least not in the mainstream).
The moment that gave me the most hope for America and embodied the true spirit of the rally, did not come from a speech. It wasn’t scripted and it wasn’t on the Jumbotrons. In fact, it didn’t even involve Stewart or Colbert. But it was the perfect metaphor for the essence of the rally.
Near where I was standing, there was a huge tree that was inconveniently bare until about fifteen feet up, where a branch provided an ideal perch to see the rally. A man decided he wanted to sit up there, but couldn’t for the life of him climb up it by himself. His plight drew the attention of the crowd around him and we started to cheer him on. “Yes, you can!” started to echo around the area, and with the help of the people near the tree, he reached the branch. If a crowd of strangers can come together to help a man climb a tree, don’t you think that as a nation we can come together to become saner?
Soon after the tree climbing incident, something in the atmosphere of the day led my friends and I to start pointing out what we called “Team Sanity Moments.” Using a small sign we had been given that had the words “Team Sanity” written on it, we held it up to note any situation we encountered that was particularly sane in an effort to channel the rally’s cause.
College is insane; the rest of us should tone it down a little.