Thougts on the Right on this day when Glenn Beck is holding his big DC rally

A friend of mine was using sarcasm today when talking about the Glenn Beck rally being held in Washington D.C. today, on the anniversary of Dr King's "I Have a Dream" speech. This friend's sarcasm came in the form of a Facebook comment supporting the idea that Mr Beck's rally will be remembered for generations to come, and how he only speaks the truth, God talks through him, etc.  The following started out as my response to that, and then kind of just grew into another of my rants.

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Maybe I've grown too cynical and militant in my middle age, but I am honestly beginning to think the public at large is too ignorant to understand sarcasm, satire and irony. I think Mr Beck's little rally today will be big news for a cycle or two. He may even try to keep it going in the public's mind through various means. But, in the end, he is a buffoon and a clown, lacking even the small amount of gravitas enjoyed by a Senator McCarthy.

One of the drawbacks of the modern communications era is that it is much easier for the backward thinkers, reactionaries, and just plain crazies to find an audience. In the end, though, those people are no more than a distraction away from the real fight. They, in a sense, set themselves up to be straw men.

The more we try to knock down the straw man, to argue against a false argument, we loose sight of what's actually happening behind them. As long as the right keeps us fighting against falsehoods, (death panels, Obama is BOTH a Nazi AND a socialist, mass kidnappings in Arizona, just to name recent examples) we miss our opportunities to set the agenda and promote our own ideals.

The right has learned that the more outrageous they make themselves, the more clownish they become, they can distract us enough to get their way.

My hope, my optimism, comes from the suspicion that they have gone, or are about to go, too far. The extreme right has been emboldened to come out of the woodwork, not just in the entertainment / distraction industries, but even with candidates for congress. The same modern communications era will make it much easier for every one to see just how far out there these people are.