Okay you heard, America elected a black man as president. Pretty cool. I am sure you are proud of us and look at us in a nicer way.
Now it is your turn. For years it has been up to us to get better. Time for you all to look into the mirror. If America can do it, why can’t your backwards little burgs get their act together?
Are you from China? Tell your unelected dictator Hu Jintao to appoint an ethnic TIBETAN to the ruling committee. Oh yeah, forgot, you cannot tell your government anything but “Thank you sir, may I have another…”
Are you from Great Britain? What are the chances that an Irish-Catholic girl in Ulster will ever be Queen one day? The chances, uh, oh yeah, those chances are… ZERO. I don’t think Irish are even allowed in for tea at Buckingham, let alone anywhere near the mantle of power.
Lots of Turks in Germany. Any chance one of them sits at the head of the Reichstag? How hard is it for a hopeful Muslim man in a country where the conservatives are called “Christian Democrats”?
So over in Russia there is a chance that a Chechnyan separatist will reform the country’s Moscow-centered top-down bureaucracy, right? Oh hell no, who are you fooling or what would Vlad Pootin be smoking?
Maybe Mexico will let some of its massive indigenous population have a say in one of the many state-controlled industrial conglomerates. Ha ha ha ha, sorry, that was just too over the top.
Power concedes nothing, which is why the election of Barack Obama stands as the ultimate manifestation of the power of the people. I say “ultimate” because I have absolutely NO faith in the rest of the world becoming as great as America is about to be. We the People are in charge and all of you can sit and watch, but it will be in envy now, from now on, and not in the least bit of smug superiority or smug anything.
For all of the impact that this historic moment will have on America, we finally get to turn the mirror back and make all of you look into it. From the Middle East‘s murderous misogyny to Japan’s mythology of the Chrysanthemum Throne symbolizing a people descended from god separate from the other members of the human race to the fact that almost every single country represents an elite people that are often no longer even in the majority in their own back yards… well it is time for a serving of SHUT UP when it comes to commenting on the ills of America, because we just took one hell of a step into moving past our once-intractable shame. We are getting on with it while the often centuries-old tragedies of your social structures remain unconfronted. Enjoy the view of the mirror that the American people now hold up to you.
Sincerely,
America, home of the brave.