Friday, October 09, 2009

Hope

Josh Marshall gives the best description I have read today about what Obama's Nobel Prize signifies:
. . . the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.
Marshall nailed it.
I have been appalled today by some negative and carping commentary from the right and the left.
The prize is a signal about how happy the world is that America doesn't seem to be totally crazy anymore.

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