Friday, October 9, 2009

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

You know, Woodrow Wilson got a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the League of Nations, and that shit failed.

They gave Yasser Arafat one, too, for "the promotion of peace in the Middle East" which is arguably one of the many things he did not do in his lifetime. The list of laureates is varied and astonishing.

I'm not a political scientist; I'm not even a regular scientist. I do wax political from time to time, though. It should be said that I'm not a source of knowledge on these sorts of things. But, its my personal belief that the prize exists to say "Please keep trying to make peace, because with enough tries you may succeed" rather than "thanks for all the peace, man." If you don't think the election of the first black American President doesn't promote tolerance or hopefulness, and change the shape of global peacemaking, you're ignoring the other 7 billion people on this planet. Future elections, globally, will have new precedence and tone. Obama's presidency alone is a global step in the right direction towards peace.

But, I say, the prize should have gone to the American people for showing the world that the rules of life are still being written. America, as a country, promoted the kind of tolerance, change and forward-thinking that I personally feel the Prize exists to pay homage to. However, as Presidents often are, Obama is the face of the American people on an international scale for his tenure, and he will be the face of our successes, as well as our failures.

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