The tragically short-sighted Nobel committee has screwed our whole country, possibly the whole world, by presenting this award -- IMO. And for those who may not recall (I've not posted here for a while), I happen to write this as one who voted for Obama and would do so again. Unfortunately, not only have the members of this committee indulged in the same type of haste that -- some of -- the conservatives here have shown in prejudging a Presidency before the 20-month mark (which will be Labor Day, 2010, in this case). They have also helped further perpetuate the unflattering image of Obama that so many hard workers with Obama including those in the White House today have sought so hard to overturn: the prejudicial image of Obama as somehow an "outsider", "not one of us", an "interloper". The more noxious forms of this attitude have emerged in the absurd "birther" nonsense.
Above all, it's those who are viewed as "centrists" in our country who ultimately make things happen. These "centrists" are rarely heard from; they rarely opine on matters of public policy; they have no kneejerk agenda of any kind; they don't have built-in soapboxes on radio or TV. In fact, we barely hear from them -- except when they vote. And as they vote, so goes the nation. It's unfortunate that "centrists" with the least developed ideas on public policy are the most easily swayed -- and also the most influential in the final vote! It's especially unfortunate that since many "centrists" here are so impressionable, their views can turn on a dime.
Now, 2008 was primarily a very special case. The exceedingly alarming incompetence and lawlessness of the Bush regime played a huge role -- along with the economic meltdown -- in making the silent "centrists" take a second look at an intellectual(!!) who would not have been given a second look by our "centrists" under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. Centrists finally realized there were only so many steps toward an international-outlaw cliff that a country could take before there was no return. And so, suddenly, they heeded the substance of the stump speeches instead of the image. And so Obama won.
We can't forget, though, that the silent centrists are easily swayed. If enough negative inroads are made on the current understanding that Obama does indeed have the interests of Americans at heart, if those negative inroads consist overly much of imputations that Obama hearkens to different "masters" than "us Amurricans", if those negative inroads end up painting Obama as an "alien" in the minds of a critical mass of centrists, then the causes for which I and millions of others voted for Obama in '08 are lost. It's that simple -- and that devastating.
The dense Nobel committee, through their blundering in with two left feet and prejudging the Obama Presidency in the same absurd way some conservatives do, have fearfully accelerated the process of divorcing Obama from centrist Americans. It's only a matter of time before a critical mass of centrists perceive the idiotic Nobel Prize as "proof" that Obama is a President of "them furriners" and not of the U.S. of A. Every single one of his long overdue initiatives will be perceived, even more than they are now, as "Obama's doing the bidding of them furriners" rather than finally addressing festering sores that have undermined American society for far too long.
This disastrous prize will do what Hamlet describes drink as doing to Danes:
"They clip vs drunkards, and with Swinish phrase
Soyle our addition, and indeede it takes
From our atchieuements, though perform'd at height
The pith and marrow of our attribute."
In the provincial mindset of too many American centrists, everything that Obama and those of us who worked our hearts out for Obama have worked for will now seem tainted, as if we're doing some other country's agenda rather than our own. That's all that this stupid prize can "achieve". That's how hopeless things are here and how easily swayed by provincial nonsense many Americans are, all the time.
So thank you very much, Nobel Committee; your brilliant new toy will only succeed in throwing all our hopes for a renewed and more ethical and fairer U.S. onto the ash heap of history.
Sincerely,
Operacast
Actually, I think the Norwegians, (I'm fourth generation Norwegian-American myself), were probably rewarding what they saw as an internationalist perspective which was an attempt to tone down the American tendency in recent years to go it alone, stumbling on the world stage in its often well-intentioned but clumsy unilateral attempts to forcefully impose its will on various regions of the globe. Admittedly, though, some of that was due to many nations forfeiting their moral obligations to collectively address true evils and simply sit around on their hinies. earl
