As a writer, regardless of how much you actually write about politics, it's generally a good idea to know what's going on in the world and know what you think about it. Even if you write kids's books or comedy skits or instruction manuals. If you know how to use language and make observations, you're making choices all the time. Choices are decisions. Decisions are based on beliefs or desires or circumstances. Beliefs, desires and circumstances are what politics are all about.

As the entire world now knows, America has a new President-elect.

And now we try to figure out what that means, what it changes, and in what ways it is good, bad, interesting or hilarious.There are jokes going around about how, once again, a black man has been given America's worst job, cleaning up after white people. There are tongue-in-cheek predictions he'll paint the white house black. There are exciting campaign photographs that bring a lump to the throat of the most cynical and the least interested. At the very least, the crowd numbers are impressive.

Now, nobody in the universe completely understands the US election process. Basically: lots of people voted for Obama, including some old people and many young people. CNN did a graph - they've got a graph for everything - showing how as the voters got older, they were less likely to vote for Obama. Somewhere around 66% of young voters voted for him, which is, to use a technical term, totally unheard of.

Something particularly difficult to understand about the American voting process is the concept that more than one thing is being decided at the one time. For instance, if you were voting in California, yesterday, you voted on - among other things - Proposition 8. The result of the Proposition 8 vote is why a lot of people who would be happy in America today, are not. The same goes for Florida and Arizona apparently, although you wouldn't know it from media reports. It's a shame that on a day that will be remembered for bringing different races and creeds together in a spirit of multicultural understanding, it's feeling to some like another battle: between race and sexuality.

All of this is interesting, even if men in suits talking about politics bore the pants off you, because there are a whole lot of young Americans for whom the pants - at least at the moment - are not bored anywhere at all. And all the way over here, in Australia, it feels like we've got a new President.

9 years ago, when I was on exchange in America, Noam Chomsky spoke passionately at my college (Boston College) about the role America had as the world's policeman. This was before 9/11 and before the war. It was a week after the Timorese voted for their independence, with murderous results, which is why we were discussing the world policeman thing.

I put my hand up and asked Chomsky why America As World Policeman wasn't the same as American Imperialism. Since then, I've learned the subtle differences by vurtue of the fact that my worst fears have been demonstrated time and time again. Several times, I've wished the rest of the world could vote in the American election. I think it changes lots of things. Not "just politics" but lots of things.

The day after John Howard was voted out in Australia, I heard the word "multiculturalism" being used on television by an elected official. I was shocked. Previously, the word rendered any subsequent argument obsolete. I actually have to admit to being a bit embarrassed to hear it being used. It had become such a dirty word, such a softie-left-bleeding-heart thing to say, that I wanted the speaker (I can't remember who it was) to qualify it, lest the argument be dismissed. Of course, there was no qualification, and it seems silly now. It's subtle, but language changes because of politics, and vice versa. In fact, language, the right to use it, and the right to be a writer, are all elements of society that people in less liberal societies cannot afford to take for granted. I think it's good to remember that.

By the way, in case those aren't enough links for you: be grateful your job doesn't extend to every aspect of your private life, as this guy's does. Yeesh. All the best to those kids, that's all I can say.