Politics – A wrap

In what was a record vote in the US, I was absent.  I’m not far from the results given the level of coverage around the world last night and continuing today.  It was a funny thing last night; I was sitting at a Korean BBQ place in Vancouver with my new flatmate and her two friends from Jersey.  I was pretty happy with the results prior to heading out to dinner, last I saw Obama had a good lead and I was thinking there was still a chance for McCain to comeback, but it was going to be really tough (No I wasn’t rooting for him). 

As we got our first round of hot sake, a fellow patron of the restaurant stood up and calmly announced that Obama had won the election (damn iPhone users for having access to information faster than me).  We toasted our new president and went about our dinner.  It wasn’t until I was looking at the returns when I got home later in the evening, well pretty late into the evening to be honest, that it really hit me.  This is history in the making; from the beginning I had an inkling of doubt that somehow McCain would win and we had the chance to continue down the same road we’ve been traveling for the last eight years.  The possibility of a traveled and truly international human to become our next president was almost a dream come true to someone like me.  You get a different perspective on the world when you live elsewhere for a length of time.  You realize that it’s not just about you and your country anymore; it’s about the global community we are all part of and it’s out duty as a human to look out for each other.

We as a nation had forgotten that we’re part of something bigger and our borders are not meant to define us, we define ourselves on how we interact with the rest of the world.  We can be a bully and have everyone fear us and have no respect, or we can be a true leader and use our people to the best of our ability to bring the world together.