Although I’m not much for rallies and crowds, this one was enormous and really inspirational (if I can get serious for a moment or two). It’s now replaying on C-SPAN, but I can attest that the crowds were gigantic and very polite (click to enlarge):
Perverse Egalitarianism
an otherwise excellent blog
Perverse Egalitarianism 
I’m in there somewhere.
It was nice, wasn’t it?
It was! Didn’t stay for the whole rally, since I wanted to give my girlfriend a tour of the city (she’d never been to DC before). Surprised by how many people showed up, especially compared to some of the anti-war rallies that I went to when I lived there.
We’re in the city for a bit – did you just come down for a day from Baltimore?
Yup, otherwise I would say we should meet up–DC, after all, has no shortage of good bars and restaurants (Baltimore, on the other hand…)
Mixed emotions.
‘Marxists actively subverting our constitution?’—what the fuck? Imaginary Marxist extremists placed in the same categorical space as fundamentalists, terrorists and racists (twice—two such references). Fuck you, Stewart, you fucking goon.
Notice, also, how the car analogy works. We are all those people in those cars, etc. etc. — meaning: the ‘sane’ moderates represented at this rally are simply the petit bourgeois who want to have their cake and not know where it’s from.
No mention of systemic causes that contribute to the media symptom.
What did Zizek say on ‘Democracy Now’ regarding the protests in Europe? Basically that only the privileged are now the ones to protest, the privileged who are sane and reasonable enough to take turns in their gas-guzzlers.
‘Hard times, not end times’ — is this not the pervasive sign of the times, treating social, productive reality as if it were the weather?
Stewart = failed negation of negation.
Oh I certainly am not saying that this was somehow a meaningful rally in terms of its message, you know? They are, after all, comedians – and as important as satire is, it’s not going to be an effective political tool. Most of the people in the crowd looked like your usually middle-class folks who just want to be guaranteed their medium-sized american dream…