Freedom fighter

One the America’s most provocative and admired public intellectuals, Doctor Cornel West, is now a candidate for the US Presidency.

Cornel West, known as “Brother West”, an Afro American academic –distinguished professor of philosophy in major US Universities – , Theologian and Activist, is described as brilliant, unapologetic, full of passion, yet cool.

By the way, he is a man who considers courage as the highest human Virtues, runs away from “deodorized” politically correct discourses, and considers Education as the place for “Soul transformation” rather than the place of pontification. When he was appointed professor of Philosophy at Harvard, his class attracted so many students that there was no room large enough for him to teach it. The University had to rent a church.

It is Now o’clock

As Cornel West says, his candidacy is not about an election, it's about a moment in history. It's about Life. He looks at the situation in United States square in the face – the spiritual decay, the ecological breakdown, massive poverty plus other catastrophes. And he can’t remain a witness whereas the only choice offered to the people is between Trump or Biden, a polarized choice between two traditional parties, the Democrat and the Republican, both captured and corrupted by the capitalist, white supremacist and organized greed mentality.

In his words, “We got a choice between neo fascists like brother Trump or milktoast neoliberals like Brother Biden. Wow. I'm so happy to make such a world shaking decision.”

Cornel West refuses the TINA fatalisation (There is no Alternative). He has decided to fight for freedom and solidarity, as he has done his whole life. He has a Dream of a better Future for America! One based on “Truth, Justice and Love” (see his official campaign)

Wouldn't that be inspiring to see America chose for President a doctor in philosophy, an intellectual, a real activist, a man who speaks the truth in an intimidated way ? A man who walks his talks and embodies “truth, Justice and freedom’ ?

Because indeed, as he says,

“we need visionary and courageous presidential leadership”.  

Don't we, all around the world, need Politicians who, rather than make pols to determine what opinion they are going to defend, dare to have opinions to shape the world in a radically different way?

Docteur West says “there is no vocation without invocation”. So he stands on the shoulders of giants – not only black people - such as Martin Luther King and others from a long tradition of black American people who have been diminished, humiliated for 400 years, and who, at their best , rather than fight back with the same violence, have transmuted their despair in something “funkier”: Blues, Jazz, and “Love supreme”. That's why he says he is an aspiring bluesman in the world of ideas and a jazzman in the life of the mind.

For me, the virtue of his candidacy is that even if he's not elected, he stimulates a conversation about something that goes far beyond the old and maybe obsolete polarization between the right and the left.

He seems to me to be a true freedom fighter, a man who exemplifies courage, integrity, decency, honesty, self examination and hope.

An inspiration

That might be an inspiration for us in Europe - as citizens, as statesman, and people from all walks of life - to take a stand for something that is far beyond ego and the tendency to preserve an injust system that preserves itself.

That might be an inspiration to invoke those giants of all colors who have set the standards so high and that we stand on the shoulders of. We can name them, refer to them, be inspired by the past and by their standards to create the future.

As Cornel West likes to quote, “an unexamined life is not worth living”, but “an examined life is painful” because each time we have to get rid of some of our beliefs, Zombie orthodoxies, obsolete Ideas, we die.

And that's precisely what we need: learning how to die before we die, daily.

To die as a voracious caterpillar and mutate into a Butterfly. To let go what Jean-Louis and me call this MAD Land (based on Massive Assured Destruction” and to give Birth to NO MAD Land (based on Mutually Assisted Development).

With courage.

Watching and listening to Cornel West in this historical moment gives me courage and hope. Even if he does not win. Because he runs with courage and hope.

And that includes the courage to DREAM of a better world!

The fact is, as Vaclav Havel said, that

‍“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. Hope  is not the conviction that something will turn out well. But the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”

Hope is a state of mind, not a state of the world. It requires Imagination, to see beyond the horizons of the familiar, the déjà vu, the eternal Same Old Shit. It gives us the strength to renew ourselves, even when the situation seems hopeless, here and now.

I have Hope.

Thank you, Brother West.

May his force be be us!

Video

Official Campaign