Thread: Cornel West: Obama A ‘Counterfeit’ And A ‘Brown-Faced Clinton’

Cornel West: Obama A ‘Counterfeit’ And A ‘Brown-Faced Clinton’

August 25, 2014 by Personal Liberty News Desk

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Union Theological Seminary professor and noted liberal public intellectual Cornel West had some harsh words for President Barack Obama in an interview with the left-leaning Salon.
The conversation started out on a sour note when Salon’s Thomas Frank asked West, “how do you feel things have worked out since then [2008], both with the economy and with this president?”
West’s reply:

[T]he thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are—we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody—a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.
…
[W]e ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist. It’s like, “Oh, no, don’t tell me that!” I tell you this, because I got hit hard years ago, but everywhere I go now, it’s “Brother West, I see what you were saying. Brother West, you were right. Your language was harsh and it was difficult to take, but you turned out to be absolutely right.” And, of course with Ferguson, you get it reconfirmed even among the people within his own circle now, you see. It’s a sad thing. It’s like you’re looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.

Aside from criticisms for what he views as Obama’s overall failures, he criticized the President’s response to the police militarization on display in Ferguson, Missouri, and throughout the nation.

The Obama administration has been silent. Completely silent. All of a sudden now, you get this uprising and what is the response? Well, as we know, you send out a statement on the death of brother Robin Williams before you sent out a statement on brother Michael Brown. The family asked for an autopsy at the Federal level, they hold back, so they [the family] have to go and get their own autopsy, and then the federal government finally responds. [Obama] sends Eric, Eric’s on the way out. Eric Holder’s going to be gone by December.

Obama wasn’t the only person on the left West ripped.
He also took Al Sharpton to task:

[W]hen you say the name Al Sharpton, the word integrity does not come to mind. So you got low-quality black leadership. Al Sharpton is who? He’s a cheerleader for Obama…
MSNBC, state press, it’s all Obama propaganda, and Sharpton is the worst. Sharpton said explicitly, I will never say a critical word about the president under any condition. That’s why he can’t stand what I’m saying. He can’t stand what I do because, for him, it’s an act of racial traitorship to be critical of the president. There’s no prophetic integrity in his leadership…

And as for the possibility of a Hillary Clinton Presidency in 2016 that has liberals so giddy (or jiddy), West offers this:

Hillary Clinton is an extension of Obama’s Wall Street presidency, drone presidency, national surveillance, national security presidency. She’d be more hawkish than he is, and yet she’s got that strange smile that somehow titillates liberals and neo-liberals and scares Republicans. But at that point it’s even too hard to contemplate.

Read the full interview at Salon.com.



http://personalliberty.com/cornel-we...faced-clinton/

Cornel West: ‘Black America in the age of Obama has been one of desperation’
President Obama hasn’t exactly been a gift to the black community, said Cornel West in his new book, “Black Prophetic Fire.”
washingtontimes.com|By Cheryl K. Chumley

Cornel West: ‘Black America in the age of Obama has been one of desperation’

President Obama (right) shakes hands with Princeton University Professor Cornel West (center) and poet Sonia Sanchez (left) after delivering remarks at the National Urban League’s 100th anniversary convention in Washington on Thursday, July 29, 2010. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) ** ... more >
By Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Monday, October 6, 2014

President Obama hasn’t exactly been a gift to the black community, said Cornel West in his new book, “Black Prophetic Fire.”
Instead, Mr. Obama has “made it more difficult for black courageous and radical voices to bring critique to bear on the U.S. empire,” he wrote in an excerpt published by Salon.
Mr. West said black activism under Mr. Obama has moved from social movements to politics — and that’s not a good thing, Raw Story reported.

“This shift produces voices that are rarely if ever critical of this system,” he said in his book. Mr. West went on to say that Mr. Obama has basically shuttered the “prophetic voices” that would have led the country from its present state — one where “desperate poor people whose labor is no longer necessary for the system [are left] at the bottom.”
Mr. West said: “The state of black America in the age of Obama has been one of desperation, confusion and capitulation. The desperation is rooted in the escalating suffering on every front. The confusion arises from a conflation of symbol and substance. The capitulation rests on an obsessive need to protect the first black president against all forms of criticism.”
Mr. West then called the Obama administration primarily a “Wall Street presidency, drone presidency, mass surveillance presidency,” Raw Story reported. “His major effort to focus on poor black men was charity and philanthropy — not justice or public policy.”





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