erwachen 2010

 For the apathetic, the news is broadcast in a foreign language.  It sounds like English, one understands the individual words, but as a whole, the discourse of the broadcasters, journalists, and pundits is utterly incomprehensible. I used to be a member of this listless mob, pretending the world didn’t exist outside of my small, cozy, familiar sphere.  On the rare occasions where I felt particularly worldly, I would catch a clip of current events, only to be washed with an overwhelming feeling of disappointment and helplessness and return to my previous comatose subjection to the tube.  I didn’t care.  I couldn’t.  I’d never been able to make up my mind or formulate opinions about the controversial subjects that prompt clear, impassioned partisanship and dominate government; who was I to make those momentous decisions? I was lost in the disinterested void of society.  But I was only one of many so it didn’t really matter; it was the job of others to change the world.

Disguised on the comedy network as a parody of news-broadcasting culture, Jon Stewart decoded the babble that was the news and woke me from my apathetic coma.  The awakening wasn’t immediate.  Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I laughed along with the hyperbolic mocking, sarcasm, and accusation inversion, but there was something more to the jokes, an unnerving sense of reality, an idea of apparent blemishes on our society that few have the initiative to look for and fewer the willingness to see.  I had believed in the fixed state of society, but he was poking holes in the system.  What I believed was inalterable, he deemed unfit and ripe for fundamental modifications.  He appealed for citizen participation in a system dependent on social input and indignant demand for a government benefitting all tiers of society; though it didn’t appear that way. It was an extremely clever front.

Comedy was his cloak and awareness his mantra.  Stewart’s comical charade occupied the front defenses of my mind, allowing his true intent, analysis and reason, to flank the unsuspecting legions and take hold of the fortress.  Other news channels’ tactics were much less effective, merely assaulting the center, the strongest point in the line of defense, by bombarding with partisan-tainted-passions and out of context facts, ignoring my virtually indestructible wall of indifference.  Comedy skirts this wall and ingrains the broader concepts in the naïve audience.  As a persuasive army, laughter is irrefutably more efficient than any combination of ethos, pathos, or logos could ever be.  As a language, comedy is universally understood, regardless of insight, passion, or predisposition towards the world.

While avoiding an anarchist label, Stewart calls for the questioning of authority and banishment of indifference.  Our government was built to be inherently changeable, but it takes initiative and passion to mold.  He calls for attention to a lethargic society, to awaken the populous and impact an imperfect world.  As an awake and animated citizen, I can make an impact.  Instead of being engulfed with despair from societal imperfections, I feel empowered.  I do care.  I want to learn the language of the news, to decipher the worldly significance of current events.  I can make decisions on the controversies that politicians run on and define the laws which I will have to live by.  I am one of many.  But everyone is one of many, and together we are immense.  Together, it is our job to change the world.