Apparently I never published the below - so here it is:
Last night, Barack Hussein Obama was reelected for his second term as our President. Leading up this election, I have felt a great deal of sorrow, anger, disillusionment and overall cycism with regard to our political system and our prospects for the future as a nation. I had formerly been an avid supporter of Obama, but watching him fight to win this election...the ads, the debates, the manipulations...I found myself deeply disappointed in him and I wondered if he wasn't just like all the rest, just with darker skin and better rhetoric. I considered not voting at all. And if after I went to the polls and cast my vote for Obama, I was still unclear as to my reasons for even going, being that a) I live in one of the 41 states where my vote doesn't matter (it's a Blue state, period) and b) I think our whole political system is so broken that it doesn't really matter who wins, and c) I believe that until there is a massive paradigm shift in the way we relate to one another as individuals, diverse peoples, and nations politics are pretty much irrelevant because the government will continue to be a reflection of "Me! Me! Me!" ideology. I just knew that Mitt Romney struck me as another arrogant, self-righteous, money-centered, and narrow-minded (did I mention arrogant?) and I would be sad to see America fall back into that tired, stagnant mindset - so for whatever it was worth, I cast my vote against it.
But as I sat watching the election coverage (hours after our power had finally been restored - a whole 9 days after hurricane sandy!), I started to read about Obama, more than I ever had before. I voted for the first time around, but truth be told, when he won that election the most meaningful aspect of it for me at the time was what it meant for America to be able to elect a black president. I also believed he was a man of real integrity - but that was most of what I knew about him.
I wont go into all the things I learned about him both biographically and policy-wise, but I will see that between what I read and his beautiful acceptance speech, I found myself once again hopeful for this nation. It is one thing to elect someone like Obama once; but is another to confirm, with a considerable majority, that he is the direction this country wants to continue to move in - despite a still very sick economy.
So I sit here and I reflect about what has changed in America since George Bush Jr. was elected 12 years ago, when I was not yet old enough to vote. I think I had just recently gotten my first cell phone at that time. People were just starting to get DSL internet, changing over from the old dial-up modems. Dawson's Creek was still on - which I'm pretty sure was the first show for teenagers that portrayed teenagers living in a world where teen sex, masturbation, and homosexuality were no longer taboo. And now here we are, 12 years later, and we live in a world where everyone has a smart phone, there is at least one personal of color on every sitcom, and gay marriage and medical marajuana are now legal in several states. By the time the next presidential election comes around, my niece, who has never known a world without lightning fast internet, who's generations biggest heartthrob is somewhat racially ambiguous (I'm talking about Taylor Lautner here), and who will have grown up with a black president, will be old enough to vote.
So what is my point with all of this? Well, maybe this age of Information that we live in now will lead to more than just narcissitic, social media addicted fat kids who never go outside to play. Maybe the fact that the internet and all its knowledge and exposure it provides is so accessible, even in Kansas, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Mississippi (and all those other bright Red states), is causing a real change in those spending the first 1/3 of their lives in the U.S. Maybe the Mitt Romney's of the world really are a dying breed because when they are gone, the children/grandchildren will know too much to follow blindly in their footsteps. I'm not talking here about fiscal policy, I'm talking about a vision for the future. A generation that considers diversity perfectly natural. Maybe even one that views education and (dare I say) healthcare, as necissities that should be available to everyone. Maybe they will be a generation who will have witnessed a deep recession and the mistrust of financial instituitions that resulted, as well movements like Occupy Wall Street, and they will have a different point of view about greed and America's class system then those before them.
Maybe, just maybe, we are on the verge of that massive paradigm shift so many of us have been dreaming of...
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