12 1/2 months ago, I stepped foot on American soil for the first time in over a year. I wasn’t wearing a flag lapel pin, and my passport had stamps from some rather unseemly countries (Turkey, the Emirates, Malaysia, to name a few), my hair was long, and I was going to live at home. But I knew then that, even though I had just finished a trip around the world, with experiences that I’m only now starting to understand, I was starting a far grander journey.
The journey to change America.
Last night, we took a powerful first step in that direction.
I travel with a slightly different perspective than most travelers. The world is a patchwork of disparate peoples, each with their own dynamic and fascinating history – and I only wanted to tap into this great collective of knowledge. So I went, from the picturesque battlefields of Gallipoli, where the seeds were planted that led to the great ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia only a decade ago. I visited the remote kingdom of Nepal, where the rapidly changing weather patterns were wreaking havoc on subsidence crops (a precursor to the food crisis today, I now realize).
I realized what power I had – I was from America. Six years of Bush had taken it’s toll on me, but I still believed that I could make a different. I just hadn’t tried hard enough.
Change isn’t easy. And last night, we took our first step towards Change we can believe in, and for the world, an America they can look up to once again. The next step – beating John McCain.
