[caption id="attachment_4658" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Cornel West"]
[/caption]by Joel S. Hirschhorn - The outspoken scholar and Princeton University professor Cornel West has been viciously attacked by many on the political left, especially supporters of President Obama. Why? Because he had the courage to call Obama a “black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” For more of West’s views see this article.
Most of the attention has been on the use of the word “black,” as if the black Cornel West had made a racist comment. In fact, West got it right because he and some other true progressives have condemned Obama for not being an authentic progressive. Right again, Obama has never shown himself to be a true leftist progressive, even though many on the conservative right may think he is one. West thinks Obama “has no backbone.”
It is not that Obama is not black enough, as some think West was saying. It is about the dishonesty, deceit and corruptness of Obama.
What everyone should be praising West for is that he correctly made the point that Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats have stolen the US government by using vast sums of money to corrupt both Democrat and Republican politicians.
West just told the truth about Obama who got elected because as a candidate for president he received a huge sum from the most awful Wall Street company, Goldman Sachs.
What West has explained is that “poor and working people have low priority in US government policy including the Obama Administration.” No surprise because West is definitely a true liberal progressive who has been making this kind of criticism very openly for a long time. Indeed, if poor and working people, as well as all African Americans, would wake up to reality they would abandon Obama, even as the lesser evil. Obama has told too many lies and done too many wrong things to deserve their support.
Nearly all members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, are nothing more than mascots of Wall Street oligarchs and puppets of corporate plutocrats, something that all intelligent Americans, including those in the Tea Party movement, should totally agree with.
Here is something else West said: "The tea party folk are right when they say the government is corrupt. It is corrupt. Big business and banks have taken over government and corrupted it in deep ways....we've got to think seriously of third-party candidates, third formations, third parties."
Over at FutureofCapitalism.com this point was made: Obama “has basically enshrined the too-big-to-fail banks while also propping up GE and the firms that will benefit from ObamaCare.” True enough.
We need many more people that get mass media attention to say the kind of things that West has said. Americans need to be reminded incessantly that their government has been hijacked by rich and powerful elites.
With a corrupt two-party plutocracy elections no longer offer the promise of much needed reforms. Odds are that Tea Party people will realize that their favored Republicans will also not deliver a rehabilitated, honest government serving the interests or ordinary Americans.
[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through delusionaldemocracy.com.]
(Opinions rendered in all op-eds are those of the writers and not necessarily those of this publication)