Yes we can!

I can stop pretending to be Canadian now! Yessss!

Seriously, you have no idea what it's been like living as an American expat the last five years, as America has launched an unnecessary war, kidnapped and imprisoned innocent people without trial, tortured its prisoners... These things should be shameful to every American, but when you're a foreigner, that shame is magnified by the tendency of others to associate you with the actions of your homeland.

I am so proud of us. We've elected a black man named Barack Hussein Obama to be our president, sending a clear message to the pundits and commentators who have spent the last twenty months telling us that we were too racist and xenophobic to ever do such a thing: We are better, more thoughtful, more mature than that. We've elected a government with a mandate for the creation of universal health care, which will finally remedy the ludicrous situation that links Americans' access to affordable, quality health care to our employment. We've repudiated the trickle-down pseudoscience that has informed our recent economic policy. And most importantly to me, we've put a thoughtful, intelligent, curious human being in the White House.

I know the next four years won't be as good as Obama and his supporters hope. But I think we've just elected a president that will make me proud to tell people where I'm from. I know I'm proud tonight. Go us.