Any honest linkage between the words "Obama" and "prophet" requires the latter to be spelled "profit."
Cornel West argues that Obama's prophecies have more to do with Wall Street's plantation profits and Booker T. Washington's commitment to accommodation than with Martin King's revolution.
"'The black prophetic tradition has been the leaven in the American democratic loaf,' West said. 'What has kept American democracy from going fascist or authoritarian or autocratic has been the legacy of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin King, Fannie Lou Hamer. This is not because black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or beauty. It is because the black freedom movement puts pressure on the American empire in the name of integrity, decency, honesty and virtue...'
"It is understandable why this tradition frightens Obama.
"It exposes him as the ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, 'adjustment and submission.'
"The wide swath of destruction Obama has overseen on behalf of the corporate state includes the eradication of most of our civil liberties and our privacy, the expansion of imperial war, the use of kill lists, abject subservience to Wall Streets criminal class and the military-industrial complex, the relentless persecution of whistle-blowers, mass incarceration of poor people of color and the failure to ameliorate the increasing distress of the poor and the working class.
"His message to the black underclass in the midst of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T. Washington playbook. He tells them to work harderas if anyone works harder than the working poor in this countryand obey the law."
Chris Hedges: Cornel West and the Fight to Save the Black Prophetic Tradition - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig
Laws that were written by those who depend on the richest 1% of Americans to fund their election campaigns and retirements.
Cornel West argues that Obama's prophecies have more to do with Wall Street's plantation profits and Booker T. Washington's commitment to accommodation than with Martin King's revolution.
"'The black prophetic tradition has been the leaven in the American democratic loaf,' West said. 'What has kept American democracy from going fascist or authoritarian or autocratic has been the legacy of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Martin King, Fannie Lou Hamer. This is not because black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or beauty. It is because the black freedom movement puts pressure on the American empire in the name of integrity, decency, honesty and virtue...'
"It is understandable why this tradition frightens Obama.
"It exposes him as the ideological heir of Booker T. Washington, a black accommodationist whose core message to black people was, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, 'adjustment and submission.'
"The wide swath of destruction Obama has overseen on behalf of the corporate state includes the eradication of most of our civil liberties and our privacy, the expansion of imperial war, the use of kill lists, abject subservience to Wall Streets criminal class and the military-industrial complex, the relentless persecution of whistle-blowers, mass incarceration of poor people of color and the failure to ameliorate the increasing distress of the poor and the working class.
"His message to the black underclass in the midst of the corporate rape of the nation is drawn verbatim from the Booker T. Washington playbook. He tells them to work harderas if anyone works harder than the working poor in this countryand obey the law."
Chris Hedges: Cornel West and the Fight to Save the Black Prophetic Tradition - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig
Laws that were written by those who depend on the richest 1% of Americans to fund their election campaigns and retirements.