Too bad such work as this is not required reading in our schools.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/15/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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.
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