Let's hope Obama can help
In Europe, quite a few people stayed up to watch the U.S. election. Almost all of them (I hype it only a little!) wanted Barrack Obama to win. There are two principal reasons for this:
President Obama is a black man. Most Europeans are convinced, still, that black people are treated very badly in the States. Discrimination was dealt a fatal (almost) blow during the '60s when we (yes, I was there) were marching all over the country singing “We shall overcome," and racism is today a much smaller issue than it used to be, although that hasn't really sunk in over here.
So, the Europeans wanted Obama to win and win big.
Secondly, Mitt Romney is filthy rich. That he has earned his money by hard work and wise investments carries little weight in Europe. In America, a millionaire is respected; in Europe he is despised. People are envious and prone to think that financial prosperity should go to me, not anybody else. In the United States people say, there goes a millionaire, which I'm to become tomorrow. In Europe it is rather: There goes a millionaire. What crime did he commit?
Romney, in other words, was despised by many Europeans for being so rich.
So, the Europeans voted (if only in their minds) for Obama. They hardly studied the issues and very few took the trouble to read newspapers or watch television or the Internet, which is the new way. It is, I would have to admit, surprising how a lack of knowledge colors the so-called debate in all the European countries. The U.S. is still a continent very far away. One realizes the importance of it—and resents it. Americans: fat guys who talk too loud and have too much money. And who are also against black people.…
So, well and good. As far as Europe is concerned, the right man won. The fact that China—about a billion people bigger than the U.S.—had a kind of election at almost the same time, didn't register. The names Xi and Li are hardly household words in Britain, France or Sweden. In fact, they are hardly known at all. Neither, it seems, do people discuss the fact that the second superpower—China!—is in fact a cruel dictatorship. (The Soviet union is almost forgotten around here.)
So, the Europeans are satisfied. The right man won in the U.S. and who cares who wins in China? The main thing now is to get the economies of the European countries going again. That’s going to be very hard, but there is no way to escape a long time of hard work and hardship.
Let us hope Obama can help.…
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World Reporter
Ulf Nilson, World reporter since his first assignments to Hungary in 1956. Correspondent and Sweden’s man in America for 20 years, Ulf Nilson is still a regular columnist in Sweden’s daily Expressen, and regular contributor in Nordstjernan. He has authored or co-authored over fifty books. He lives in southern France or at his beloved Värmdö, just 30 minutes north of Stockholm. He
• covered the US, including Vietnam during the war years
• marched in the civil rights marches
• interviewed Martin Luther King
• met presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and George H. W. Bush
• and, as one of Sweden’s most well-known journalists, also met with every politician, industry leader or cultural personality—all the movers and shakers of Sweden through five decades of a proliferate professional life.
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