Almost all politicians are without moral fiber
Published by marco on
This is a wide-ranging one-hour interview with Cornel West. West seems a bit more frazzled than he usually is, but he still provided some reasonably pithy commentary. It would have perhaps been better if Chris had spoken more.
Dismantling the American Empire (w/ Cornel West) | The Chris Hedges Report by Chris Hedges (YouTube)
At 20:45,
“That’s a sign of what it means to be obsessed with success out of careerism, opportunism. And it reflects the distinctive and dominant features of the political and professional class in the American Empire, which is conformity, complacency, and cowardliness…and being well-adjusted to injustice and well-adapted to indifference…and wanting people to only see your success and not the underside…and the precondition of that success, which is all of these lies and crimes.
“It has nothing to do with moral and spiritual greatness. It has everything to do with narrow worldly success based on opportunism and careerism. You see it in the academy; you see it in journalism; you see it in Hollywood; you see it in the music industry; you see it in our politics. And that’s one of the reasons why the American empire is on its way toward doom or implosion if there’s not a significant counter movement.”
At 36:00,
“if we can’t meet that test, you can rest assured that any leader—any elected official—is nothing but a strategist and a tactician. They don’t have a moral fiber in their backbone. And that’s the problem with our politicians in both major parties in the United States.”
