Just before midnight on election night 2008 I’m scolded by a Starbucks manager for attempting to interview one of his employees–a Latvian teen wearing a plastic Uncle Sam top hat and a red, white, and blue lei around his neck. People are eating free Subway sandwiches and Burger King fries and whoppers and dancing to a cover band belting out Johnny Cash songs.

A young guy with a mohawk and an American flag painted on the side of his head bumps into me and spills my coffee at around 1am. I turn to ask Chris, a guy in his early 60s married to a woman from Manhattan, how important he thinks this election is for Brits. “The US is like a video game that we Brits like to watch”, he tells me. “We don’t understand it one bit, but we’re fascinated.”

The full story at Intelligent Life