"If anyone is still out there who doubts that America is a place where anything is possible [...] tonight is your answer." In case you have been living in outer space, it is probably hard not to have heard these words in the past week.
I'll be the first to admit: until it was absolutely certain that Barack Obama had won the presidential election in the US, I was among those who doubted it was going to happen And if we are really honest: who was truly convinced that we would see the first Afro-American rise to power in 2009?
If anything, this result simply proves, as far as I'm concerned, that the US are indeed a country where anything is possible. Where extremes meet. A country that most (all?) Europeans simply can't grasp. A country where the gap between rich and poor is immense at times. Where stardom and oblivion live next to each other. And where still everybody, despite the differences, rallies behind the stars and stripes.
Meanwhile, the majority of people on this globe seem very enthusiastic about Obama being elected. Yes, that includes me, I guess. Expectations run so high, however, that I wonder if he cannot but fail to live up to them. I wonder how one deals with that kind of pressure.
What do you think when you are told that you are to be the next president of the United States? How does it make a man feel? What do you think when you see yourself in the mirror, brushing the teeth or shaving the chin of the president elect? Is it possible this does not make you freak out from time to time?
Note: It's already been a long time since my last Strange folk post. This does not mean, however, I lost interest in the one country about which I am not absolutely certain I want to go there or not. Funny detail: the people who appeared in my last Strange folk post, where in Belgium only a few weeks ago. It was great seeing them again!
