You’d think that winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a good thing.

You’d think it, but you might be wrong. Unless you’ve been camping out in a concrete bunker for the last several weeks (likely waiting the Liberal Apocalypse that will come when all people receive free health care and turn into a rampaging zombie army), you know that our president, Barack Obama, won hisself the Nobel Peace Prize.

You also might possess the sentiment that somehow, this isn’t deserved. Or it’s premature. Or that he should decline it. Oh, the indignation! Fie! Fie on Barack Obama and a handful of Norwegians!

Man, what a bunch of assholes we are. Oh, shit, sorry! Sorry that the Nobel committee didn’t call on you, John Q. Cock-n-Fist, to see if you thought this year’s nominee would deserve the award. You know, I’d bet half the smacked-asses who feel it necessary to wade in with this argument don’t even know what the Nobel Peace Prize is. They damn sure don’t know who’s won it in the past. (If they did, they’d probably shit in their hats.) Smart money says they can’t even spell the name. (Newsflash, it isn’t Noble, it’s Nobel.)

How cynical we’ve become. The guy — our president, the guy who represents us on the global stage — gets a big award, and we just want to poop on it? People. People. He’s us. We won the fucking award. Not just him. Us! It signals an American return to prominence, a vote for idealism, a vote for that silly hope thing that people once used to possess and that our current president claims to embody. Over the last eight years the country maybe wasn’t swirling the drain, but we had certainly pulled up the stopper. And yet, even with that in mind, I don’t think it’s exactly fair to say he won it because he’s “not George Bush.” Really? Is that how cynical we’ve become?

I grow weary of this meme going around that our president hasn’t done anything. He’s done more in his first nine months than some president have accomplished in four years. And winning the Nobel is as much about what he’s accomplished (diplomacy, the start of healing race relations, a call to end nuclear proliferation) as it is the potential for what he can accomplish in his remaining three years. You know what you can do? Start passing around the meme that our president has done all kinds of shit. List his accomplishments. (I was going to suggest that you make stuff up — “Remember when Obama liberated the Gill-Men by negotiating a treaty with the Star Ponies?” — but I guess that would undercut the message that he’s done real stuff.)

I’ll say it again: what assholes we are! The guy has the crud-fuckiest job in the history of jobs. (And I don’t even know what “crud-fuckiest” means, other than it suggests the fucking of crud.) And we want to give him the finger? “Hey, Obama, here’s a country where the economy is a greasy turd sliding down the toilet bowl. We torture. We’re mired in two wars. The world hates us. Health care costs are killing everybody — what a fun irony! We wantonly choke the environment. Conservatism is a dream. The government had unprecedented power to fuck with its own citizens. Iran wants the bomb. North Korea wants the bomb. Israel wants to bomb everybody who might get the bomb because they secretly have the bomb already. Al Qaeda wants us dead. The Taliban is resurgent. Our children are getting stupider. Science has taken a backseat to religion. This all happened in the last eight years. You have nine months to clean it all up. If it isn’t fixed in nine months, we’re going to be super-pissed! Good luck, you poor bastard!”

Everything’s not magically fixed with a wave of his pixie wand, and we’re mad? Even though everything’s in motion? Even though he’s masterfully spinning like, a thousand plates to try to patch up the holes in our sinking ship, and we’re going to throw cans at his head? Christ. It can take like, two years just to get a movie through development or build a fucking city park and we’re all sassed because he hasn’t flown around the planet like Superman and turned back time in less than a year?

What assholes we are.

You know what this is like?

Let’s say you’re the passenger in a car, sitting next to the driver, and you decide that the best course of action is to start smacking him in the face repeatedly. Whack whack whack! You’re smacking him in the mouth, in the eyes, in the nose. Whack whack whack! Hey, you know what? As it turns out, it’s hard to drive a car when the passengers are hitting you in the face.

I don’t agree that you can’t criticize a president. I don’t agree that it’s unpatriotic to disagree, or even to dislike the president. I do think it’s unreasonable to hold the president to some mythic, golden standard, however, especially when we let the last guy throw up in the hot tub and take a drunken whizz on the Constitution, though. I do think it’s counter-productive to sandbag the dude who’s carrying our hopes and dreams on his bowing back.

I don’t agree that the GOP is “siding” with the terrorists by criticizing Obama’s Nobel win. (The Taliban banned opium production once, which is arguably a good thing. Because I believe it was a good thing, am I a Talibani cleric? Probably not.) I do think it’s bad gamesmanship, and is  further proof that the GOP is growing incapable of demonstrating honor and fairness. I do think the GOP/RNC shows its true colors by not saying something like, “We congratulate the president and hope he uses it as a mandate to turn this country around.”

This guy is our leader. He’s us right now. He’s driving the boat. Don’t kill the boat captain unless you know how to drive the goddamn boat.

Let me paint for you another scenario:

We criticize Obama until we’re blue in the face. We turn public sentiment against him because he doesn’t shit unicorns and because his smile can’t fix everything. Instead of constructing, we demolish. Come the next election cycle, we limit or overturn the Democratic majority. And in the next cycle after that, maybe we lose Obama himself. And we get… very possibly Jeb Bush. Or Sarah Palin. Or Glenn Beck acting as Lambchop to Dick Chaney’s Shari Lewis (hand up ass and everything). Is that what you want? Then keep on slagging. Keep on gnawing away at the administration’s efforts like a battalion of hungry termites. Our goal is to challenge our president to do good things. Our goal is to keep up the pressure. Criticism must be tempered with solution. What happened to us? We’ve been gutted, our scarecrow bodies stuffed with the itchy hay of disappointment and cynicism, and if we can’t find a way to turn that around, to embrace realism and optimism instead of cynicism, we’re fucked. We might as well bend over and let all kinds of foreign objects get shoved in our eager, open asses.

What’s the mandate, here?

Let’s stop being a bunch of assholes.

(Reading materials: Andrew Sullivan and Joan Walsh.)

(Also, apologies for making far too little sense with this rambly screed. I have a head full of treacle; I’m trying desperately to punch this cold in the throat and make a break for freedom. I’m almost there! Freeeedoooom!)