Cornel West: “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit...

Salon ^ | SUNDAY, AUGUST 24, 2014 | THOMAS FRANK

[IncPen]

Full title: "Cornel West: 'He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency'”

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. 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.

[IncPen]

Mo Dowd, Thomas Frank and Cornel West all in one weekend.

[SoFloFreeper]

Cornel isn’t happy because Obama hasn’t yet begun leveling Bible teaching churches with bulldozers.

[ClearCase_guy]

I guess people are catching on that Obama’s goal is simply to destroy the US. But this realization arrives too late.

[DaxtonBrown]

What’s truly frightening is that if Obama is a defective Progressive, what kind of Hell on Earth are these people proposing to replace him?

[ontap]

crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza,

Crimes in Gaza are being perpetrated by this bastards friends!!!

[jjotto]

A dictatorship of the proletariat, guided of course by the vanguard of intelligentsia.

[TomGuy]

West fell into the same trap many do when they jump on presidential wannabes' bandwagons:

• They project what THEY want the person to be, not what the person actually is.

Had West actually listen to the pre-nomination speeches, he could have gleaned what his candidate-of-choice stood for.

Similar could be said (and WAS posted) during the GOP presidential primaries as bandwagoneers jumped on and tried to brow-beat others into submission to support their candidate.

[Farmer Dean]

Israel defending itself is a war crime to these creeps.

[righttackle44]

These creepy people are not progressive in any sense. They are knuckle-dragging beasts who have no understanding of people.

[gusopol3]

Can’t forget Cornel West sitting in his wood-paneled, book-lined Princeton study telling Christopher Hedges Obama is “ a culturally white man with a dark skin.” So many ironies there, it’s like a hall of mirrors.

[nathanbedford]

“My God, we are an empire in decline.” A culture in decay with a political system that’s dysfunctional, youth who are yearning for something better but our system doesn’t provide them democratic venues

The ultra leftists are in despair as they are forced to see that the Messiah they have whored after this time has failed them once again and they despair because they see no true Messiah, not even Hillary, on the horizon to deliver the socialist utopia they all yearn for.

They whine about an empire in decline, a culture in decay, but they can think of no solution but the modern equivalent of the man on horseback. There is nothing wrong with the political system devised by our Constitution except that it has been abandoned. Its "political venues" have been abandoned for one leftist whore after another.

There is a constitutional solution, it's called Article V and it provides the proper "political venues.".

[jimjohn]

Hmmm... So I’m not the only one to pick up on this. I would say the golf outing after the be-heading was the last straw, but I suspect more. Information from my sources say the Foley murder hit close to home to many here in the New England area.

The golfer-n-chief (who’s most ardent supporters are not so much poor black folk as they are lilly-white commie liberals with old money) probably expected him to at least look out for one of their own; which Foley was. But they’re not happy about this one. No, not so happy on ‘the Vineyard’, thus the finger pointing could be starting.

Oh and please note: He lost much of his black support when he started going full pro-sodomite. One of the reasons for the mass importation of a new minority group. You will of course NEVER hear about this in your Sunday morning NYT. No America - his key supporters are (and has always been) stupid, mostly state-employed, college-indoctrinated, deep pocket white people. They, not the black folks, are what fund and prop up this machine.

jimjohn - out.

[smalltownslick]

It’s amazing the disconnect between the first part of that paragraph and its conclusion.

[griswold3]

Agreed. But what ‘Progressives’ fail to comprehend is that for every liberal action there will be an equal and opposite reaction. They cannot blame the policies* for failure. Obama must not have been the right leader once again.
*For example, they really believe that raising taxes will increase revenue. But, when taxes are raised, tax avoidance is accelerated. France is the perfect model. They raised taxes 75% and revenue fell by 30%.

[plain talk]

We are in decline because of failed liberal policies yet Cornel West thinks that is the case because Obama didn’t go further left. No matter the decline liberals will say the answer is MORE liberalism

[Cry if I Wanna]

.. what kind of Hell on Earth are these people proposing to replace him?

Elizabeth Warren.

[glennaro]

It appears, according to this adolescent posing as a scholar, that B-J Clinton hangs onto his title a the first “first black” president.

[IncPen]

The ultra leftists are in despair as they are forced to see that the Messiah they have whored after this time has failed them once again and they despair because they see no true Messiah, not even Hillary, on the horizon to deliver the socialist utopia they all yearn for.

Precisely.

A wiser FReeper than me opined in 2008 that Obama might well be the last gasp of the radical 60s leftists, because he will demonstrate to them in no uncertain terms the emptiness of their ideology.

The great risk is that he will feel unbound, set free from his base.

Imagine, for instance, what he could do with his Pardon Pen.

And the great risk for us is, "Who do we replace him with?"

[hal ogen]

intellectual degenerate cornell west and his demented ilk should don sack cloth and throw ashes on themselves as they wander the US seeking forgiveness for their insanity and destructiveness. Civilized people should shun them. I find them loathsome.

[gusopol3]

He did get away with calling Obama an oreo, which is unique.