Stewarts of the World: By Light is Sight
The return of a political lampoon with advice till Earth's end, also a look at a touchstone or launchpad, which has yet to be decided.
I suppose I have a perverse desire for something, anything to happen that will uproot the inevitability many are working to ensure, of our choices for President come November are only Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Maybe Joe Biden will fall into a ball pit at Chuck E Cheese and disappear while his staff conclude to let him be. Or maybe a bird will shit on Donald Trump’s face during a campaign speech and his followers leave him on the basis of an act of God. I do know one thing that gives me a glimmer of hope, or at the least a laugh aboard a sinking ship, Jon Stewart’s returned to The Daily Show.
With some calling his first episode back ‘a threat to democracy,’ it is clear we have a chance. This is the return to the pre-Trump era America craves, someone who can call out both sides bologna, who has mainstream familiarity with outsider dissent, and can deliver the message with the best medicine. The media expects a lot from us these days, here’s what you’re missing about Bidenomics, these guys Dean Phillips and RFK Jr. are water under the bridge. While I don’t agree with everything Jon says, I do think his conclusion to his first segment back is the best thing America could hear right now. Watch below or on Youtube here.
I love how he says he was glib and dismissive about it before. But if we are to inhabit this attitude of the world improves through you, not the elected. No matter who wins in November the problems of the world will remain, and whatever fear surrounds this possibility is best abated with productivity. Yeah, it’s the lame bumper sticker, be the change you want to see in the world. If it was that easy we’d all do it, but the world gets by on those who are. Jon says this responsibility persists until the sun explodes, meaning the work of life is never done. All this progress lay on precarity, but if we take the long view, the pressures of the moment alleviate upon the good arc of history. We are proof of it, and have a duty to preserve it if we enjoy its fruits.
As a fan of the film National Treasure, Jon’s point invoked a line of the Declaration of Independence read by Cage at the beginning of the movie. We all know Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness, but this line as Cage says, ‘is at the heart of all the others.’ Which goes, ‘But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.’ I see Jon’s celebration of those who embody what they want to see in the world being rooted in the same vigilant gumption penned in America’s founding.
We’ve all grown up in this world of order, where systems are in place to help should things go wrong. But when the system has corroded itself, Jon has come to understand what our founders did, that ultimately everything falls on you. We must smile in the face of absurdity.
We saw authoritarianism rear its head during covid, turns out the Bill of Rights are emergency contingent, ‘with red lights flashing, time to retire.’ All I’m saying is, it is laughable what we’ve come to accept as democracy, something’s gotta give.
Peace & Love