I have to start this off by saying that Barack Obama's win has cleared some dust from my soul. The last time I was so proud of the country of my birth was between 17 and 20 years ago, perhaps because I was looking at a nation I had longed for through my teenage years. The years in uniform and afterward did not have that feel; surrounded by a sea of fellow young people 'on the college program' did little to maintain that feeling.

Tonight, that changed in a very fundamental way. It changed in a way that astounded me. And really, it has very little to do with Barack Obama himself as much as a new trust in the democratic system which I have been revisiting through Alexis de Tocqueville. Where I once was jaded by my former understanding that the United States ran on lobbyists and fickle voting procedures and machines, I became even more jaded over the last 8 years. I could not explain to myself, I could not rationalize, I could make no sense of why my former brothers-in-arms not only risked life and limb but lost them. I could not explain how I could have worked with navigation systems that should have been accurate and how there was so much 'collateral damage'. It made no sense, unless one connects the dots in a way that makes locking one's tapioca pudding in a refrigerator sensible.

And that's uncomfortable.

And then Barack Obama, against all of my own prejudices of the Presidential Elections, somehow managed to not only win - but to dominate the election. How did that happen? I have a few ideas on that which I will let coalesce, but the fact remains that the American people have spoken. Nay. They shouted, they cheered, and they demonstrated that they were above John McCain's campaign tactics. Well, most of America. And when I watched the acceptance speech, I was struck by a deep sense of something which defies words. In fact, that something - whatever it is - defines these words.

The world did not change tonight, as Obama said in his acceptance speech. The change is yet to come, but the potential for that change is here. There are dark days ahead, both in the United States and globally - the economies are eclipsed by their lack of economy; the state of the world is in question through hatred and animosity fueled by a lack of diplomacy; the environment of the world does not pass scrutiny.

So now there is a hope, and as young as I am and as old as I have become, I am struck by this strange word. Hope.

And yet at the core, democracy has demonstrated that it is a powerful force to be reckoned with - that it is possible to effect change through democracy.

And I pity President Elect Obama. He must bear the burden of the changes while protecting the flames of hope that got him elected. The American people have democratically chosen him to not only lead the United States but to break out those community organizer skills for the projects ahead. Why?

Because democracy isn't just voting. There's a lot of work to be done. And, like voting, it requires everyone to do their part. Everyone.

Defining 'everyone' is a bit of a trick as well. Something I will write more about after some sleep.