"Let us not be stingy with our
pleasure; good news is pretty rare these days. And when we use the word "us,"
we mean the near-totality of the rest of the world, who were worried that we
would not be seconded in our passion for Barack Obama by the American voters on
Election Day."
Let us not be stingy with our
pleasure; good news is pretty rare these days. And when we use the word "us,"
we mean the near-totality of the rest of the world, who were worried that we
would not be seconded in our passion for Barack Obama by the American voters on
Election Day.
For once, therefore, Americans
are in step with the rest of the world. Or rather, vice versa, as after all, it
was they who voted ...
OBAMA, JAPAN EXPRESSES ITS LOVE FOR OBAMA
Barack Obama seduced us with
his youth, his charisma, his personal journey and his mixed-race background. He
inspired and gave hope at a time of crisis and disruption. He embodied the
future while his septuagenarian competitor gave off the slightly rancid odor of
the 20th century. Obama exposed the battalions of false-sounding politicians and
focused in a positive way on the issue of transcending race in the United
States and all other places.
The Democratic candidate
performed a personal tour de force by bringing together a majority of Americans. But also, incontestably, he has united an even greater majority of the world's
citizens who "voted" for him in spirit.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
To say the least, the new
president-elect has inspired enormous expectations. For Americans, the priority
is the state of their economy, which was the number one topic of the campaign. But
in the rest of the world he is also expected to follow through with his
promise to break with the Bush era, which is undoubtedly one of the most
disastrous in American history.
Unless we want to be
disappointed, we shouldn't expect sudden changes like an immediate withdrawal from
Iraq, let alone Afghanistan, which are the two fronts at which the American army
is durably embroiled.
But an American
president who would end the messianic unilateralism of the Bush clan, its Manichaeism,
its arrogance, its deceit and its paranoia, who would take the world as it is
to rebuild after this crisis of governance - that would be happy news for the entire world.
[Editor's Note: Manichaeism
was once a religion. Today, it refers to the idea that one's moral superiority
justifies committing immoral acts. It is a moral certitude that one belongs to
the forces of good opposing evil ].
Even such a minimalist approach
would make Barack Obama the mid-wife of a "post-American" world, to
borrow a phrase from the analyst, Fareed Zakaria*. On this election night, we
can still hope ... or dream.
*Fareed
Zakaria is the author of the book The Post-American World.
