How large is the stage you stand upon? Do you define yourself in terms of the town you live, the country you reside or the planet that travels beneath your feet?
I've traveled some. I've moved around a bit. I've lived in different parts of the world.
I specifically come from a land that seems to naturally define itself with hyphens: French-Canadian, Irish-Canadian, Haitian-Canadian. We are a collective that travels the earth, hikes the trails, climbs the mountains, and goes "back home" to the "old country". We tend to do it with a smile on our face, politeness in our voice and a little maple leaf flag sewn onto our backpack or pinned to our lapel.
I'm more generally, though, from a collection of groups, a loose affiliation, commonly known as The West.
We are truly the lucky ones. We've been born or we've moved into a franchise that promotes tolerance, peace, equity and order. We are proud of our freedoms and we fight hard to keep them - we have activists at home trying to bring awareness to our domestic injustices and we have soldiers, teachers, doctors and aid workers in the towns of foreign lands trying to bring order and western civilization to places that haven't yet come out of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In the west, something special is happening right now.
Filtering through the hyperbole is not easy, but if you think deeply enough about it, there it is in its naked form. It is incredible. And although we will all benefit, only some of us can influence how this is going to turn out.
We have just witnessed the son of a foreigner, born into a broken home and modestly raised, accept the nomination to stand for the election to the top post in the free world.
In front of millions of people from around the world, we watched Barack Obama accept his fate and take responsibility for ours.
We may have heard that this is a historic moment, a once in a generation opportunity. Is it really?
Elections come regularly. Every few years we have a chance to "throw the bums out" or "give them a bit more time". So is this time really special? Sure, Barack is a good speaker, has excellent scholarship and some good ideas, but so do many leaders of all sorts of organizations big and small.
So is this special? Is this important?
Throughout the 20th century, we lived in a time of conflict. We've engaged in hot wars and cold ones, direct engagements and through proxies. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, we were told of a New World Order, but weren't told of the power vacuum that was created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. From an industrial point of view, China stepped up to take a prominent position, and from the militaristic point of view, our new enemy was not a state, but a state of mind.
This philosophy started attacking us a few years ago. They attacked non-conventional targets using non-conventional means and they killed a lot of people. Most of their efforts were small squirmishes in far away lands, away from the prying eyes of our cameras; the attack on New York wasn't.
The September 11th attack was a direct hit on the hearts and minds of everyone who lives in free and democratic societies. I'm sure it scared the bejeevers out of everyone else.
From one perspective, a relatively unknown terrorist group attacked a couple of buildings geographically sitting within the borders of the United States of America. Looking at it a different way, a philosophy that represents an older, more traditional way of life, attacked the heart of the way of life of the most fortunate of us that live on this spherical pile of dirt.
We responded exactly the way that was predicted.
Nations from around the world loaded up their ships and their planes with people and bombs, we sailed for distant shores, then we retaliated with everything we had.
For a time, we were focused on one thing and one thing only - hitting back at the zealots that hurt us in New York. Fighting a philosophy is a hard thing, but what happened next was unexpected and exposed a deep rooted corruption to our system, our way of life.
Through our inaction, our ignorance and our arrogance, we allowed the leaders of the most powerful nation on earth to launch a new war to settle old scores.
We sat on our hands and watched in disbelief as a corrupt government successfully executed a plan to convince their people that this new war was important, and most heinously, was related to the one that was currently being fought against the philosophy that was previously incubated in the desolate state of Afghanistan.
Most of the western world rejected this war. Most of the traditional western allies said no. Most of the leadership of the free world sat on their hands. But none of the western leadership stopped the invasion of Iraq.
How could we? Canadians don't vote in US elections. Neither do the French. Neither do the Germans. Neither do most of the western world's inhabitants. Sadly, the English felt they owed the United States this indiscretion.
Unfortunately, our imperfect system has some imperfections that are hard to overcome.
When it came to Iraq, the majority of the people that do control the leadership of the western world, failed to stop an abomination and perversion of the things that we hold most important to our existence. By allowing the administration of the United States to launch a war in Iraq, the people of the United States took a stroll into the Garden of Eden and came out with apple juice all over their fig leaves.
America has always had the best marketing. Usually the United States is benign and generous and thoughtful and deserving of its unintended role in the leadership of the west, but these last few years have taught us all something - the United States can be corrupted from within and the people of the United States can be manipulated and used. None of us is perfect and the United States is no different, but when it is being managed by corrupt and incompetent leadership, the United States can be a mean-spirited drunk.
Which brings us to last night.
via New York Times
Last night, Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party to stand for election for the Presidency of the United States, and the leadership of the western world.
Obama represents more than just a clean break from the policies of the last administration. He speaks strongly about the restoration of a just society. He encourages all people to dream about a better future and to dream big. He represents an America that won't only be different, but one that aspires to be worthy of leadership.
If it is fair to say that the last 8 years represents the worse fears of America realized, then Barack Obama represents the best hero that America could put forward to repair the damage done.
The world wants to forget these last few years. We are tired of this hangover. We want to advance into the future and progress our societies and civilization beyond where we are today.
The world needs Obama. We need him more than he needs us.
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