As many of you know, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will descend upon the National Mall tomorrow to host what has now become their combined “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” Stewart will champion sanity, and Colbert, while in character, will champion fear.

Despite the advertised intent of the rallies — to bring a little calmness to our inflamed bipolar political landscape — many have asserted that they are a masquerade for a Democratic campaign rally, particularly Fox News columnist Dan Gainor, who declared last Friday that “yet another TV network openly declares for the Democratic Party.”

This allegation is legitimate. Stewart and Colbert (the latter under a satirical guise) have espoused liberal views on a variety of issues. Their fan base is definitely left of center. Tomorrow’s attendees will encounter the front lines of a lot of leftist causes. There’s also the very idea that the liberal Stewart is aligned with sanity, while Colbert, the conservative fool, is aligned with fear and irrationality.

But modern-day crazies do not solely reside right of center. There are extremists on both ends of the political spectrum, and they feed off each other with sickening enthusiasm. Those incapable of empathizing with their political opponents will always relegate anger and hate in place of that missing psychological activity. Either out of spite, or because they’ve given up hope believing they can convert opponents to their own (and only plausible) way of thinking, the political extremists often fulfill their own stereotypes. It’s a vicious cycle, amplified by Internet anonymity and fixed news networks masquerading as neutral, a process that I blamed directly on the Electoral College in an earlier column this semester. The end result is the Cosmic War, a battle between good (your side) and evil (their side) fought between mortal belligerents.

There’s not a whole lot to say to these people. To right-wing extremists, you could try to tell them that they can’t force obedience to their own specific values, and they can’t expect unregulated corporations to act like Jesus Christ is their CEO. On the other end, perhaps left-wing extremists should learn to stop whining. Look, we’re working toward a liberated world free of poverty, but it takes time. Imperfection is not synonymous with tyranny.

But none of that really works on them.

These are the kinds of people who think it’s OK to yell at a political event, as if they’re throwing the hammer at Big Brother’s face. To the rest of us, they are a bunch of assholes, but these people believe what they’re doing is right. Think about it — if you knew you wouldn’t get hurt or killed, wouldn’t you have disrupted a Nazi rally? Everybody thinks something is crazy, but violating a speaker’s control of the floor is barbaric. It demeans ordered society.

It is this attitude that will be combated in tomorrow’s rallies. Despite the liberal atmosphere, this event is real. The message being espoused by tomorrow’s rallies is not a leftist one, for liberalism is not the anchor of sanity. Tomorrow’s message is crafted by the mentality of the youth — that we refuse to be a part of your Cosmic War between left and right, that we refuse to believe that our political lockdown is a holy war in the first place, and for God’s sake, it’s time to legalize weed.

So, if you have any free time in your busy college life, please, come on down to Washington, enjoy the sights, and remember — humor is the strongest weapon against insanity.

Greg Nasif is a senior history major. He can be reached at nasif at umdbk dot com.