Obama’s first 100 days
I might take up a few more minutes than you announced, because I really want to respond to what was just said (reacting on students) But before doing this I need to tell you why I am inspired by Barack Obama, and have been inspired by him for a number of years.
Gelegenheid: Dialogue on democracy, 100 days Obama
I was fortunate enough to be allowed to review his books when they were published. And if you read those books, everything he has written until now is about one question. The question is: ‘who am I?’ On the basis of this question he positions himself in his environment, in his family, in his community, in his country and from there he started developing a storyline from his past to the present, to the future.
His books are an open invitation to readers to do exactly the same with their own story as he did. And I think the first thing we can learn from this approach is to try and redevelop our own storylines. Because I think that one of the problems in European society, in Dutch society today, is that we have become very much focussed on ourselves as individuals and we have forgotten to create storylines in which we relate to other people and to our own history. And if you don’t know your own history you’re like a child lost in today.
A famous Italian writer, Claudio Magris, once told me that if you would ask a child playing with his toys to answer the following question: ‘you’re going to die in ten minutes, what will you do in your last ten minutes?’ A child would look up and say: ‘continue playing with my toys’. Because that is the childs’ universe. And if you are in a society, in a country where we are very much aware of the present, but we have forgotten our environment, our relationship with others and our past, you get exactly the same reaction.
And this is something we see a lot, I believe, in European society today. This is also something we saw a lot in American society until recently. And the traditional methods to create a sense of community, a sense of relationship and political dynamism have gone. President Obama’s biggest invention in my view is that he has found a new way of inventing people to connect to storylines and create a sense of community. I think this is very powerful stuff we need to learn from as Europeans.
If you compare the United States to Europe I think Europe has always been better at organising social security in society. Organised by governments and institutions. America has not been very good in doing that. But America has been much stronger at creating communities. At creating a sense of belonging. To a group, to a church, or other community. And this sense of community is a very powerful tool in the change President Obama has to bring about.
One of our weaknesses as Europeans is that we sort of outsourced the sense of community to governments. And in the last twenty years governments have been retreating. So the outsourcing went to governments and then the governments went outsourcing or retreating itself. Which had as a consequence that we were somewhere lost in this process. And we need to re-find connections in this process without growing back to the old system of oppression of our community. Because that was the situation for the Dutch civil rights society at the end of the sixties.
So my second point of learning from Obama is to look at ways of creating communities. Some of you, some of the students mentioned his new method of communication. If I look at my children, my oldest children are 22 and 20, they are not less idealistic than I was or my generation is. Their actions are completely based on morality, on values. Perhaps even more so than in my generation. But they have completely different forms of expressing and communicating.
And the power of the Obama campaign was finding ways of communicating with people who cannot communicate in the same way and who do not relate to the issues in the same way as we did in the 1980s. And I think we can learn from that as well. If we want to use the opportunities we have as a society, we will have to find different and new ways - the youngest generation will have to do the job - to reconnect to community service, political activity, etcetera. And this is something I also learned from the Obama campaign and the way President Obama has been running its presidency in the first 100 days.
Off course I can talk a long time on the international commitment Of the Obama administration. I was fortunate enough to speak to Hillary Clinton about just that last week. And I also followed the actions of Vice President Joe Biden in Latin America, Secretary Clinton in Mexico and President Obama in Europe. The renewed international engagement is off course an extended hand to the rest of the world which simply cannot be refused. And as Joe Biden said in Chile two weeks ago: “I have two messages. One is good news, the other one is bad news. The good news is, there is change. The bad news is, there’s change.”. With which he meant to say –especially to the Europeans -: You can no longer hide from your responsibility. You can no longer blame everything on Bush and not start doing your bit to change the world now. And I think this is a very powerful message. And it is a wake-up call for us Europeans, because it will mean that we will have to answer a couple of very tough questions.
And now, I will go back to the issues raised here tonight and then connect those to our current society. I’m going to quote someone you might know from a completely different world and it’s a person called Lidewij Edelkoort. Do you know who she is? She is a Dutch trend watcher, very famous for this. All the department stores across Europe use her to predict the next trends. She had an exhibition on trends in Paris a couple of months ago at the Dutch institute in Paris. She describes there the last twenty years in European western society. A period where fear was mounting. Fear of loss of position, fear of loss of relationships, etcetera. Fear has increased the last twenty years. And she says we’re at a tipping point. And I think the Obama election was the best proof of this tipping point.
America had the same build-up of fear. If you’re not with us, you are against us. If they are not your enemy, you’re not my friend. This dichotomy has been stopped by President Obama. Will it stick? We will have to wait and see. Many things could go wrong, but it is change, you see change in attitude. And the question for Europe is: we are at the same tipping point, things are going to change. Are we going to embrace hope, or are we going to fear mongers in our society, in our politics as well?
Now, one of you raised the issue of loyalty and I wanted to mention two things that happened this week in this country. But before I do so I want to quote President Obama. One of the most inspiring moments I experienced in listening to what he was saying the last couple of months, was when the Obama family talked about their first dog. You know the story about the first dog? It had to be of a certain breed because of an allergy in the family, so they had to be careful with which dog to choose. And they were talking about different breeds and then in the end President Obama said: ‘at the end of the day, the pond is full of mutts like me’. The power of that statement, of the President of the United States willing to say: I’m a mutt; I do not belong to this race or to that race. I have two races in me. Combined with the way he confronted his own past, including his loving grandmother’s racism really is a fundamental change in the way people do politics, in the way American society will develop. And this is something we can learn from.
And why is this important for the Dutch context? This week I was very saddened by two things I saw on television and in the newspaper. In a late night show a politician from another party said that Muslim soldiers in thre Dutch armed forces do not have the right to have assistance by an army Imam. He didn’t want army Imams, although he didn’t explain why. He was asked several times why but he didn’t go into this. And then, at some point the interviewer said “but these people are risking their lives for this country. Surely they should have the right to be assisted in their faith by someone.” “Oh no, they can do it privately.” Was his answer. “But you don’t ask this of Catholics or others, why?” “Oh yes, but they have two passports, so they’re not loyal.”
So just imagine… For the first time in a long period of time this sentence really kept me awake at night. You are not loyal. What the hell do you need to say to be loyal to then? When people are willing to give their lives for their country. What you are actually saying is not asking people to be loyal. You just want them to leave the country, because you do not want them in society. And this is something completely different.
Another event I read in Dutch newspapers was an interview of people who vote for mr. Wilders. And they were asked: “Why do you vote for him, what are your views?” And the people said: “well those Moroccans who don’t have a job, put them on a boat and make sure the boat leaks, so when you send them off you’re sure they don’t come back.” Say what?
And this is apparently totally accepted in the public domain in the Netherlands. Nobody says anything, nobody reacts. So we are now in a position that it is accepted that we send people into their deaths as a mean of public policy and nobody contradicts this. Nobody debates about this in Parliament.
It would have been wonderful if only one out of ten journalists who accompanied mr. Wilders to London would have paid some attention to those issues. But apparently we have become so beaten down by the debate in the last couple of years that we’re used to anything. And we are willing to accept anything in the public debate. And I have to say to you frankly, I do not want my children to grow up in a country where this is normal and accepted in the public debate.
Therefore it is time for you and me and other people to step forward, to listen to this message and to speak against people who advocate fear and who are fear mongers. Because I think fear is the losing proposition. Hope is the winning proposition. If we embrace hope in Europe, we’re in the best possible starting position. We’re in a better starting position than the Americans to use the opportunities of the transformation period that we are about to enter.
This is my message for you today; I’m inspired by President Obama. The fact that he got the reception he got, not only by European politicians because American presidents always get a good reception by European politicians. But because of the special reception he got from the European people. In Prague, in Strasbourg, in Kehl, in Turkey, European people embraced this politics and said: yes, we believe in your proposition of hope, we want to be your partner. This is certainly the best proof that we’re at a tipping point and that those who embrace hope and know that fear is a losing proposition will seize the day and also the next couple of years.
Thank you.