An the Nobel Prize Goes to ...

Harold Printer.

Harold Printer, writer and political activist.

His most notable works date to the 1960s and 1970s. He is an Englishman. He is very ill with only months to live, if that.

So one would expect he would use his probable last moments in the spotlight to be a voice of calm in this turbulent world. Or perhaps to speak of peace, love and understanding. Maybe he would use the time to reflect on contributions to world peace he might have made.

No, he spent 46 minutes of a taped acceptance speech to spew bitter hate-filled rhetoric at the United States.

I surfed around blogdom a little last night and noticed blog after blog written with the same vehement rhetoric. One that I found particularly interesting was written by a South African who was extremely defensive when a non-South African made a rather non-controversial statement about her country. So defensive that she seemed to run out of vocabulary pretty quickly as she resorted to calling the person vile names within just a few words.

What was interesting about her diatribe against the visitor to her blog was that her blog was primarily focused on the great evils of the United States and Americans. I should write 'dumb Americans', to use her eloquent words.

Her logic? If you aren't a South African you have no right to critize South Africa or say anything about it for that matter. If you aren't a citizen of the United States, you have an obligation to verbally beat the living daylights out of the US and citizens of the US at every opportunity.

Another blog I thought was particularly pathetic was written by an American citizen lamenting the fact that she is an American citizen. She made statements about feeling 'culturally deprived' as an American. Culturally deprived? Which culture is she deprived of? Asian culture? South American culture? Which? I'm sure she means European culture.

Meet the United States of America - the world's whipping boy. Take a shot, it's free, it's easy and guarenteed no consequences for whatever you have to say.

I understand why people do that. People don't want to lose their own cultures, they want to retain their own languages, of course. A powerful, wealthy nation is a threat to those things. Their cultures, their native languages. We could easily get way too homogeneous for anyone's taste. Our differences are our strength and with instant information, we are losing our diversity. Fortunately, 'we the people' of the United States of America don't want to destroy other cultures. But the fear of it happening anyway is there, and rightfully so. It happens with no one meaning for it to happen. We are big, wealthy and strong. We are hated for that.

Meanwhile, Nobel Prize for Art, Literature and Politics winner, Harold Printer will leave as his virtual last words a legacy of divisiveness, hate and bitterness towards a nation that's not his own.

Frieden