Thinking outside the country

I’ve had several conversations and debates the past three days about the Nobel Peace Prize for Obama. I don’t think you have to think long and hard about what my opinion is… but, for a few paragraphs, I am going to explain it.

As I’ve said before, I lived in London during 9-11. It was, quite literally, as Dickens put it, the best of times and the worst of times. The best was seeing total strangers turn around and offer me sympathy because of my American accent. That sounds like a trifle… but… human kindness is never a trifle. Especially when the provocation is the sound of my sentence.

Flash forward to 2008. I went back for a visit. That same intonation of sentence begot dirty looks and mere tolerance. No sympathy. And I think many of the smiles had something to do with the money I was handing over a counter. That’s a huge generalization… but there was a notable difference. Simply because I was American.

Now, I haven’t been back since the election. But I read the BBC with some regularity. It isn’t a first hand observation… but there is a different tenor. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you don’t care. But what I think I see is a lesser prejudgment from the international world.

Maybe that, too, is a trifle. We are still bombing Afghanistan. We are still in the quagmire of Iraq. We are still paying the banks to not fail and screw us over in the process. We are still vastly unemployed, never mind underemployed. We are still incapable of reaching a consensus about the right to get medicinal treatment. We have a lot of shortcomings.

But, um… see, we aren’t the only country. We aren’t the only people entitled to an opinion. Not just about the economy and healthcare and the Middle East. There are other countries and other people in this world who have an opinion about us, our culture, and our president. Maybe … maybe he hasn’t done enough for us to justify getting this prize. But, can you just get out of your jingoistic self for a second and consider what his election might have meant to people who don’t live here? Who don’t listen to our 24 hour news cycles bashing one another? Who just see the fact that America elected someone who rose from nothing, who overcame one of our great evils of racism, who was willing to look the world in the eye and have the balls to admit we aren’t perfect?

Maybe, perhaps, this award isn’t about us. Maybe it’s about the world and what they think of us. And maybe we should stop complaining and just say, thanks.