Unless you’ve been using Bareknuckle Vengeance as your sole source of breaking news (and who could blame you, since it is America’s 673^rd most-trusted source of intermittently-updated amateur punditry), you’re by now well aware that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have planned twin rallies at the Washington Memorial intended to parody a certain pink-faced halfwit. On its face, this seems like a fine idea—and maybe it is, I’m really not sure. Glenn Beck is, after all, an unbelievably enormous tool and so are his millions of minions. Meanwhile, Stewart has done more good for American political discourse than nearly anyone else in the past decade. But I wonder if these rallies are more problematic than meets the eye.

In the end, I wonder if these rallies don’t promote a certain kind of disengaged citizen that upholds an untenable status quo.

The Stewart rally is advertised for people “who think shouting is annoying, counterproductive, and terrible for your throat” and who are “too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs.” Calm rational dialogue is certainly a positive that should be promoted. And, hey, I really hate shouting too; it is damn annoying. (Particularly when you’re on the 2-line home after a long day and you just want to listen to the new episode of RadioLab in peace, but noooo… some jackass dude-bros in the back are loudly shouting about how much “fun” a waitress at Hooters would be and how unfair their court-mandated rehab programs are. Ugh).

But are we really arguing here that the fundamental problem with American democracy is that there are too many deeply passionate and engaged people actively and, perhaps loudly, working to affect change?

But the Stewart rally, perhaps unwittingly, takes this profoundly disengaged and undemocratic citizen and valorizes her as a much-needed rational and moderate voice. Thus, someone who advocates forcefully for desperately needed health care reform, who decries American foreign policy, or who maintains that much of the Bush Administration (or the Truman and  Nixon Administrations for that matter) are war criminals (which they are!) is painted as a crazed Howard Beale-type that is denigrating the “democratic process” instead of a vehicle for change. Can these rallies, as designed, possibly avoid reinforcing the status quo?

But Two Scoops, you might ask because you’re nonsensically referring to me by my nonsensical pen name, aren’t these rallies engaging people turned off by an often shrill political discourse? Maybe, but are they engaged because they’re motivated to affect political change or because they want to be entertained?  If a one-hundred thousand people turned off by the shrillness of American politics showed up to the foot of the Washington Memorial in an ironic rally, what would the content be? Will it be something that positively affects American society or will it just be a mockery of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party?  In the end, it seems unlikely to spark any sort of rational or calm dialogue between the Left and the Right, and merely push people further away from each other. And in that sense, the whole thing just seems incoherent to me. But, then, maybe I'm missing something here? I'd like to think so.