Cornel West Blasts Obama Is A “Brown-Faced Clinton”, A “Post-Traumatic Depression” Will Follow

Outspoken Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West goes where very few ‘thinkers-of-color’ have had the courage to go in this interview with Salon’s Thomas Frank: “The thing is, [Obama] posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free… we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist… So you got low-quality black leadership. Al Sharpton is who? He’s a cheerleader for Obama… Eric Holder won’t touch the Wall Street executives; they’re his friends… I think a post-Obama America is an America in post-traumatic depression.”
Excerpted from Salon,
…how do you feel things have worked out since then, both with the economy and with this president? That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.
No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that’s a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are – we’re an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody – a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on 08/24/2014