Can't A Guy Just Enjoy His Nobel Prize In Peace?

So I wrote the above comment on Facebook and as usual a deluge of my Republican friends' responses followed. Most asked what he did to deserve it. I really had to true answer yet. The comment was my usual tongue-in-cheek status updates that takes a political issue and tries to make a joke about it. Not everyone was laughing. So when people started posting on my Facebook page asking what he did to deserve it, I answered truthfully, that I didn't know and they should read the news to find out. A couple of people didn't like my answer, posting "well, excuse me" type of responses. Granted my tone was a little short. I like debating but can't stand all this Obama bashing.

Seriously, people out there are just getting a wee bit outlandish, considering all that America suffered under eight years of Bush. But I had to respond and after a day it hit me why Obama was so different and possibly deserving of this Prize. Time will tell if Obama lives up to the hype and there will be those who never will admit he either succeeded or failed. History will be the judge. In the meantime, below are my thoughts on the subject if you care at all.

I have to apologize. I thought you were being facetious with your comment. Bear with me here while I explain myself.

First, this is a long response. Most people will probably not agree with it. I could be wrong about everything I wrote here but to paraphrase an old song, it's my Facebook page and I'll cry if I want to. So here it goes:

What I mean is that, nobody knows what was going through the minds of the Nobel committee when they gave this honor to Obama, especially since the voting apparently happens in February, meaning less than a month into his presidency they already decided he should get the Peace Prize. I agree that it seems very odd and weirdly anticipatory of them. To see what Obama has accomplished (admittedly even as a Obama supporter, I have to say it’s not very much since he’s been President for less than a year though I give him kudos for the direction he’s been shifting America in since January) you’d have to follow closely in the news of where he’s been and what he’s been doing and what, if anything, he’s gotten done.

That said, I can only speculate on why they gave him the big prize. We are unarguably the most powerful, freest, richest, and greatest country in the world. We have a system that is flawed but works pretty well for what we have to deal with. For the past eight years we had an administration that did what it thought was in the best interest of the United States of America at the expense of the goodwill of most of the rest of the world. It was a mentality that I argue was highly visible satisfying certain very real fears and urges of Americans, but ultimately cost us dearly. We took the eye off the ball and fell from the high moral ground we had been taking.

By 2008 the world blamed us for a devastating war in Iraq, missing opportunities to quell terrorists in Afghanistan, illegal and embarrassing acts of torture, destroying the writ of habeas corpus and degrading the very principles of our own Constitution—what had made this country great and so powerful on the world stage. You can argue the facts but you can’t deny that the rest of the world turned a very dark eye on the United States over the past 7 or 8 years.

What makes this country so great is that, on a dime, we can in fact turn our political course around, which is in fact what we have just done, with no bloodshed, no violence and no subverting of laws. Obama won a clear victory, a mandate, if you will. In the past 8 or 9 months the President has been traveling the world, addressing people, sending his dignitaries out, giving speeches to the Muslim world and the UN with a clear message that the United States wants to be a respected player on the world stage again, not a feared or loathed player and that everyone is expected to do their part and make hard choices. His message is that great things can come if you stand with America and do the work needed to make peace to rebuild communities.

The trust and goodwill that he’s garnered in such a brief time is building political capital in the countries of the world not seen in many, many years. What he does with this goodwill has yet to been seen. Yes, he may fail but he is taking the country on a path to become a mover on the world stage. It’s clear that the Nobel Prize committee feels that by giving Obama this honor they have given a vote of confidence in his administration and the things that they promise to accomplish. It’s also a clear indicator that the world is ready to look to America to lead it out of the many problems plaguing the globe from economics to terrorism to health and human services.

We’ve been given a huge gift by the Nobel Prize committee and we should accept it graciously and humbly. We should see it for what it is, a commitment by a distinguished body that believes that America can be looked up to as an example to the people of the world.

And that’s all I want to say about that.

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Are Birthers Vicitms Of "Implicit Social Cognition"?

I read this article in Scientific American titled "Birth of a Notion: Implicit Social Cognition and the 'Birther' Movement." As you can imagine the comments got heated but not too crazy since nobody broke Godwin's Law and called anyone a Nazi. Oh wait, the writer did mention Nazis in the article so maybe that's a good strategy: mention Nazis in the blog post so no crazies start calling others Nazis.

Read the SA post and then come back to read my response.

The reasoning people in the comments section have expressed against the Lipinski/Kwan example is really flawed. One commenter said that if you rooted against Kwan you were labeled a conservative racist but that's not what the writer implied. The example showed how Kwan was label by a supposedly edited and vetted media outlet as not and American. What could have led to this assumption when the facts are easy to look up? (Watch the Olympics and the flag next to the contestant's name easily shows which country they represent.) The point was that a person named Lipinski vs. a person named Kwan made someone in the news organization assume that Kwan was not an American, thus the headline “American Beats Out Kwan” It did not say if you rooted for Lipinski you hated Asians or if you rooted for Kwan you hated the Polish. It simple showed how this assumption was made. It did not in any way make a judgment in that example as to whether the writer of the headline, fact checker or editor was Republican or racist.

In the end this article was about "Implicit Social Cognition" of people who believe the birther argument. Most people don't believe it and if you can argue that it's NOT mostly Southern, White, Conservatives who perpetrate this rumor and believe in it, then I'd like to see that evidence. So while, the opinion piece does draw some strong conclusions about racism using some questionable anecdotal examples, it is hard for any reasonable person to dispute that many if not most or all of the birthers are in fact racist. Otherwise they'd just say, I don't agree with the president of the United States, not question the entire legitimacy of his election based on thin rumors.

I definitely don't agree with the people who say that if you replace "birthers" with "truthers" you get the same logical results since the whole point of the piece is that a minority of people still cling to a belief that seems like an absurdity to a majority of people. I also defer to the fact that this minority is very vocal and gets lots of attention (squeaky wheel theory applies here.)

I think that there is scientific merit to this piece and because it addresses issues that are contentious (especially now with the news of how people are acting in town hall meetings and in sessions of Congress) it brings up intense debate.

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It Takes A Community… To Fight A War

By Lon S. Cohen

Go back a few short years ago. Who knew that people all over the world wanted to share information in a mere 140 characters on Twitter or to gather around Causes as grim as Cancer to ones as lighthearted as “Drinking is Cheaper than Therapy” on Facebook? Apparently just as financial experts misread the dangers of subprime mortgages and credit default swaps, pundits missed the simmering underground of geeks and technophiles creating a powerful means through which a smart candidate might just get millions of people to rally around his vision of change. Barrack Obama (or more accurately David Plouffe) saw this undercurrent not as just a passing fad but as a middle ground where people were crying out to be given a voice on everything from gadgets to politics. His strategy was wildly successful as is evident from his victory in November 2008 at the polls and it legitimized Social Media in the process proving its power. But what was there all along was the fact that people always formed communities, not just inside websites, in forums and chat groups but in real life as well. This is the keen insight that Barack Obama had about the American people.

Barack Obama’s past as a community organizer taught him about the need to bring people together to advance a cause and the power that community can wield once the momentum gets going—for good and for evil. This is why the foundation of that community needs to be strong, educated, moral and most of all led by a person of good character. This what President Obama brought to the table when he spoke in Egypt. It’s what so many past diplomats did not or could not even being to understand.

The previous administration faced one of the most tragic and direct attacks on the United States in modern history. They reacted quickly and with the certainty that what they were doing was right. Putting aside all the missteps and misinformation, what the Bush administration failed most to understand is that when they were framing their campaign as a “War on Terror” they had made a huge strategic mistake. What they should have recognized was that this was not a war on terrorism but a battle with terrorism, for terrorism is merely a symptom of a larger and much more complex problem than routing out the bad guys and brining them to justice. The battle against terrorism has not been won. It has mitigated some of what the terrorists tried to do but at a high premium in blood and money. The war has still yet to be fought.

By going to the Middle East and presenting himself to the Arab world with a message of understanding President Obama has shown that he knows where the war really is and he has the experience and background to fight. The Arab world suffers from some of the deadliest afflictions known to mankind: lack of education, poverty and oppression. The terrorists know that this where the real war is fought and they’ve been winning, getting stronger and better at it because they have “boots on the ground” in the real battle zone, recruiting form the disenfranchised, exploiting weaknesses, transmogrifying the shield of faith into a sword of vengeance while we fight the terrorists that they produce on the other side of that process to stalemate because there is no lack of resources in the Middle East when it comes to frustrated young men looking to make a mark on this world.

What Obama brings with him is the knowledge that while building a strong community in an American city like Chicago may not be the same as building a strong community in Kabul or the West Bank, the lessons learned and the hopefulness that makes a person better, stronger and smarter when he is part of a community larger than himself is universal. This is where the “War on Terror” will finally be won, not on the battle fiends of Iraq or even in the mountains of Afghanistan but in the community of men.

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