Jon Stewart on President-Elect Trump, Hypocrisy in America
I agree with John Stewart’s views in the video below — like the Dude, America Abides. The America that works best is the pluralistic version envisioned by our founding fathers and their antecedent leaders from many preceding nations who created our forms of government and human rights. Here you are an American as soon as you become a citizen and you are treated with individual human rights that are granted and limited by our constitution and all of our laws that followed.
You are expected to integrate at that point, but you aren’t expected to assimilate like we are the Borg or something, although many do assimilate because the sensual pull of our dominant culture is so strong. Our rights do not derive from God, they aren’t self evident - they are codified by our laws and they can change and evolve to meet our needs as a society over time.
We will accept you and your culture up to a point — so we don’t mind Mormons, but we don’t allow them to marry multiple wives. We don’t mind if you practice your patriarchal religion, but if you beat your wives and children we’ll put you in jail. You can talk about grabbing women by the pussy in a locker room, but if you do it public you will likely get thrown into jail. We don’t mind you wearing a kippah, bonnet, scarf, or hijab, but we aren’t about to let you force anyone else to.
Here we think that while all cultures aren’t necessarily equal they all have great stuff that we can steal and incorporate. Here we don’t think cultures are equal, here we think people are equal.
We also don’t think that cultural or tribal feudalism was ever a good thing which is why most Americans sneer at kings, dictators, fascists, and domineering religious leaders while calling their daughters “princess.” So while you have the right to talk bad about other tribes, their ethnicities, and their religions all you want, if you act on your bigotry it’s illegal. That’s why this is such a strange time - sometimes fear and bigotry overcomes reason in our country, but over time this is a tide that will reverse strongly. We all live in a great country - one where it’s essentially unamerican to think that you and you alone get to define what makes America great.
After Jon Stewart left “The Daily Show” last summer, much of the presidential campaign went on without his unique and satirical point of view. Charlie Rose met with Stewart to discuss his new book about the more than 16 years he spent at the Comedy Central program. Stewart was quick to give his post-election analysis.