The Darrell McClain show
Independent media that won't reinforce tribalism. We have one Planet; nobody's leaving so let’s reason together!! Darrell, McClain is a Military veteran with an abnormal interest in politics, economics, religion, philosophy, science, and literature. He was born and raised in Jacksonville FL, and went to Edward H white High School where he wrestled Under Coach Jermy Smith and The Late Brian Gilbert. He was a team wrestling captain, District champion, and an NHSCA All-American in freestyle Wrestling. He received a wrestling scholarship from Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. After a short period, he decided he no longer wanted to cut weight which effectively ended his college wrestling journey. Darrell Mcclain is an Ordained Pastor under The Universal Life Church and is still in good standing, he's a Believer in The Doctrines of Grace Also Known as Calvinism. He joined the United States Navy in 2008 and was A Master At Arms (military police officer) He was awarded several awards while on active duty including an expeditionary combat medal, a Global War on Terror medal, a National Defense Medal, a Korean defense medal, and multiple Navy achievement medals. While In the Navy he was also the assistant wrestling coach at Robert E Lee High School. He's a Brown Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under six six-degree black belt Gustavo Machado, Darrell Trains At Gustavo Machado Norfolk under the 3rd-degree black belt, and Former Marine Professor Mark Sausser. He went to school for psychology at American Military University and for criminal justice at ECPI University.
The Darrell McClain show
Dr. Cornel West Reflects on the Legacy and Challenges of Obama's Presidency
Join us for an enlightening conversation with the distinguished Dr. Cornel West as he shares his profound reflections on Barack Obama's presidency. What happens when a leader's intellectual promise encounters the harsh realities of political power? Dr. West opens up about his initial support for Obama and the hopes he pinned on his presidency, only to later voice concerns about his policies on Wall Street, drone warfare, and poverty. Together, we explore the emotional resonance of Obama's 2008 victory amidst America's ongoing battle with racism and inequality, questioning the trajectory of his leadership in the years that followed.
We dissect the complex dance between political pragmatism and moral courage, drawing from historical figures like FDR to scrutinize the legacy of the Obama administration. Dr. West passionately argues for a leadership model anchored in justice, truth, and love, critiquing the deference often shown toward political figures. Our discussion delves into systemic issues and the importance of accountability, especially in positions of power. Influential voices, such as Marian Wright Edelman and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, are highlighted for their unwavering stance on principle over political calculation.
The episode further navigates through the lasting impact of Obama's presidency on contemporary issues, including systemic racism and the rise of authoritarian populism. Dr. West provides a critical lens on Obama's handling of racial injustice, the controversial use of drone strikes, and the broader implications for democracy. The conversation underscores the necessity for solidarity within the black community and the urgent need for leadership marked by integrity and courage. Tune in for a thought-provoking analysis of the symbolic and practical legacy of Obama's presidency and its implications for the future of American democracy.
Dr Cornel West interview. Take one marker what was it like when you first met Obama?
Speaker 1:I recall that he gave me a call at Princeton immediately after his powerful speech that he gave in Boston at the Democratic National Convention and he had said America is a magical place. And I had said this brother's going to have a Christopher Columbus experience. He's going to discover America. America is free and democratic to the degree to which people fight to keep it free and democratic through blood, sweat and tears. Nothing magical about this at all. This is not Disneyland or Disney World. So he called me up and he said I heard what you said about my speech. Why did you say it? I said I said it because I believed it.
Speaker 1:It's clear that you're brilliant. It's clear that you've got unbelievable rhetorical talent. But at the same time I wanted to speak the truth. He said well, you know I'm thinking about running for president and I was wondering whether you would work with me. I said I've got one question what is your relation to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr? How will your campaign enact the struggle against poverty, militarism, racism and materialism? Those are the four evils that Martin Luther King Jr saw right before he was murdered. And he was very honest with me and he said he said, professor West, you know that I'm not as radical as you are, but I do see myself directly connected to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. I said that sounds wonderful to me. Let's work together.
Speaker 2:How was he working with Obama?
Speaker 1:The next thing, you know, I was down in Washington DC in a meeting we were preparing him for a debate at Howard University. It was with Charles Ogletree, david Axelrod, jesse Jackson Jr, arthur Davis. We were all in a room, we worked for two days and so I became a critical supporter. That was the first time I met him there in Washington and I met him again in South Carolina when I was doing a number of events. But I ended up doing about 65 events all around the country, beginning with Iowa and ending up in Ohio, those crucial states and it was always a critical support because there's no doubt that he was better than the other candidates. I thought all he needed to do and I told him.
Speaker 1:When I first met him I said if we can leapfrog over the Clinton machine, you're going to be the next president. At that time he had about six or seven percent support and even black folk had not really began to kick in. This is prior to Iowa. So I was deeply impressed by his intellect, his sharpness, his poise and so on. But it was always a question would he be able to hold up the bloodstained banner of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr within the context of the treacherous terrain of American electoral politics. That was a fundamental challenge that I think he and I knew that he had.
Speaker 2:And what was Obama's relationship to Dr King?
Speaker 1:Well, he knew that. You know, I've got a calling and a vocation, not just a career and a profession, and so I was going to hold up the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, ella Baker, marlitha King Jr vis-a-vis his candidacy or anybody else's candidacy in that regard. And when I introduced him here at Harlem, at the Apollo, I said exactly the same thing. I said we're here to try to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr and the others, and the best candidate who does that is our dear brother Barack. Well, again, it's a relative judgment. He was better than the other candidates, there's no doubt about that. That's why my critical support was always there.
Speaker 1:But once he brought in the Wall Street advisors, wall Street affiliates Tim Geithner, larry Summers, robin Rubin and company it was very clear that he was willing to bail out Wall Street to 1% and not bail out the homeowners, who somebody Mon King and Ella Baker and others would resonate with. So my critique already started there and then it began to deepen when I saw Brennan from the Bush administration tied to the same counterterrorist strategy of dropping those drones on terrorists. And dropping drones on terrorists I can understand in terms of a just war theory, but when it includes innocent people. That to me, is a crime against humanity. I don't care what color you are, I don't care what country you're from, and when I saw that policy increased and that was tied to mass surveillance, it was tied to national security policies that were continuous was something I was very critical of under the Bush administration.
Speaker 1:Wall Street on the one hand. You got drones on the other hand, and then the fundamental issue of poverty that I was hoping that he would make poverty much more of a central issue, even as he was trying to reconstruct the economy. But by reconstructing the economy he had a chance to render Wall Street elites accountable. Their greed was running amok. There were crimes committed insider trading, market manipulation, predatory lending, fraudulent activities. At least I thought we'd have a Justice Department that would apply rule of law to them the way they apply rule of law to Jamal on the corner, juanita on the corner, poor whites, any poor folk who would actually violate the law. So when I saw the tilt toward Wall Street, the tilt toward the drone policies, and then also no serious issue hitting a poverty or the mass incarceration regime, my critique began to deepen and it got. You know, it was consistently deep throughout his eight years.
Speaker 2:What about the election night of 2008?
Speaker 1:Well, I remember my feelings when I saw right there on CNN a screen that he won the tears of so much struggle against the vicious legacy of white supremacy in the history of this nation the slavery, jim Crow, jane Crow lynching spit on rebuke scorn. Now you've got a black man in that White House built primarily by black slaves. That's a moment that I think all of us of all colors who have a care about human beings and the future of American democracy would feel very, very deeply. I'll never forget that as long as I live, very, very much so. But then the question became now that we have the success, let's see whether there'll be greatness. See, success and greatness is not the same thing. For me, success is being in a position of authority, power and influence. Greatness is what you do with it.
Speaker 2:And what was Obama's relationship to Wall Street?
Speaker 1:When I read in Ron Susskind's text Confidence Men, wall Street, washington and the Education of a President, that meeting that took place March 2009 with those 13 firms seven of them head Wall Street leaders, firms seven of them head Wall Street leaders and he walks in and he says I stand between you and the pitchforks, but I want to let you know, I'm on your side, I will protect you. That's what you say to poor people. That's what you say to working people. That's what you say to black people, brown people, red people, yellow people, women, gays, lesbians, trans the ones who are being pushed to the margins.
Speaker 1:Wall Street doesn't need that, and I don't want to present myself as a Wall Street hater. I just hate greed and I hate injustice and I hate entitlement and privilege that's not accountable to the demos, to everyday people, you see. So when I saw that Wall Street tilt and the bailout everyday people, you see so, when I saw that Wall Street tilt and the bailout, I said, oh my God, we've got a continuation of neoliberal politics that tilt toward the corporate elites and not toward working people. And that was the beginning of my deep suspicion that, lo and behold, he was leaning in a direction away from the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He was leaning in a direction away from the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr and somebody had to try to keep alive that legacy of Martin and the others that very much were responsible for the election of a black man in a society so deeply shaped by white supremacy.
Speaker 1:And Obama and the black community supremacy and Obama and the black community. He would say over and over again that I'm not president of black America, I'm president of America. And I would say back I want you to stand for truth and justice. Black people, poor people, working people we're not asking for anything special, we're asking for fairness, we're asking for justice. If you stand for justice, then I know you're going to make the mass incarceration regime a priority. You're going to make poverty a priority. You're going to make accountability of Wall Street a priority. But the sad thing was, of course, you had such massive Black elite capitulation and you had ordinary Black brothers and sisters who were so caught up in symbol that they downplayed the substance. And I can understand that, symbolically, barack Obama will forever go down in the annals of time as having this great symbolic status.
Speaker 1:The struggle for freedom and justice is not just about symbols. The struggle for freedom and justice is not just about symbols. You've got to be able to seize the moment and let the world know you are a fighter for those who have been spit on, subjugated, dominated, exploited. They can't live vicariously through your symbolic success. You see, we live in a culture, a culture of superficial spectacle. All you got to do is have successful woman, successful black or brown and all the other folk catching hell, supposed to live through them. You see, that's not my tradition. No, no, not at all. We applaud their success. Now, how are you going to use your success, you see, are you going to continue to bend, whatever you can, your authority and influence to try to empower poor and working people? Now I think, brother Barack, president Obama will come back to me and say well, brother West, I am a pragmatist, I've got limited options, I've got limited alternatives and I have to be able to maneuver. I've got to be able to work in a bipartisan way. I'm a politician, I'm not just part of the prophetic tradition. I thoroughly understand that we all have different lanes. But then the question becomes how intense is your struggle?
Speaker 1:So, when it came to health care, he had been a supporter of a single payer but didn't allow the voices of single payer to come in. He had been a supporter of single payer but didn't allow the voices of single payer to come in. He had the meeting with the pharmaceutical companies. They cut a deal and I said you don't punt on second down, you punt on the fourth down, you push it as far as you can go. Then you say here's a compromise, here are the concessions, so that I knew that he would not be able to get the single payer, but I thought at least we'd get the public option. You got to fight for it. You see, you don't have these private meetings just to come out with success.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't just him. He had Rahm Emanuel, he had a guy in there and a whole host of others whispering in his ear because he was relatively new at that level of power and he was falling back on his advisors. And most of his advisors were old Clintonites for the most part. And I had said exactly the same thing about Bill Clinton as I said about Barack Obama Too close to Wall Street, foreign policies that I had deep disagreements with and didn't hit the issue of poverty.
Speaker 2:And when it's challenging Obama.
Speaker 1:Well, I got a call from my dear sister, valerie Jarrett. She said I want to know whether this is friendly fire or whether this is a critique of someone who is more and more a foe. And I said well, I'm trying to just accent the moral and spiritual dimensions of what I have to say. I'm trying to look at the world through the lens of poor and working people and, as a Christian, I'm looking at the world through the lens of the cross, and that cross signifies unarmed truth, and the condition of truth is always to allow suffering to speak, beginning with the most vulnerable, and that comes out of Hebrew scripture you spread that steadfast love to the most vulnerable the god, the motherless, the fatherless, the widow, the stranger and so forth, and then unconditional love across the board. So I'm loving the babies in Somalia, afghanistan and Pakistan who are being killed, as much as I'm loving the black folk who've been killed by police here or anybody else, anywhere, you see. And so she made it clear they had a. Uh, there was a piece of the New York Times where she came out and said uh, she said, brother Wes is not only crazy, he's un-American. I said oh, I'm an enemy of the state now, I'm anti-American. I just let them know. No, I'm anti-injustice in America, no matter what color the president is.
Speaker 1:Now, as you can imagine, it created tremendous controversy because my language was very sharp and very, very intense and people were wondering wait a minute. I thought Fox News were the critics of the president. Well, they're right-wing critics. Most times they're wrong and you had to protect the president vis-a-vis the racist attacks because, of course, his family is very precious, could be killed any minute. So you get the solidarity with the president on that issue. But there are left-wing critiques of the president that need to be heard and people were saying, no, no criticisms at all. My dear brother, al Sharpton, who I've known for 30 years, and he would tell me all the time any criticism of the president in public is not allowed because it reinforces the right wing, and I said, no, we can't have that.
Speaker 1:I come from a people that says lift every voice. That's the anthem of black people. You got to lift your voice. I'm not going to be an echo and just part of some kind of protective crowd. I'm going to protect.
Speaker 1:When he's being viciously attacked for bad reasons, I'm going to critique him, I try for good reasons, but it's going to be in the name of the very people and tradition that put him in office. You see, the last thing you need now is a black president who gets milquetoast when it comes to poverty, spineless when it comes to Wall Street and still dropping drones on folk and therefore not being able to create the kind of what I'd call a more radically democratic presidency. It'd be a fusion of the best of FDR, I think, bernie Sanders, my dear brother in his critique of Wall Street. That's what I wanted out of Barack Obama. It was not in him. Bernie Sanders is not a neoliberal in that sense, he's a social democrat, he's more progressive. And people say you're asking too much. Maybe you know, but at least I have to let him know. You know what some of us are thinking I wasn't all by myself, but what so many of us were thinking in terms of fighting for poor working people.
Speaker 1:In regard to political calculation, how do you preserve your position? How do you rethink your relation to your constituency? But then there's what I call just moral witness and political courage. And you see, there's a difference between a statesperson who can bring together prudence with moral witness and political courage. See, when FDR said the Wall Street were greedy, they were economic royalists and he said I welcome their hatred. He said that in the White House, that's what a statesman does, who's in solidarity with working people.
Speaker 1:What I saw with Barack Obama was he didn't have a lot of political courage. He didn't have a lot of moral witness. He was always obsessed with being in the middle and there's nothing in the middle but just that yellow line. The truth is beneath the road. The road is hiding and concealing all the suffering. You see, you think of the children. One out of two black and brown children under six live in poverty in the richest nation in the history of the world.
Speaker 1:Where is the policy? Marian Wright Edelman she's part of the great legacy of Martin Luther King Jr, edelman. She's part of the great legacy of Martin Luther King Jr the children's fund. She's raising the same kind of issues. Can't get a word out of it. I will not mention the word poverty, of course. My dear brother Tavis Smiley and I went on two poverty tours 21 cities the first time, 14 cities the second time, trying to raise the issue of poverty.
Speaker 1:No response in most of his supporters and cheerleaders. We don't want to hear it. Wait a minute. How are you going to have a president here and all these children catching hell? And you can't even raise the issue? And yet Wall Street is breakdancing to the bank. They got Federal Reserve giving this quantitative easing. They're getting nearly zero interest rates, free money flowing. Students have to pay interest rates to go to college. Something's wrong here in terms of the 1% vis-a-vis the 99%. So again, raise the issue, put the critique forward.
Speaker 1:I think it's no accident that you end up with a Black Lives Matter movement under a black president, with a black attorney general, with a black Homeland Security cabinet member. If black lives mattered enough in the White House, you would think they'd be able to come to terms with the accountability of these police killing too many of these precious young brothers and sisters. You see, and when it took place, you know, my dear brother Brock says Trayvon would have if I had a son, it would have looked like Trayvon. I said that's a beautiful formulation. But when Zimmerman went free, what did he say?
Speaker 1:This is a nation of laws. We must observe the law. That's not what fathers say when their sons get shot down. So don't act like you're a father one moment. In the next moment you're talking about. This is a nation of laws. Slavery was law of the nation, jim Crow was the laws. Women can't vote until 1990. That's part of the laws too. So don't invoke the laws in relation to your deep feeling and empathy of somebody who just got killed. Don't play that game with us. And I had to hit him hard on that too.
Speaker 1:See, in the end, this is not about individuals, it's not about a president, it's not about professor or anything else. A tradition has been put in place by our great people who have been hated for 400 years and taught the world so much about how to love, love justice, love truth, love beauty and love the good. And, for some of us, religious love, god, love the holy. That tradition is richer and deeper, coming out of the sweat and tears of everyday people, than any president. And that was part of my struggle with so many of the black leaders and black pundits and so forth who wanted to be so uncritical, so deferential, in the kowtow and not recognizing there's principles involved here. And what about Michelle Obama? She's been hard your whole family in terms of no violence, no vicious attacks and threats being executed and so forth. So we never talked policy or anything, but she was always very, very, very, very kind. So it's a fascinating difference there actually.
Speaker 2:And Obama's candidacy.
Speaker 1:It was surprising because one of course, my dear brother, brother Jeremiah Wright, reverend Jeremiah Wright was supposed to be there. He had been Barack Obama's pastor. He had been, he played a fundamental role in the marriage of course he brought, he performed a wedding and so on, and he had sent notes already that he was asked not to be there and everybody said wait, what's going on here? And then Barack Obama said he would be at to have a smile, his state of black union. And the last minute said no, he makes the announcement in Springfield tied to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, which is a rich one. So we understood, okay, I mean political calculation.
Speaker 1:Every politician has to do that, very much so. And you don't want to alienate your white fellow citizens coming out of the box. So you don't want to be too associated with black people early on. But you also want to be clear with the black folk. Because you had promised to be there, because we didn't know, we found out right there on television. We went wait, what's going on? Let's respect us enough to tell us why you can't do it so early on. There was a certain suspicion. No, there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 2:What about. Dr Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Speaker 1:Reverend Jeremiah Wright is one of the giants in the Black prophetic tradition of the 20th century. He's deeply influenced by Malcolm X. In some ways he more or less became Jr. He studied at the University of Chicago, so he's both a scholar as well as a powerful preacher. Now, jeremiah Wright has always been one to engage in a very, very intense critique, not just of white supremacy but of the American empire, war, invasions, occupations and so forth. And one may not always agree with him or not, but there's no doubt that he has put his life on the line and that makes a difference. That makes a big difference. And that makes a difference. That makes a big difference. I've blessed the teaching in the basement of his church with Malefia Sante, one of the great black scholars, afrocentric theorists. So I go way back.
Speaker 1:King Jr's last sermon was going to be why America may go to hell. It was not America should go to hell. It was not America ought to go to hell. It may go to hell because if you don't come to terms with racism, poverty, militarism, materialism, those evils are going to suck all the good stuff out of your democracy. That's in part what Jeremiah Wright was talking about. But Fox News and the others. You know they cast it in such a way that he was a hater of America rather than a hater of injustice in America. And so, unfortunately, of course, as an American politician, you can't get too close to that kind of prophetic fire or you get burned. So I can understand Barack in some sense wanting to get a distance as a politician, but on a personal level and on a very deep, truthful level, you had to try to teach people that there are voices in our society that are radical, that are not up for elections. They're trying to tell the truth and you can give your own critique of those voices or your agreement with those voices.
Speaker 1:And of course that didn't take place. He just got completely demonized and that's a very sad thing. Somebody raised their voice and just completely demonized. In some ways people tried to dismiss him, but I think I went on Fox News and said that I take a bullet for Brother Jeremiah and I don't agree with him all the time, but I know that he's got a deep love of ordinary people, deep love of black people, deep love of oppressed people. See, integrity is not about ideological purity or moral purity. Integrity is about saying what you believe, meaning what you say, saying what you mean and putting your life on the line. That's bottom line, that's Martin, that's Malcolm, that's Ella, that's Fannie, and it goes across the board. Dorothy Day was like that, rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was like that, edward Zaid was like that. This is a human thing. It cuts across race and gender and sexual orientation in that regard, and politicians are always a bit fearful of such people.
Speaker 2:Obama's famous speech A More Perfect Human. A lot of people have problems with that.
Speaker 1:I was a bit disturbed by it because he seemed to equate black rage. After 244 years of barbaric slavery and almost 100 years of American terrorism called Jane Crow and lynching and Jim Crow. That black rage had the same status as white resentment that these black folk were moving up too quickly. Now I believe in staying in contact with the humanity of my precious white brothers and sisters, but they need to understand that in a white supremacist civilization, when you've been the beneficiary of unbelievable privilege and entitlement, you have a right to justice, you have a right to fairness, but your resentment will never have the same weight, morally and spiritually, as a black rage who've had to come to terms with foremothers and forefathers raped and violated and exploited and lynched. And when he presented that equivalent, it made me upset. I said you're not telling the truth. You don't give speeches to make white fellow citizens feel better about themselves. You give speeches to try to tell the truth and then win elections. He decided he couldn't tell the truth. He had to ease white fears, insecurities and anxieties and make that equivalent. And many, many black folk, of course, were very deeply upset with the speech.
Speaker 1:No-transcript and Obama's use of language. See part of the problem of having a silvery tongue is that it can be used as a substitute for a moral backbone. And a moral backbone you don't have to have a silvery tongue, you just need witness courage, fortitude so that, for example, even with the, we come back to police brutality and Black Lives Matter. Silvery's tongue gives a formulation and pulls back no action at all. What are you going to do about accountability of the police? Well, we'll see with investigation. We've seen investigations over and over again. They still walk free. So I think in some ways that kind of silvery tongue is a dangerous thing in terms of not allowing people to keep focus on what the real actions and deeds and policies really are. I mean, he gave a wonderful talk about income inequality, didn't he say? Well, why is it after you first turned to top 1% got 95% of the income growth? So your policies go on one way and your wonderful speech on income inequality go on the other way.
Speaker 2:And the media coverage.
Speaker 1:And the mainstream media. I mean he had the corporate media in his back pocket. I mean we got to be honest about this. Msnbc was basically a state media. It was hardly a critical word said about him in eight years.
Speaker 1:Black, white pundits, if you're going to be a media obsessed with free speech and first amendment, then engage in affirmation but also critique Hardly none at all. Our dear brother Barack Obama wins the Peace Prize and his last year he drops over 26,000 bombs. He's got five wars going on simultaneously but he is viewed as a peaceman because that's the image projected and you say well, wait a minute, where's the truth? Here they say oh, brother Wes, how come you upset? You ought to be supporting the black president. I like the black brother. He's brilliant. I love him as a human being. He's head of an empire. He is the brilliant, poised black face of the empire, just like now we got know-nothing, mean-spirited, xenophobic white face of the American empire. We got to keep track of the structures and institutions, not just the styles and the temperaments. Now, of course, barack Obama is much, much, much, much better. Donald Trump's no comparison. But they're still running an empire.
Speaker 2:Obama is America's first black president. What is that?
Speaker 1:Well, one is. I think it sent messages black America, brown America, yellow America, red America, white America that white supremacy was, at a crucial level, a lie, and that's the symbolic indictment of white supremacy and I resonate with that deeply. That's why I cry. I resonate with that deeply. The very notion that black people are human beings at the deepest level is still news for too many people, and a lot of my fellow citizens have yet to get that memo. The black man, brilliant black wife, charismatic black wife, beautiful, sharp black children, symbolic indictment of white supremacy, crucial. That will never be taken away from Brother Barack Obama.
Speaker 1:The challenge will be when the history books are written. It's going to be more than just symbol. It's going to be what kind of substance? Did you keep alive the legacy of the best of black people? We're talking about Sarah Vaughan. We're talking about Donny Hathaway. These are love warriors at the deepest level, and if you're a love warrior, you hate injustice. And if you're not a love warrior, you can hide and conceal the injustice with silvery speeches and get all the symbolic acclaim, but when it comes to the rubber hitting the road, that's a different thing. That's a different thing. Marvin Gaye can write some beautiful songs, but if he can't sing it, then what's going on? It's going to be a different performance. You're going to feel it differently and I think, as the years go by, more and more black people are going to say what a missed opportunity with the black president, especially given this horrible, nightmarish condition now.
Speaker 1:How come he didn't hit poverty? How come he didn't hit mass incarceration? How come he didn't talk about race? How come he didn't hit poverty? How come he didn't hit mass incarceration? How come he didn't talk about race? How come he kept dropping those drones on those folk? How come he assassinated an American citizen without due process? We've been concerned about personal liberties as a people because they could assassinate us. You can't assassinate an American citizen because you disagree with them, with no due process. These are crimes and I got in trouble because I call them a war criminal. You don't kill innocent people. In Pakistan and Somalia, over 200-some children killed. Those are war crimes. Bush 45 drones. Barack Obama over 500. I call Bush war criminal. What does that make Barack Obama War criminal too? You got to tell the truth. You're not in it for popularity. This is about an integrity of a people, of a struggle, of a movement, of a grand effort to make the world a better place.
Speaker 2:Increased racism during the Obama's presidency.
Speaker 1:In a white supremacist civilization, when you get a symbolic indictment of white supremacy, you're going to get a backlash. That's another reason why, when you're in there, you better fight, you better fight this is not no popularity contest in terms of PR strategy and so that when the backlash takes place, we better have serious, substantive progress, have something to hold on to, because, believe me you I mean all the white supremacist militia groups are operating. Before barack obama, many of us had to keep track of him because they coming at us with him almost double not just him, but a whole lot of others too, but especially him as the major symbol. Now that he's gone, it's part of the mainstream. When I'm there in Charlottesville and I'm looking in the eyes of these neo-Nazi, thuggish brothers and sisters, that hatred bubbling up. It had been there for a long time, but now it could come out and they're willing to live and die. So that's, in part, white supremacist backlash against the symbolic indictment of white supremacy, which was the black president. I also think that if Obama's neoliberal policies had actually spoke to the needs of working people, he would have been able to convince them not to go right wing. He would have given them a sense that they're not forgotten. So when you get authoritarian populists, the crypto neo-fascists like Trump, and tries to convince them he's on their side, because they've been forgotten and they were forgotten. With the wealth inequality in place under Obama's administration, the wage stagnation, massive redistribution of wealth from poor and working people to the top 1% that had been going on for a while, it escalated, you see, so that it helped set the context for the kind of both white backlash, as well as the rule of big money, the rule of big military, the scapegoating of our precious Mexicans and other immigrants, the vicious misogyny that emerged, all of the various forms of hatred that we've seen since Donald Trump came down that escalator, you know, as somebody who you know for so long had to live under death threats myself, it's clear to me that the levels of hatred and contempt and the willingness to kill and murder cut very deep in certain circles of my fellow citizens. That's precisely the reason why, when you get a chance to make your blow for justice, you better do it strong, because if you don't, you'll still be misunderstood as being more militant than he is.
Speaker 1:He was called a socialist. Everybody knows he's not a socialist. Ask Wall Street whether he's a socialist or not, he's called a Muslim. We know the brother's. Not a Muslim. He was called somebody not born in America. Hawaii is in America Last time we checked. All these lies are going to go on, that's par for the course. So no, I'm not surprised at all. I mean, my God, this is America. You've got magnificent human beings in America of all colors, and you've got some xenophobes in America who hold on to their whiteness for dear life. That's just the kind of country we are.
Speaker 2:Henry Lewis the Skip Gates controversy.
Speaker 1:Well, I recall when it happened happened. Skip just got back from China. You know Skip and I go back 40 years. He's my very, very dear Skip. You know he's a liberal too now, so we don't agree on everything, but I have a deep love and respect for him and when I called him up I said this is a moment in which you can Link your plight To the plight of everyday black people who get mistreated like this all the time. When the first time he was on CNN, that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1:Then the intervention took place to somehow isolate him as this black professional who's tied to these particular kind of sites, from Martha's Vineyard to Harvard and so forth, to create some kind of beer, from Martha's Vineyard to Harvard and so forth, to create some kind of beer summit to bring them together.
Speaker 1:So it's more individual as opposed to institutional and structural. It's very important that black middle class people, that black bourgeois people, link their plight with the plight of the black poor and black working class. Link their plight with the plight of the black poor and black working class, Because one of the strategies of the powers that be is to isolate them, extricate them, make them exceptional Negroes, exceptional people, and still treat the rest of black people in a disrespectful way, and I thought what was upsetting about the response from the White House. It made it too individualistic, as if this thing is not something that's widespread. By the time you got to Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, it became very clear of course it's systematic, Of course it is chronic. Course is something that's much more widespread than these individuals, especially these very brilliant, well-to-do individuals like my very dear brother Skip Gates.
Speaker 1:Amazing grace that speech Again I thought it remained on a superficial level. This is not the time for singing. This is not the time for singing. This is a time for policies that speak to institutional racism, that are responsible for the deaths of so many black folk. So it was almost a kind of diversion or distraction in that way, and I must say also, I thought he sang the wrong song. And I must say also, I thought he sang the wrong song Because when you've got precious bodies in the coffin owing to a vicious white supremacist, this is not about amazing grace at all. It's not about worms that we are Uh-uh. We got some other songs in the black tradition. You could sing Wade in the water, god going to trouble the water, we're going to meet God in this trouble, in this struggle. We're going to make sure that justice can be found for these folk in the coffin. You need a fighting song. We got some fighting songs in the black tradition. Now, amazing Grace is a beautiful song. There's a time to sing that song. He got wrong song and what does that do? That pacifies people, you see. So I was. I wasn't that excited about that particular moment either. I was glad he went down. I thought he should have gone to ferguson barack obama.
Speaker 1:He's got a decency about him. He really does. I don't want to downplay that I don't see enough courage and backbone. He's got a decency about him. He really does. I don't want to downplay that I don't see enough courage in backbombing. He's got a decency about him. So there's things that he's done that are beautiful. I thought the speech that he gave for the brothers and sisters in Connecticut, newtown it was powerful. When he cried, those were genuine tears. Absolutely. That's a decency about him, you see. But decency in tears is not the same as action based on political courage and moral witness, and that's what I've seen. That's relatively lacking in his eight years.
Speaker 2:And so Obama's contributions.
Speaker 1:Well, I think, first and foremost he provided a sense of hope, optimism, upbeat quality in the early part of the 21st century, just as the American empire was beginning to undergo various forms of decline and decay, of decline and decay, and it looked as if he could provide a regeneration and revitalization of American democracy at that moment, and that's a major contribution. It had repercussions all around the world Africa was looking toward him, latin America was looking, the Middle East was looking for him and so forth, and that's something, again, that can never be taken away. The problem is, when you provide that level of hope, if you don't come through, the disappointment is felt in a very deep way. Now we talked before about this symbolic indictment of white supremacy. Being a black president, that will never be taken away from you. But when you do that, you have to then also be measured by the best of that black tradition, and when you got, you know Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and Martin King and Malcolm X and others in that tradition. It doesn't get too much better than that. That's like somebody showing up and going to blow their horn.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm sounding Well, you're sounding good, but let's play some cold-trained Miles Davis. Let's play some Mary Lou Williams on the piano and you listen to this. Oh, I got to do some more practice. You sure do. Yes, you do. That's true for black presidents too, because the standards are set from inside of the traditions of the everyday people. You set the highest standards of love, courage, fortitude, service to others, sacrifice. That's where the standards are, you see. And it's not Wall Street, it's not stock markets, it's not Harvard, it's not Princeton. Those are the elite institutions that will pat you on the back, but the real measurement is going to be the ways in which you empowered or willing to serve and sacrifice for those slash. Don't call everyday people.
Speaker 2:What about Donald Trump?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the Obama presidency was a neoliberal rule, and by neoliberal what I mean is the rule of big money, with market logic shot through every sphere of our society, militarism, with wars in various countries, disproportionately Muslim countries. You have a neoliberal rule in place, unable to speak to the wealth inequality, unable to speak to the militarism, in fact reinforcing it. And here comes along somebody who calls for the collapse of that status quo. And Trump calls for the end of this kind of regime. And what does he have?
Speaker 1:Well, what we had was we had Bernie on the left. I do believe Bernie Sanders could have beat him. I knew that the old neoliberalism of Clinton just didn't have enough gump and gut and grit to deal with the newness of this spectacle, substance-less, xenophobic movement that Donald Trump was galvanizing. And so there's a sense in which the Obama administration in no way is a cause of the Trump administration. No, not at all. But he helped set the atmosphere by not following through and speaking to the needs, especially of working people, and by working people I mean all colors across the board, reigning in the Wall Street, greed not allowing people to think they've been forgotten, and so forth.
Speaker 2:And what about the future of democracy?
Speaker 1:The rule of big money and the rule of military industrial complex. You got to remember now, for every dollar spent in the US budget, 53 cents goes straight to the military industrial complex. So they already feel very truncated and narrowed. If it is the case that America can no longer generate high-quality leadership or statespersons of integrity, then democracy is just lying down a slippery slope to chaos. And that means not just anarchy, that means tyrants. Tyrannical rule. Plato becomes right.
Speaker 1:Every democracy produces a demos that's driven by unruly passion and ubiquitous ignorance that becomes gullible to a strong man, and so you end up with a tyrant who takes over and democracy goes under. Slowly but surely it goes under. We're already seeing signs of that under Trump. So I refuse to believe that, given all the magnificent human beings in this country, full of unbelievable imagination, intelligence, courage, that the best we can do is the kind of mediocre and under mediocre leadership that we have right now. If that is the best we can do, then you know something very precious it's coming to an end. The democracies are very fragile, very fragile possibility of your reconnection with obama well, you never know.
Speaker 1:You never know, you know. I mean, he's always been my brother, he's always in my prayers in terms of his safety and so forth. Uh, and my hunch is is that, um, there'll be context in which we'll get a chance to talk, you know, I get a brother hug and tell him why I had my strong critique, why I still think I'm right, and so on, but maybe not too, you know, you never know. You never know. All of us need to be rendered accountable in some way. I'm not always right either. He could correct me on some things, you see, but you never know. I'm always open, I'm always open.
Speaker 2:So Cornel West? Dr Cornel West is obviously running for president right now. Cornel West in that recalled a meeting working with challenging and critiquing Barack Obama. In this, west discussed Obama's candidacy, the symbolic importance of becoming the first black president and, as he tied it to the importance of keeping the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King alive.
Speaker 2:Cornel West is a prominent philosopher, activist, author. He was serving as the D Rich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary. Wes first began his teaching career at Union Theological back in 1976, when he was just 23 years old. He has since taught at Yale, princeton, where he received an MA and a PhD in philosophy and where he still holds the title of Professor Emeritus, also at Harvard, his alma mater, and the University of Paris. He has authored 20 books, best known for his classic, the 1993 book Race Matters and the 2004 book Democracy Matters. He has produced three spoken word albums, where he collaborated with Prince and other notable people, and appeared in over 25 documentaries and films. In over 25 documentaries and films. Additionally, he is a frequent commentator on political and social issues across several media outlets.
Speaker 2:A provocative, democratic intellectual, west initially supported Obama in 2008's presidential campaign but historically soon after became one of President Obama's fiercest critics from the left.
Speaker 2:Throughout process and throughout President Obama's two terms, dr West cited vehement opposition on everything from his handling through the financial crisis to his handling of the black identity and racial issues.
Speaker 2:Now this is what I'm starting to do in our classic interview section, and this came from snippets from a interview archive of life stories. This was a didn't make the movie all of out of a 2018 interview, and the movie, which I said all of us didn't make it in it was a thing that they had on HBO and it was a three-part HBO documentary series that ended up coming out in 2021 and that documentary was called In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union the personal and political journey of President Barack Obama explored that weaves together conversation with colleagues, friends and critics alongside his own speeches and interviews, so that you could probably still go to HBO and watch the entire thing. I hope you enjoyed it. We've got a lot more of things like this coming. I used to do a part of the show called Blast from the Intellectual Past and that led me to think that maybe sometimes we need to have a longer blast from the intellectual pass in long form. Thank you for tuning in and we will see you on the next episode.