salon | Is there anybody who thinks he’s progressive enough today?
Nobody
I know. Not even among the progressive liberals. Nobody I know. Part of
this, as you can imagine, is that early on there was a strong
private-public distinction. People would come to me and say privately,
“We see what you’re saying. We think you’re too harsh in how you say it
but we agree very much with what you’re saying in private.” In public,
no comment. Now, more and more of it spills over in public.
There’s
a lot of disillusionment now. My liberal friends included. The phrase
that I have heard from more than one person in the last year is they
feel like they got played.
That’s true. That’s exactly
right. What I hear is that, “He pimped us.” I heard that a zillion
times. “He pimped us, brother West.” That’s another way of saying “we
got played.”
You remember that enthusiasm in 2008. I’m from Kansas City. He came and spoke in Kansas City and 75,000 people came to see him.
Oh
yeah. Well we know there were moments in Portland, Oregon, there were
moments in Seattle. He had the country in the palm of his hand in terms
of progressive possibilities.
What on earth ails the man? Why can’t he fight the Republicans? Why does he need to seek a grand bargain?
I
think Obama, his modus operandi going all the way back to when he was
head of the [Harvard] Law Review, first editor of the Law Review and
didn’t have a piece in the Law Review. He was chosen because he always
occupied the middle ground. He doesn’t realize that a great leader, a
statesperson, doesn’t just occupy middle ground. They occupy higher
ground or the moral ground or even sometimes the holy ground. But the
middle ground is not the place to go if you’re going to show courage and
vision. And I think that’s his modus operandi. He always moves to the
middle ground. It turned out that historically, this was not a moment
for a middle-ground politician. We needed a high-ground statesperson and
it’s clear now he’s not the one.
And so what did he do? Every
time you’re headed toward middle ground what do you do? You go straight
to the establishment and reassure them that you’re not too radical, and
try to convince them that you are very much one of them so you end up
with a John Brennan, architect of torture [as CIA Director]. Torturers
go free but they’re real patriots so we can let them go free. The rule
of law doesn’t mean anything.
The rule of law, oh my God. There’s one law for us and another law if you work on Wall Street.
That’s
exactly right. Even with [Attorney General] Eric Holder. Eric Holder
won’t touch the Wall Street executives; they’re his friends. He might
charge them some money. They want to celebrate. This money is just a tax
write-off for these people. There’s no accountability. No
answerability. No responsibility that these people have to take at all.
The same is true with the Robert Rubin crowd. Obama comes in, he’s got
all this populist rhetoric which is wonderful, progressive populist
rhetoric which we needed badly. What does he do, goes straight to the
Robert Rubin crowd and here comes Larry Summers, here comes Tim
Geithner, we can go on and on and on, and he allows them to run things.
You see it in the Suskind book, The Confidence Men. These guys
are running things, and these are neoliberal, deregulating free
marketeers—and poverty is not even an afterthought for them.
3 comments:
These criticisms by Dr. West have a hollow ring.
“No, the 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.” Okay, so West (and millions of others) got suckered in 2008. Knowing this why did he vote for Obama in 2012? Dr. West could not free himself from the mental incarceration of the greater evil/lesser evil syndrome. What is the quality of such leadership?
Why do you stop at assigning "hollowness" to Prof West?
If I follow the meme from various "Black Studies" courses or "Afro-Centric" community discussion forums - THIS PERIOD marks the first time that a group of Black people APLAUDED or stayed silent as the machine of their LONG TIME WHITE SUPREMACIST OPPRESSOR defeated a military power in Africa.
If we imagine that the Ancient Greeks held African slaves and then went on to conquer "Nubia" only to see their resident slaves CHEER about the victory had by their new found homeland - this would be a parallel to what we see today regarding the relationship between the Americanized Negro and the US GOVERNMENT - with OBAMA being merely a MASK of OBFUSCATION about what the government has done, thus disarming the Negro.
The HOLLOWNESS that you should focus upon is the "CONSCIOUS SOUL" of the Americanized Negro and how the frequent cat calls of "Africa, Africa!! NEVER AGAIN" did not stand up to the TEST of their loyalties over DOMESTIC PROGRESSIVE FUNDAMENTALIST OPPORTUNISM.
When you err and focus on WEST you are guilty of doing what many others have noted as the means to defeat the Negro - TAKE OUT HIS "LEADER" and they will fall. WHY NOT talk about the ARMY OF IDEAS AND ASSUMPTIONS that got EXPOSED AS POLITICAL OPPORTUNISM with Obama IN POWER and the "We Are In The WHTIE HOUSE NEGROES" defining the contents of the Negro's Artificial Horizon?
Doc West is a funny dude. You never attack a person's background. You talk about a person's actions. West played some bullshit Obama's not really Black and people turned on his stupid ass. He doesn't like Summers. That's cool. He can explain why he doesn't like his cabinet choices. But to say "well, his momma's white so that means..." West's a fake ass dude. How do West and Smiley get their money since they stand with the "least of these?"
West is really attacking the President to cover his own treachery or ineptitude. He never tried to school anyone on how to take advantage of a Black President with congressional majorities. So his trifling ass needs to sit the fuck down.
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