Warning: The following post contains strong political opinions from outside of the corporate media. If you can’t control yourself, don’t read them. As this is an editorial, the standard disclaimer is in effect: this does not portend to represent the views of all Oregon Hill residents.

It has been two weeks since Election Day. The majority of neighbors and City residents voted for the Democratic Party presidential candidate Harris and she did win Virginia’s electoral votes. However, in what was a shock to some and unsurprising to others, she convincingly lost the national popular vote and the electoral vote. Experts note that turnout in the seven swing states at the heart of the election was even higher than in the rest of the country.

While many Democrats would like to try to blame Greens, Russians, and others for their loss, as they have obnoxiously and wrongly done in the past, they simply can’t when faced with the facts. As a Green, I can take comfort in that I voted against both sides of the corporate duopoly (both Democrats and Republicans) – my hands are clean. I voted, but I did not vote for Biden/Harris, Trump, or genocide, and I give my utter appreciation to the courageous Jill Stein and her electors/petitioners for that opportunity. I sincerely hope everyone still has that opportunity in the future.

I could go on and revisit ‘Election Thoughts’ from 2016 and discuss needed election reforms, but instead, let’s concentrate on the current international moment:

While the contentious Presidential election is over, there’s still time to do the right thing. Speaking of facts, according to a new United Nations Special Committee report, Israel’s war conduct in Gaza “is consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” including mass civilian casualties and using starvation as a weapon. American corporate media downplays the situation, even as more children and noncombatants die from U.S. bombs. Something for Americans to think about as they decorate their homes with Christmas nativity scenes – there are thousands of Middle Eastern families looking for refuge and none of the carnage and displacement will bring back the victims of the Hamas October 7 attack of the previous year.

If Democrats were smart, they would press (baby boomer) Biden to resign NOW before Trump takes office and then quickly announce a sea change in foreign policy under (gen X) Harris, demanding that Israel end the war and allow Palestinians to return to north Gaza or else IMMEDIATELY lose all financial and military support (over $250 billion). After all, the Israeli government has ignored all previous ‘guidance’ and warnings from the current president. The Biden administration so far has done nothing in response and lamely clung to policies that support war and, yes, genocide. Its doable- President Reagan did it with one phone call back in 1982. We are constantly being told we are ‘the most powerful country on earth’, so surely we can adjust foreign policy. Harris lost the election, yet she could still gain more hearts and claw her way to higher moral ground with a last minute generational shift in regard to other nations.

Sure, President Trump, once he is back in power, will likely rescind any such large moves to ‘the left’, though he would have to expend some time and energy to explicitly change back the policy and be forced to retrench his own hardline position in support of Israel’s right wing government. That alone might make it worth it from a pure ‘resistance’ strategy point-of-view.

Also, an alteration in foreign policy would let American voters know that election campaign mistakes can be corrected and signal that a new Democratic leadership can abandon the ‘war party’. More importantly, the rest of the world would learn that arrogant “American exceptionalism” does not apply to genocide and this country is still capable of change for the better and bigger picture.

However, as a Green I am very doubtful that the Democratic Party is capable of even this reform as it is too tied to its own hubris, militarism, war-profiteering, and lobbyist money. I gave up on it a long time ago and urge others to join the voter revolt and build something new. We need left wing populism to counter the right wing populism (Trumpism).

Sadly, it’s too easy to predict that this country, under the corporate duopoly, will continue to ignore many young people and go further down a right wing path of fascism and war. Next up, we will see if Ukraine goes from a ‘conventional’ battlefield to a nuclear one.