Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
09 October 09
The news that President Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize seems like a prize bit of satire, like Chicago getting the Olympics. “Are you laughing or crying,” wrote a reader to me. “Neither. I’m thinking about what this tells us about the world today,” I responded.
Then I checked over and over and over again on the Internet and called up several people just to make sure that this wasn’t a satire, that some new type of computer virus hadn’t infiltrated my software that would make fools of anyone credulous enough to believe this hoax.
And then I realized that it makes perfect sense.
It was considered a big joke when people quoted Woody Allen, the American comedian and film director, as saying, that showing up is eighty percent of success. (Allen says he doesn’t remember ever having said that.) With Obama the percentage is considerably higher.
But after all the mocking or cheering, what this shows is that we live in the world now not of realism but of imagination and wishful thinking. The Nobel Committee even said that it gave the prize not because Obama has done anything but that they support him. They want him to do something.
In the past, the ancestors of Westerners had to work hard, most lived in grinding poverty, faced wars and famines. Remember the proletariat? Remember the slums?
But now they—or at least not only the elites who govern but also the masses of the upper middle class that make and shape the news—are living off the fat of the land. In America, even slum-dwellers usually have hi-tech music devices, expensive sports’ shoes among the young, and other consumer goods far beyond Third World living standards.
Is it an accident that according to the UN Human Development Index, Norway, once the home of starving farmers and fishermen, is number one in the whole world in terms of living standards. While the Norwegians did some of it themselves, a lot comes from the exploitation of oilfields off their coasts, unearned wealth.
And the left, no longer is champion of the actual poor and downtrodden, they just talk about it a lot, then party with the dictators who keep their people in those conditions. In good Marxian fashion they pursue their own interests: bigger government and grant programs to give them high-paying jobs and to provide for their needs; the feeling of being a good and moral person even when those they are supporting are terrorists.
To a large extent, too, those who govern—as in the times of aristocratic rule—don’t actually produce anything, or at least not anything but words, concepts, proposals, programs, and statements. The old American slang for this is that they’ve never met a payroll. Some of them have, but the money came from either government or foundations. They know about selling an idea but not manufacturing or selling three-dimensional objects.
Meanwhile, the resource base is narrowing, at least in Europe, and societies are living beyond their means. Crime is rising; terrorism and mass violence is peeking out. Proportionately large sections of proportionately large immigrant populations may not want to integrate. But to adjust to these facts makes the voters unhappy and so everyone pretends otherwise. Don’t worry, be happy is a theme which wins a lot of backing.
In all of this context, feeling good is more important than doing good. Doing good may involve doing gritty things, like building factories to employ people at higher wages (uh, oh, environment, man-made global warming, nasty developers demonized in films) or to work real hard in school or start a small business and slave away at it (what are you, Asian?) or to fight in wars against totalitarian foes (and what if you hit a civilian by mistake when your enemies are shooting them on purpose or hiding behind them?)
Then I checked over and over and over again on the Internet and called up several people just to make sure that this wasn’t a satire, that some new type of computer virus hadn’t infiltrated my software that would make fools of anyone credulous enough to believe this hoax.
And then I realized that it makes perfect sense.
It was considered a big joke when people quoted Woody Allen, the American comedian and film director, as saying, that showing up is eighty percent of success. (Allen says he doesn’t remember ever having said that.) With Obama the percentage is considerably higher.
But after all the mocking or cheering, what this shows is that we live in the world now not of realism but of imagination and wishful thinking. The Nobel Committee even said that it gave the prize not because Obama has done anything but that they support him. They want him to do something.
In the past, the ancestors of Westerners had to work hard, most lived in grinding poverty, faced wars and famines. Remember the proletariat? Remember the slums?
But now they—or at least not only the elites who govern but also the masses of the upper middle class that make and shape the news—are living off the fat of the land. In America, even slum-dwellers usually have hi-tech music devices, expensive sports’ shoes among the young, and other consumer goods far beyond Third World living standards.
Is it an accident that according to the UN Human Development Index, Norway, once the home of starving farmers and fishermen, is number one in the whole world in terms of living standards. While the Norwegians did some of it themselves, a lot comes from the exploitation of oilfields off their coasts, unearned wealth.
And the left, no longer is champion of the actual poor and downtrodden, they just talk about it a lot, then party with the dictators who keep their people in those conditions. In good Marxian fashion they pursue their own interests: bigger government and grant programs to give them high-paying jobs and to provide for their needs; the feeling of being a good and moral person even when those they are supporting are terrorists.
To a large extent, too, those who govern—as in the times of aristocratic rule—don’t actually produce anything, or at least not anything but words, concepts, proposals, programs, and statements. The old American slang for this is that they’ve never met a payroll. Some of them have, but the money came from either government or foundations. They know about selling an idea but not manufacturing or selling three-dimensional objects.
Meanwhile, the resource base is narrowing, at least in Europe, and societies are living beyond their means. Crime is rising; terrorism and mass violence is peeking out. Proportionately large sections of proportionately large immigrant populations may not want to integrate. But to adjust to these facts makes the voters unhappy and so everyone pretends otherwise. Don’t worry, be happy is a theme which wins a lot of backing.
In all of this context, feeling good is more important than doing good. Doing good may involve doing gritty things, like building factories to employ people at higher wages (uh, oh, environment, man-made global warming, nasty developers demonized in films) or to work real hard in school or start a small business and slave away at it (what are you, Asian?) or to fight in wars against totalitarian foes (and what if you hit a civilian by mistake when your enemies are shooting them on purpose or hiding behind them?)
(Continue)
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