The Real Reason Obama Won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Let’s be honest… for the better part of the past decade the United States has had an atrocious public image in the eyes of the rest of the world.

If you’re a US citizen and you disagree with me, I respect your right to disagree with me. But you need to stop and ask yourself if my opinion is the opinion of a crazed redhead in semi-rural Canada with too much free time on his hands (which it is) or the opinion of a crazed redhead in semi-rural Canada with too much time on his hands who also happens to be saying what a lot of the world is thinking.

There’s a good rule of thumb I like to follow, and it’s something I like to tell people when they’re struggling to come to terms with something said to them they may not agree with. It’s especially relevant on online social situations where people are getting battered verbally by multiple other people, and continue to wonder why this is happening:

If one person, or a few people, say something about you or towards you, it’s an opinion; if almost everyone says something about you or towards you… it’s probably closer to fact that you may be willing to admit. And just because you don’t like it, or don’t want to admit it doesn’t mean it isn’t true and won’t continue to be true until you change it.

I’d like to take a moment here to point out that this doesn’t necessarily apply to global politics, President Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize. This applies to all human interaction.

Anyway, with that having been said, there are plenty of people who won’t like the fact that Obama won the NPP. A lot of the people, especially if they’re the types of americans who consider themselves patriots and are against the current administration, are going to have a problem with this because they don’t see anything wrong with how the US is currently percieved. Or they won’t admit it. Or they don’t think it’s the US’s fault. If someone doesn’t see anything wrong with what Bush did to the world for the past 8 years (and I’m not just talking about Iraq, I’m talking about almost completely ignoring what every other country said or wanted about anything) then watching Obama getting rewarded for taking the first steps towards fixing all of that. Well… that would be frustrating. And disheartening. So it’s easier to say it’s wrong.

But, and it hurts to hear this, just because what you thought and did was wrong was, in fact, wrong… doesn’t mean you have to continue doing it. You can stop. You can reassess the situation. You can say “Holy crap. Almost everyone says I’m kind of a dick. Like… a LOT of people say I’m kind of a dick. Maybe there’s something to that?”

It hurts being called a dick, and it hurts to be wrong. But it happens to everyone, and most people move past it and learn from it. The ones who don’t, the ones who don’t see what everyone else does, and continue be wrong, well I feel some measure of pity for them. Not that it helps, because those are generally the type of people who don’t like feeling pitied.

And now I’m back to talking about people… but really, I’m talking about nations. I’m talking about billions of people and trillions of dollars.

And, again, in all honesty: The hundreds of millions of people and trillions of dollars known globally as “The United States” are poorly percieved by other countries. If you asked this question to most of the people on the planet, and asked for a confirm/deny answer, you would recieve a tremendous ammount of responces marked “confirmed”.

So along comes President Obama. He says: “Holy crap. People think I’m running a country full of jerks. Well… I know I’m not, so I’m gonna try and fix that”.

And then he won the Nobel Peace Price. He didn’t even do all that much. He just admitted that it was an issue and started working towards fixing it. And the rest of the world went “FINALLY! Someone with some power over there noticed”.

So when you ask yourself: “Why did President Obama win the Nobel Peace Prize?” the answer is this: “If President Obama were alone in a room, and he coughed to cover up a fart… that single gesture would be more diplomatic than either of President Bush’s terms. Possibly both of them combined.”

And whether you like that statement or not, or whether you agree with it… there’s an awful lot of truth to it. And it’ll hopefully result in your country being percieved better, and your life improving. So be thankful.