4 more years

Hope. Change.

I was 18 and eligible to vote in 2008, smugly liberal and fanatically in love with Barack Obama. My parents, friends, teachers, everyone was so excited when he was sworn in. Then it happened.

Nothing.

Hope dwindled as change never came.

We’re still killing innocent civilians overseas, spending billions of dollars on a military designed to show off and maintain our colonial power.We’re still sending millions to jail for victimless crimes, exploiting prisoners’ labor and denying their humanity.We’re still trapped in a dominant culture and laws structured by racism, sexism and queerphobia that deny women equal pay and punish the non- and anti-normative.

This is a broken down, morally diseased nation. His re-election means four more years of slightly less evil than Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, hopeless non-change. Still, he’s probably better for the United States than Romney for a few reasons.

First, he isn’t anti-abortion and doesn’t plan to federally defund Planned Parenthood.

Second, he isn’t in favor of a constitutional amendment that limits marriage to the union between man and wife.

Third, he won’t increase military spending.

Finally, he sponsored the DREAM Act, which is a small step forward for U.S. policy on immigrants. Obama at least has the decency to talk like he cares about protecting people and improving the damaged country that is the U.S.

The U.S. is not the hope for the U.S. Neither Obama no Romney are the hope for the U.S. Real hope is found in radical political change, which two-party candidates can’t offer.

I’m 22 and eligible to vote. I almost didn’t.

I had to overcome a lot of ideological turmoil to vote for Obama, conceding that though this country is deadlocked in a partisan struggle for illusory justice, too many more people could be hurt by Romney.

So I voted to re-elect President Barack Obama. I’m not proud of my vote. I’m privileged enough to have spent thousands on my state education, and all my classes have taught me one thing: Humans are interdependent, vulnerable creatures, and we have to take care of each other.

The U.S. preaches militarism and middle class idealism, while it practices white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism.

I doubt Obama will change that, but at least he won’t make it much worse. I hope.

­— ptbeane@indiana.edu