Obama's Downfall?

All this talk of Obama's impending demise brings me back to blog entry I wrote early last year shortly after his election victory.  I think it's relevant now...

I had a nightmare last night.  It was gruesome.  I was somewhere in the U.S., in some non-descript city, walking along on a busy street.  There didn't seem to be anything particularly out of sorts, except the people walking past me all had a certain stoicism in their expressions, a solidity as if they were impregnable to both happiness and despair.  Then suddenly I caught something large crashing onto the street out of the corner of my eye.  I looked over and in horror saw the body of Barack Obama lying mangled in the middle of the road.  No one else took any notice.  Cars just carried on, running him over, crushing him beyond recognition.  The people on the sidewalk didn't even look over, their expressions stayed as stolid as if they were machines, like they didn't have the capacity to feel anymore.  Then another body came hurtling down from the heavens.  Smash! It hit the pavement directly in front of me.  Again, it was Obama, a look of despair on his frozen face.  People walked oblviously along, stepping around, over and sometimes even on the body.  

Another body fell, this time behind me. I could hear the crunch of bones colliding with solid concrete but I didn't look back.  I didn't have to - bodies started raining down on this non-descript American city, all Obamas, all with that look of depair carved onto their faces.  And no one cared.   

I woke up this morning with two thoughts running through my head: are we doing it again? Are we falling into the classic trap, the one in which we pin all of our hopes on a single individual only to have them come crashing down around us when we inevitably discover that this is just a man, a great man indeed, but in the end, a human being with all the frailties and limitations that go along with being human.  Then I thought what if the Republicans planned this all along?  Of course, this is going to sound like conspiracy theory but I don't doubt that there are some Republicans in Washington, especially neo-cons, kicking back and smiling now that the burden of America has been lifted from their shoulders.  Someone else has to deal with the next 5 years, arguably the most difficult 5 years America will face in at least a generation.  Did the Republicans intentionally pass up the presidency knowing that no administration is going to be able to fix America, knowing full well that things are going to get worse before they get any better?  People around the world pin prophetic hopes on Obama but what happens when we all realize that he can't save the world?  Will we abandon him?  Will the American people turn their backs on what ultimately is an experiment in American politics?  

Will they run back into the waiting arms of the Republicans in 2013?

I hate conspiracy theories.  They lead to dangerous thoughts, to misguided teleologies.  Like why did McCain choose Sarah Palin as his running mate?  Before that disasterous decision, he still had a chance; it was an uphill battle but the prize was still within reach.  Choosing Sarah-barracuda was political suicide.  Was it, in fact, suicide?

Who knows.  I leave that conspiracy theory in the hands of much more adept conspirators than myself.  But I can't ignore the message in my nightmare.  I look forward to the Obama years but I will not place the burden of salvation on his shoulders.  If I do, then his despair, the one carved into all of those faces lying crumpled on the streets of that non-descript U.S. city, will be the despair of the entire world.  

Obama and the Nobel

Has the Nobel Prize always been a political affair?  Am I missing something?  Admittedly, I am not a Nobel groupie.  Ask me who won the Literature prize last year and I'll scratch my head for a while before shrugging my shoulders.  Not that I don't respect the institution.  It is an important forum in which humanity recognizes the achievements of individuals working toward a better, more peaceful world.  The key word here is "achievements", meaning what has been accomplished.  Scientists, for example, aren't awarded the Nobel for the discoveries they make.  They win the Nobel when those discoveries begin to contribute to society in a positive way, when, in other words, the theory is used in practical applications, proving itself a valid contributor to the Nobel ethos.  This is why a physicist might only win the prize years after the theory he's winning it for was discovered (one of the winners of this year's physics prize, Charles K. Kao, made his award winning discovery in 1966).  Similarly, in the more abstract realm of Peace and Literature, awards should not be given based on the ideology (or theory) an individual holds, regardless of his potential to turn his ideas into concrete action.  It's the action that matters.

Obama's ideas about a nuclear-free, multilateral world based on cooperation is noble, but it's not Nobel.  In fact, many of us subscribe to the same ideology; it's not a new concept.  The hope we place in Obama is important, necessary, but it is still an unrequited hope.  We are still waiting.  And the process of building him up as the next great hope has its negative space as well: we set him up for an even bigger fall.

In terms of the Nobel prize, what the Committee in Sweden has done is politicize the award.  They've stamped an ideology with Nobel approval.  They did the same thing in 2006 when they awarded Orhan Pamuk the Literature prize.  Like Obama, Pamuk might have deserved the honour one day but to award it to him when they did, the Nobel committee was more interested in recognizing another ideology: the modern, secular muslim, at a time when modern, secular muslim role models are so desperately needed. In Nobel terms, the value of that ideology to the promotion of world peace, while relevant, should remain secondary to the achievements of the individual receiving the award.

But perhaps all of this is just another reflection of the 21st-century zeitgeist: the Reign of the Ideologue.  The committee members selecting Nobel recipients are not unaffected by the currents of the age; they also hope and dream.  Regrettably, the net result is the devaluation of the Nobel Prize.  When the selection process becomes ideologically-driven, what does being a Nobel Laureate really mean?