How do you like Obama being elected?
I asked my roommate this question, and she answered in a tone of total suspecion “I don’t believe it is true”. And she went on and explained, “America only elected a black person only to show ‘equality’. I don’t think this guy will ever have any real power.”
A blogger Hecaitou, whose blog has a very wide readership among Chinese people, also wrote on his blog that:
If every race create an image of God in their color, this year it happens that a black God is on duty.
A reader also commented on one of my previous Chinese blog post on campaigning that “Maybe the next president has already been decided, and the whole campaign and election thing is only a planned show.”
Maybe some of these were just kidding, but I really wondered why so many people have suspicion whether an election that has changed the world (indeed) is true. In this country, so many people refuse to talk about politics (event to think about it at all), subconciously doubt anything that looks slightly idealistic (for example an idealistic & passionate candidate being elected because people are moved by him rather than only because of his African-descent). And many people just think some natural things are too good to be true.
I really wondered why and didn’t came across an answer to this until I read what Barack Obama wrote in his book “the Audacity of Hope”:
It signaled a cynicism not simply with politics but with the very notion of a public life, a cynicism that … had been nourished by a generation of broken promises.
This is an answer how he won the election as well as why are there so many politically cynical people here in China: how could you believe all campaigning, running, debating is nothing but a well-planned show, how could you believe that a president of such a big country as USA is really elected by ordinary people like the next door grandpa or downstairs grocer when your kid die because of chemical-tainted milk-powder and you can’t even resort to any court for justice?
