World Peace, Guilt, Etcetera

We're all familiar with the concept of the "guilt-trip." We ourselves most likely get tripped up a lot; our parents call and ask why we haven't emailed them back yet, or we stand someone up at Foco because our alarm didn't go off, or we miss a class and our prof gives us That Disapproving Look. But apparently the art of guilt-tripping isn't limited to our little college-student world.

No, Sweden'sNorway's giving it a try...

Probably most of you have heard by now that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Some people hate this idea. Some people love it. Some people are too apathetic to care and sit around watching the Simpsons. Yeah.

Me, I'd just like to comment on the fact that guilt trips exist, and on the fact that instead of rewarding past efforts, the Nobel Foundation might be attempting to influence world politics juuust a bit by awarding this prestigious prize to a future peacemaker, President Obama. After all, there're certainly no specific and amazing resolutions that our great president has singlehandedly masterminded in these past eight months. I give him credit for a lot of things, but not ending too too many wars in any spectacular fashion.

So, then, what are the motives of the Nobel Foundation? (There are always ulterior motives, right?) In this case I think those motives may just be a desperate gander at making the world believe that Obama will make peace. I sure hope that he will, and I choose to believe that he will. But I'm just saying- he hasn't done it yet, much.

I don't object to President Obama's reception of the award; I figure that the Nobel Foundation may be right and it may guilt-trip the president into working for peace. It would look pretty bad for our president if he received the prize and then started World War Three (-cough- Iran). And, hey, if giving him the prize makes him choose peace over war, then I'm all for it. We've had enough violence and nuclear proliferation for now.

But we'll just see if this strategy works or not. All I know for sure is that sometimes guilt trips fail (i.e. the little sixth grader trying to stop a bully by invoking conscience and goodwill) and sometimes they succeed (yeah, you should really call your mom more often). I just hope President Obama's a lot more like you than that bully on the playground...