September 11, 2010

  • DR. CORNEL WEST IS MY HERO - HIS LOVE FOR OBAMA IS NOT BLIND!

     

    I deeply respect and revere my intellectual and spiritual brother, Dr. Cornel West. He is a scholar and a sage. He is a real Christian who always bravely calls out hypochristian peers that disgrace his religion as they hate and harass homosexuals.

    Dr. West is a warrior for social justice and the humanity of poor people. He was a conscious rebel at Harvard before his dignified escape to the racially superior academic bastion of Princeton. He is a uniquely regal King. I could endlessly praise this outstanding afrocentric icon…

    Dr. West has always been a healing inspiration to me. He is an incessant role model in academia. He is an angelic “Balm in Gilead ” when I am tortured by gaybashers in media. Yet, Dr. West is most admirable when he is courageously crucifying the demonic hoax that is President Obama/GWB 2.0!

    This evil world is tolerable only because heroes like Dr. Cornel West hold up half of my sky. The New World Order is in progress. Our gloomy sky will become heavier each day.

    Recently, West eloquently eviscerated Obama at KPFK:

     

    “…I was ready because I draw a radical distinction between the symbolic and the substantial. As a critical supporter of Barack Obama, engaged in over 50 events for him from Iowa to Ohio , I knew that at a symbolic level something could happen that was unprecedented. And it did happen. At that symbolic level, I can understand the tears, I can understand the jubilation, I can understand the euphoria. But I always knew there was a sense in which he, now heading the American empire, was tied to the shadow government, tied to CIA, FBI, tied to the establishment waiting to embrace him. It was clear when he chose his economic team, when he chose his foreign policy team, he was choosing, of course, the recycled neo-liberals and recycled neo-Clintonites that substantially you're going to end up with these technocratic policies that consider poor people and working people as afterthoughts. Beginning with bankers, beginning with elites.

    Symbolically, black man breaks through makes you want to break dance. So, yes, we have to be able to relate to both of these...because the hopes that were generated and the call for change, and then we end up with this recycled neo-liberalism. There's no fundamental change at all.

    That's very real, but I think we do have to understand we had to bring the age of Reagan to a close. We had to bring the era of conservatism to a close. And then you try to unleash new possibilities. Of course, the question now is, how do we keep our fellow citizens awakened so it goes beyond the campaign for a candidate and really begin engaging in grassroots organizing and mobilizing.

    That's where the analogy breaks down. Barack Obama leans toward Wall Street, mesmerized by the elites, wants to be embraced by the establishment, wants to preserve his legacy as a president, more in the language of the neo-liberal and neo-conservative columnists than in the hearts and minds of everyday people…

    I think even my dear brother Michael Moore tends to put too much confidence in Barack Obama. In his film you get the sense that here comes Barack Obama speaking the language of deep democracy. No, no, no, he's been a liberal all his life. He uses that language to mobilize, but in the end he's going to capitulate and defer to the neo-liberal establishment, which is what he has done so far. Now granted, there's still some possibilities there, even when you talk about just extending unemployment benefits. This is nothing revolutionary at all, but it does alleviate some of the suffering. But if we don't get some restructuring going on, if we don't get some Marshall Plan activity of massive investments in infrastructure here, in this country....You've got four billion dollars every month in Afghanistan . You can come up with that all the time.

    But [Larry Summers] has a braininess that lacks wisdom and vision. He has a smartness that lacks a sensitivity to the poor and the marginal. You and I encountered a lot of that kind of braininess and smartness at Harvard. I don't find that attractive or appealing at all. I think that it's empty in a certain sense. I was surprised that Barack Obama could be seduced by that kind of braininess and smartness that leads to policies that don't put jobs and homes at the center, but as an afterthought…

    It's a reflection of just how broken the system is. You've got a majority of fellow citizens who want truly universal health care, and he can't even view public option as indispensable and untouchable. What's going on? Pharmaceutical companies, powerful, $300 million spent for lobbyists. That's a broken system.

    It means we're locked in an iron cage of a neo-liberal or neo-conservative mediocrity, which means the needs of the people will never be fundamentally met if they're poor and working class. That either leads toward a thickening of the cynicism or it leads toward new expressions of social chaos…”

     

    Read more of this superb interview by Terrence McNally  here:

     

    http://www.alternet.org/rights/144569/always_controversial_cornel_west_disses_obama%2C_survives_cancer_and_almost_spent_his_life_in_prison?page=entire

     

     

    Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A MemoirThe Cornel West Reader


     Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union BossesBought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall StreetDeconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America's First Postmodern PresidentThe Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War AbroadBlack Enough/White Enough: The Obama Dilemma (English and English Edition)

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