Too bad such work as this is not required reading in our schools.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/15/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> For all these people criticizing Fire and Fury, mostly because it makes
> everyone look bad and because it points out how many Democrats are
> complicit
> in the Trump administration, here's the real response to the book or
> rather,
> to what it portrays.
> Miriam
> America Is Spiritually Bankrupt. We Must Fight Back Together
> By Cornel West, Guardian UK
> 15 January 18
>
> The undeniable collapse of integrity, honesty and decency in our public and
> private life has fueled racial hatred and contempt
>
> We live in one of the darkest moments in American history - a bleak time of
> spiritual blackout and imperial meltdown. Exactly 25 years ago, in my book
> Race Matters, I tried to lay bare the realities and challenges to American
> democracy in light of the doings and sufferings of black people. Back then,
> I reached heartbreaking yet hopeful conclusions. Now, the heartbreak cuts
> much deeper and the hope has nearly run out.
>
> The nihilism in black America has become a massive spiritual blackout in
> America. The undeniable collapse of integrity, honesty and decency in our
> public and private life has fueled even more racial hatred and contempt.
>
> The rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity
> has so poisoned our hearts, minds and souls that a dominant self-righteous
> neoliberal soulcraft of smartness, dollars and bombs thrives with little
> opposition.
>
> The escalating military overreach abroad, the corruption of political and
> financial elites at home, and the market-driven culture of mass
> distractions
> on the internet, TV, and radio push toward an inescapable imperial
> meltdown,
> in which chauvinistic nationalism, plutocratic policies and spectatorial
> cynicism run amok.
>
> Our last and only hope is prophetic fightback - a moral and spiritual
> awakening that puts a premium on courageous truth telling and exemplary
> action by individuals and communities.
>
> The distinctive features of our spiritual blackout are threefold.
>
> First, we normalize mendacity and naturalize criminality. We make our lies
> look like the normal order of things. And we make our crimes look like the
> natural order of things. We too often say Wall Street is a good servant -
> rather than a bad master - of the common good. Then we look away from the
> criminal behavior of big banks because they are too indispensable to
> prosecute.
>
> We deny that drone strikes are killing innocent people abroad. Then we
> overlook killing lists on Terror Tuesday at the White House, when a
> president and his staff can decide to kill people without any legal
> procedure, including, sometimes, US citizens.
>
> Second, we encourage callousness and reward indifference. We make
> mean-spiritedness look manly and mature. And we make cold-heartedness look
> triumphant and victorious. In our world of the survival of the slickest and
> the smartest, we pave the way for raw greed and self-promotion. We make
> cowardice and avarice fashionable and compassion an option for losers. We
> prefer market-driven celebrities who thrive on glitzy spectacles and
> seductive brands over moral-driven exemplars who strive on with their
> gritty
> convictions and stouthearted causes.
>
> Third, we trump the moral and spiritual dimensions of our lives and world
> by
> applauding our short-term gains and superficial successes. This immoral and
> brutal disposition reinforces - and, in part, is a result of - the
> all-encompassing commodification of a predatory capitalism, running out of
> control in our psyches and societies.
>
> The pervasive violence in our domestic lives and military policies abroad
> are inseparable from the profit-driven marketization of our spiritually
> impoverished capitalist civilization. And our civilization rests upon an
> American empire in decline and decay.
>
> Imperial meltdown is at the center of our catastrophic times. Our
> ecological
> catastrophe is real. The Anthropocene epoch engulfs us. Human practices
> -especially big business and big military operations - now so deeply
> influence the Earth's atmosphere that extinctions loom large.
>
> The potential for nuclear catastrophe remains urgent as US-Russia tensions
> escalate and other nuclear powers, like North Korea, China, Pakistan,
> India,
> and Israel, are expanding and restless.
>
> Our economic catastrophes proliferate along with grotesque wealth
> inequality. Our political catastrophes deepen as oligarchy triumphs from
> governmental dysfunction. Our civic catastrophes deepen as the public
> interest, common good, or even rule of law are undercut by big money.
>
> And our cultural catastrophes are often hidden - the vast and sad realities
> of trauma and terror visited upon vulnerable fellow citizens who are
> disproportionately poor people, LGBTQ people, peoples of color, women and
> children.
>
> The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom - not cause
> or
> origin - of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to
> American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie.
>
> He is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy - all spectacle and no substance,
> all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and
> maturity. His triumph flows from the implosion of a Republican party
> establishment beholden to big money, big military and big scapegoating of
> vulnerable peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women.
>
> It also flows from a Democratic party establishment beholden to big money,
> big military, and the clever deployment of peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples,
> immigrants, Muslims and women to hide and conceal the lies and crimes of
> neoliberal policies here and abroad; and from a corporate media
> establishment that aided and abetted Trump owing to high profits and
> revenues.
>
> The painful truth is there is no Donald Trump without Barack Obama, no
> neofascist stirrings without neoliberal policies - all within the imperial
> zone. Obama was the brilliant black smiling face of the American empire.
> Trump is the know-nothing white cruel face of the American empire.
>
> Obama did not produce Trump, but his Wall Street-friendly policies helped
> facilitate Trump's pseudo-populist victory. Obama's reluctance to confront
> race matters in a serious and substantive manner did not cause the ugly
> white backlash, but Obama's hesitancy did not help the opposition to
> white-supremacist practices.
>
> And, more pointedly, both Obama and Trump - two different faces of the
> imperial meltdown - supported military buildups, wars against
> Muslim-majority countries, drone strikes, the Israeli occupation of
> Palestinian lands and people, illegal imprisonments of innocent people,
> night raids on poor Muslim families, and inhumane detention camps. These
> war
> policies and war crimes have come back to devour what is left of America's
> democratic soul.
>
> So how do we respond to our dark times? The greatest tradition of prophetic
> fightback in the American empire is the black freedom struggle. The
> greatest
> tradition of moral and spiritual fortitude in the American empire is the
> black musical tradition.
>
> The artistic excellence in the best of black music - including the
> magnanimity and majesty of the sound - sets the standards for the black
> freedom struggle.
>
> These standards consist of radical freedom in love and radical love in
> freedom - the freedom to tell the truth in love about one's self and world,
> and the love of the truth as one freely speaks and lives.
>
> The Movement for Black Lives is a grand sign of hope. It is an exemplary
> collective effort to put prophetic fight back in our bleak moment of
> imperial meltdown and spiritual blackout. The prophetic vision and social
> analyses of the Movement for Black Lives begin with the most vulnerable,
> such as the precious LGBTQ people subject to massive trauma and terror.
>
> In this way, the terror and trauma suffered by the people in Gaza, Iraq,
> Pakistan, Yemen, and India (especially with Dalit peoples) are inseparable
> from the trauma and terror in Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland and Chicago.
>
> Another sign of hope is Reverend William J Barber II, the most Martin
> Luther
> King-like figure in our time. His Moral Monday movement and now the Poor
> People's Campaign is, alongside people such as Father Michael Pfleger and
> his great ministry at St Sabina Church in Chicago, the Reverend Katie M
> Ladd
> at Queen Anne United Methodist Church in Seattle and the Reverend Michael
> McBride at the Way Christian Center in Berkeley, California, the last hope
> for prophetic Christianity in America.
>
> Like the Movement for Black Lives, the 8 March 2017 women's mobilization
> was
> a grand sign of hope. It shattered the neoliberal hegemony of the Women's
> March of 21 January 2017 over the "feminist" label. In stark contrast to
> the
> fashionable corporate feminism, boss feminism and top-down feminism of the
> corporate media, the 8 March women's mobilization put class matters, gender
> matters and LGBTQ matters at the center of race matters and empire matters.
>
> The historic moment of Standing Rock, in which indigenous nations came
> together in a struggle for sacred lands, self-respect and control over
> resources was another grand sign of hope.
>
> Race matters in the 21st century are part of a moral and spiritual war over
> resources, power, souls and sensibilities. There can be no analysis of race
> matters without earth matters, class matters, gender matters and sexuality
> matters and, especially, empire matters. We must have solidarity on all
> these fronts.
>
> As we fight back, we remember the great visionary and exemplary figures and
> movements of the past. These precious memories focus our attention on
> things
> that really matter - not spectacle, image, money, and status but integrity,
> honesty, dignity, and generosity.
>
> This focus locates and situates us in a long tradition of love warriors-not
> just polished professionals or glitzy celebrities - but courageous truth
> tellers who fell in love with the quest for justice, freedom, and beauty.
>
>
> e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
>
>
>
>
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