The Nobel Peace Prize committee obviously did not consider how awarding President Obama the prize would fan the sparks of political and racial hatred into flames in his own country.

People from both parties are puzzling over how and why he was nominated only two weeks into his administration.  The complaint is that he has not accomplished all that he has set out to do.  Preventing him from any accomplishments is the controlling goal of the GOP at this point,    The GOP and the Taliban condemn awarding the prize to him. 

The Nobel Committee made clear its reason for the prize.  What Obama accomplished was simply not to get drawn down by the undertow of malice. character assassination, and oppression that is the mission of the American right wing.  Instead, his very candidacy brought a new expression of good will and constructive approaches to a world that was under a blanket of belligerence, ethnic and religious hatred, and an obsession with violence as the dominant form of self-expression.  His accomplishment was to shine a benevolent light in the dark age of malevolence.

Some have said that the Nobel award was a direct slap in the face of President Bush.  Bush did not throw the world into the corrosive mire of hopelessness  and despair by himself.  He had the support of politicians and citizens who wanted only to match hatred, belligerence, and violence directed at America in kind.  Obama's election suggested to the world that Americans wanted to focus on reason, good will, and peace, and even while being embroiled in terrorist attacks and wars which were only exacerbating hatred and violence upon innocents, they wanted to try negotiation instead of arms.  Simply put,  the world was given a glimmer of hope.

The Nobel Peace Prize demonstrates the depth to which the world and America had sunk.  America is about evenly divided between those who want to try Obama's way and those who want to revert to oppression and violence as abiding values.


The prize is also an admission that American politics is no longer leading the world in establishing equality, justice, and peace.  The prize seems to express the vague hope that those values can be revived and made operative.