In all the thoughtful – and less thoughtful – analyzes and experts who followed the WE election, I haven’t seen anyone think about what it might have really meant for the country, its people, and their place in the world, if Kamala Harris’ forces of “joy” had somehow prevailed. another the forces of “darkness” of Donald Trump.

Let’s just stop for a minute and think about the implications. Registering joy at a Harris victory would have meant – what, exactly?

Regardless of what kind of mental, intellectual, emotional, or political acrobatics were involved, at least part of that joy would also have meant explicit support for U.S. participation and implementation. Israeli genocide is still perpetrated against Palestinians.

Wouldn’t such an outcome also have fully validated and presented, in a completely pure way, the utter rottenness at the heart of American politics and so many of its institutions?

Wouldn’t it then have dug an even deeper hole from which a disappearing American empire must finally find a way to extricate itself? And lamenting its loss, as many do today, has exactly the same meaning. There can be no other logical possibility.

While Democrats framed this election as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism, at no point did they allow democracy to work within their own party, opting instead for the old adage from the American war in Vietnam that “destroy the village to save it”. “.

Beginning with the subversion of their strongest candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, in 2016, the party elite has continued its long-standing dominance of the electoral process.

In 2020, campaigning from the basement with tightly controlled media and public exposure, Biden’s lackluster campaign took off only after a relentless focus on racial politics and the endorsement of Sen. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina .

Disjointed Democrats

Coming full circle, thanks to an internal coup against Biden this year – after the party and media shielded him from scrutiny of his tenure. mental decline for years, the same donors and interchangeable party “leaders” who abandoned Sanders (all unelected, of course), chose Harris as their candidate, without a single citizen voting for her.

Harris’ endorsement of Republican politician Liz Cheney – while entirely logical in a world where the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations have helped rehabilitate both her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, and the Former President George W. Bush, criminals from a previous war – was simply another nail in the coffin of his moribund campaign.

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Not even to mention the muzzling of Palestinian speech at the Democratic National Convention and elsewhere, since, after all, Harris spoke.

Pundits and party leaders pestered the electorate endlessly to vote for Harris, primarily because of her identity and because she was not Trump, rather than for her performance or her policies. Then they turned around in the most unbalanced way and blamed everyone but themselves for results that were obvious to anyone outside their media and ideological bubble.

With little, but still ample, time in office, will the Biden administration dare to change course, even slightly?

Almost instantly, the usual suspects frantically and shamelessly launched into fundraising to “save” the very democracy they had worked so hard to destroy.

Pen America, after being castigated and boycotted by writers for his inability to take a stand on genocide in Palestineis now worried about “new threats to freedom of expression that we know are coming” and “authoritarians” who are “pursuing journalists”.

With his characteristic clarity, journalist Jonathan Cook recent columnentitled “A year later, the Guardian finally authorizes us to use the term “genocide””, castigates the language police in “progressive” circles.

We can expect to see many more examples of hypocrisy in action, with ever-greater consequences, as liberals and progressives all try to score points after the US election and return us to the sickening cycle of consensus – each throwing invectives on their own. side, with fewer and fewer people defending the principle.

Apocalyptic cruelty

All of this, of course, has occurred against the backdrop of truly hallucinatory and apocalyptic cruelty and violence that the current US administration continues to support, enable and fund with American taxpayer dollars, as Israel continues to raise the bar on its total impunity – as if to challenge the world not just to feebly say “enough” but to actually try to end its genocidal rampage .

With little, but still ample, time in office, will the Biden administration dare to change course, even slightly?

As Israel continues decimate Gazaseparating men from women, executing people of all ages, assassinating journalists and academics and destroying what remains of the health system while preventing the entry of food and medicine, will there not be- what a word of rebuke to the perpetrators – or a word of hope, sympathy or comfort for those being massacred, as if any of that matters at this point?

Israel’s genocidal intent is crystal clear. Even university students from Gaza, who attend or are already admitted to schools around the world, cannot leave to resume or begin their studies. In this way, in addition to having physically destroyed Gaza’s education system and killed students, teachers and administrators, Israel wants to prevent any possibility of a future for Palestine.

And what about Lebanon? As Hezbollah pushes back Israeli ground troops from southern LebanonIsrael continues its cowardly tactics of aerial bombardment, destroying villages, decimating towns and infrastructure, targeting journalists and medical personnel and killing civilians.

But what is there to show? Did this strategy quell resistance or prevent rockets from raining down on northern Israel? Did he allow Israeli residents to return home?

The road ahead

Although President-elect Trump may well have the political will to reach a negotiated settlement to end the war in Ukrainehis initial cabinet appointments demonstrate a fervent agenda to put Israel first, rather than America first – solidifying the unwavering United Party’s core policy of absolute Israeli impunity, no matter what it does.

Beyond the relentless and expected continuation of the US-backed Israeli death machine, a lot could happen between now and Inauguration Day.

War on Gaza: the Trump cabinet is a recipe for all-out war in the Middle East

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In the background, the response of the mainstream media and Western politicians to the The rampage of Israeli footballers in Amsterdam – presented as a “pogrom” in which the perpetrators were presented as victims – portends a future of imminent psychological operations and the production of “anti-Semitism” on an industrial scale, in an attempt to resurrect between the dead the idea of ​​Israel as a “refuge” for “persecuted” Jews.

These maneuvers will come up against a new acquiescence and inventions on the ground on the part of the media, as well as new laws equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism; new campaigns to ban various types of speech; and more violence directed against anyone who protests, not to mention new forms of military coercion and destruction, aided by technologies field-tested by Israeli occupying forces, which will go down in historical infamy.

The United States is far from ready to adapt to a multipolar world in which the Israeli state, in its current form – as French occupation of Algeriaor the apartheid regime in South Africa – dissolves into the dustbin of history.

But ultimately it is the people of the region, along with their supporters around the world, who will decide.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policies of Middle East Eye.