"What do you have to say about Cornell West endorsing Jill Stein?"
Ah, you ask, I'd imagine because he's a theologian and a minister.
I think anyone who is not supporting the one and only person other than Donald Trump who will be sworn in as president in January has permanently removed themselves from consideration as anyone who should ever be listened to or taken seriously from now on.
This election has the potential to be the death of any aspirations of democracy in the United States. And that is an enormous deal. If it fails here, it's got no chance.
He's hardly alone on that list, you can add most of the people who run magazines and many websites of the alleged left in that list. As I'm typing this organs of the lefty media from the highest, such as The Nation to the lower dregs of Salon are writing guaranteed Hillary hater click bait. John Nichols is another person I now include on that list with his carping over the now settled platform. The only way to make the platform of less importance than it is would be for Hillary Clinton to lose the election. TO TRUMP - PENCE.
This is the election when I can say, for the first time, if you're looking for how the left failed, look at who was leading them into failure for the past half century. Cornel West is one of the few figures in encouraging that who is not an atheist or, as they say, a"secularist" but I'd never claim that atheists have a monopoly on ego-enhancing lunacy. Certainly not after seeing what Cornel has done this year. I think he has gone from being a responsible religious figure into being a self-centered megalomaniac. What he's done is repulsively irresponsible.
I'd ask Bernie Sanders what he thinks of it but only because the answer would tell us something about Bernie Sanders, only I think the faster he fades into the background, the better. He waited way too long to endorse Hillary Clinton, encouraging the Bernie or Busters and the "Losing is Winning" play-left for me to take him seriously, anymore.
I gave up on Cornel West when I heard him on his radio show. He would pontificate while Tavis Smiley (I think it was) would play the sycophant, and then they would entertain one caller who could call in to discuss the previous week's show, while Dr. West played pedant and power figure and browbeat the caller about daring to challenge Dr. West's genius and insight.
ReplyDeleteHe was never wrong, and he loved pointing that out to people, one-on-one.
"Minister" my ass.
Thankfully I never heard it. I can't imagine being able to consider anyone who has taken his position seriously on any topic ever again. If it hadn't been Larry Summers who forced him to leave Harvard I'm sure I'd have come to the same conclusion a long time ago. It's one of my worst habits, siding with someone because of who is attacking them without considering there might be a point to the attacks. I think it explains why I didn't face up to the nature of the lefty magazines earlier. This has been a really decisive year, it's been building ever since 1996, my gradual disillusionment with the traditional, atheist-secular left but not only the secular left.
DeleteI think there's a good question to consider, that maybe the possible achievements of the left at any given time are far more limited than the infantile, confortable, play-left, mostly white and mostly affluent or the children of affluence, are willing to acknowledge. I am genuinely convinced that Hillary Clinton is the farthest left that can be achieved now and for a good time to come. Trying to push some lame-assed, middle-class idea of a "revolution" will not only fail but enable the right. That's what has happened most of the past fifty years.
I think it is noteworthy that "the Black vote" went for Hillary Clinton over "Brother Bernie". I wonder how much credibility Cornel West has with the mainstream of Black Americans, most of whom need the practical good that will only come with an actual election victory for the Democratic Party. I think he's playing to mostly white, affluent, college-educated people who are in a position to put him on TV and give him ways to make money.
Yup. I read his work on Niebuhr's ethics, especially in "Moral Man and Immoral Society," and it was an insightful critique.
DeleteAnd an early work. I don't see that Cornel West in anything he's done in the last several years.
West is a minister and a theologian? Wow -- two more reasons for me to hate that self-promoting armchair radical bag of gas.
ReplyDelete