Get Off Obama's Back ...second thoughts from Michael Moore

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

Friends,

Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on
Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize.
"No, I don't think so," I replied. I thought it was important to
remind him he's now conducting the two wars he's inherited. "Yeah,"
she said, "but to tell him, 'Now earn it!'? Give the guy a break --
this is a great day for him and for all of us."

I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too
long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could
to crap all over Barack's big day. Did I -- and others on the left --
do the same?

We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these
two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation -- financially and
morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that
money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that
need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving
too slow for most of us -- but he needs to know we are with him and we
stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness
around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch
McConnell?

Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all
need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted.
What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to
get out the vote last November? C'mon! We're the majority now -- the
majority by a significant margin! We call the shots -- and we need to
tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say -- or else.

All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too
quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is
202-456-1414). But don't abandon the best hope we've had in our
lifetime for change. And for God's sake, don't head to bummerville if
he says or does something we don't like. Do you ever see Republicans
behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican
presidents and they still couldn't get prayer in the public schools,
or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security
into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that,
but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came
up nearly empty handed. No wonder they've been driven crazy lately.
They'll never have it as good again as they've had it since Reagan
took office.

But -- do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They
keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering,
we just pack up our toys and go home.

So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere
are celebrating -- that America now has a sane and smart man in the
White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two
daughters.

Many, for the past couple days (yes, myself included), have grumbled,
"What has he done to earn this prize?" How 'bout this:

The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be
the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years
were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man -- a man who opposed the
War in Iraq from the beginning -- offered to end the insanity. The
world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they
watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson light the
fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped off the nations on this
planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years
worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn't attack
us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own
wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.

And if all that wasn't enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the
worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.

So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama
won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him
won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant
Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of
people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief.
It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace
to the world -- and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to
achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every
other nation feel like they had won, too. When you've got billions of
people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a
prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.

One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to
those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination
and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the
Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the
fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded
on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a
hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be
found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio). The fact
that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur
-- and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the
bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as
"Barack Hussein Obama"!) -- is more than reason enough he should be in
Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along
with him. 'Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its
hat to all of us -- we, the American people, had conquered some of our
racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of
our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans -- and poor
whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had
been raised to hate -- we had all seen enough. It was time for change.

Thank you, Barack Obama, for giving us the opportunity to redeem
ourselves. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you
promised to do. We need it. The world needs it.

My prediction for the future? You become the first *two-time* winner
of the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!

Fred (that's Norwegian for "Peace"),
Michael Moore
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MichaelMoore.com

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