Well for the first time in a long time I am very proud to be an American. I think it is ok to say that you are not proud of some of the things your country does when you believe those things are wrong. In the past eight years I have not been proud of very many things that we have done as a country, in fact I have been down right ashamed of some of the things we have done. We must criticize our government at times we think that very government is taking the people it serves in the wrong direction. I think it is the most patriotic thing you can do as an American, be vigilant and critical of things you disagree with.
I also suspect that many of those people that said it was un-American to be critical of our government at a time of crisis will now begin to criticize unrelentingly. This is to be expected, and for the first time in a very long time I think that we will have an administration and a government that will not only listen to the critics, but take their point of view into account when making serious decisions that affect the entire country.
It was especially interesting and enlightening to have viewed such a critical and important election in our history from abroad. People here and all over the world were pulling for Obama to win, and I think that says something. What we as Americans do in the world affects billions of others around the globe. For the past eight years the world has watched as the United States has engaged in some of the most destructive and careless policy possible.
In electing Barack Obama we have shown the world that we are still capable of being a rational nation, and that we can make the good decisions necessary to lead in this world. I am so happy and proud that I finally had a candidate that I truly wanted to vote for and not just a president that I wanted to vote against. I did not feel as though I was just voting to keep the crazy old angry guy and the idiot governor out of office, but rather voting for the best possible choice to run this country. For the first time in a long time the American people did not have to choose the best of the worst, but we actually voted for the best of the best.
OK, enough of my rant, I promise that all future blogs will at least make an attempt to be humorous.
Kristin and I also went to an election party to watch the results come in. There were about 500-600 people there and we had a great time. I have posted a video of some of the results coming in so you can see what it was like to be an American in London on election night. Sorry for the poor quality and shaky video, I was fairly intoxicated by the time we got any real results, and that created a bad video and an even worse hangover the next day. We stayed up celebrating and drinking champagne until about 4am here. My German friend Andreas was with us to experience the American (or maybe just Perrone) tradition of drinking on election night until the results don't matter because the American people have proven in the past that a little over 50% of them are pretty poor decision makers. This actually was a bad idea, because by the time the results started to come in I was REALLY intoxicated. Now four or eight years ago this approach proved to work pretty well. You see if you get really drunk the results don't matter all that much, you get angry, rant a bit, pop in a frozen pizza, and go to bed. You are even too hung over the next day to listen to Bush talk about "political capital" on MSNBC. Overall it's a great strategy if your candidate doesn't win. So I will take this into consideration for the next election.
For those of you that voted for Obama, thank you!
For those of you that voted for McCain, I guess you now realize that your vote really doesn't count all that much. This is true, and if you choose to abstain from voting from here on out the rest of us will understand. In fact, if I were you I would never vote again.
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