 The brilliant Dr. Cornell West sat down for an interview with Brian Williams of MSNBC and he gave this network the reality check that they desperately desperately needed. But even more important than that, he is forcing all of us to really face some harsh truths about our system, our system of governance that may be broken beyond repair. We may not be able to change this system, although we're in the process of finding out whether or not our institutions can adapt to the need for widespread systemic change. But before I go on, we'll discuss the implications of what he's saying once we watch the clip. Take a look. Where the fork in the road? Right now, there's a massive crisis in the legitimacy of any leadership. Who actually speaking out? Of course, the Republican Party is following its neo fascist gangster who's the leader. The Democratic Party, neoliberal leader, will see what Brother Biden has to say, but it's hard to believe that he's going to be able to come through with what is necessary, even though he's so much better than Brother Trump. We must have a spiritual, moral, and democratic awakening among all of the citizens who care. Recognizing we're going to disagree in the public square, but recognizing that we are losing our democracy. And anytime any society can no longer mobilize the best of its past. It could be Lincoln. It could be Frederick Douglass. It could be Walt Whitman. It could be Toni Morrison. It could be what won't go on and on. But do we have what it takes it's hard to say? If our system just becomes so choked by greed and hatred and contempt that it doesn't allow for reform, then the choice is between nonviolent revolution, violent explosions that occur over and over again. And I'm opting for nonviolent revolution. By revolution, all I mean is what Martin Luther King meant, which is the fundamental sharing of power, resources, respect, and wealth. Redistribution of wealth, what Brother Bernie was talking about. And I don't believe Bernie has a monopoly on wisdom, even though I supported him twice. But we are in this together. We hang together or we hang separately. But we are also a part of the world. And the world is looking. Chinese empire against our own empire can it undergo the kind of democratic awakening because it needs fundamental change as well. What about our brothers and sisters in Latin America? What about our brothers and sisters in the Middle East? Oh, precious Africa. It is a global affair. And Norm Chomsky reminds us we've got ecological catastrophe waiting for us. And if we have leaders that view it as a hoax, then the whole planet goes under. And it's all over. And all you got is the cockroaches. That's where we are now. But I do have hope. I'm a blues man. Black people been through slavery. Black people been through neo-slavery called American terrorism and lynching. And we've been through so much hatred. And we've always produced magnificent love warriors like Don Coltrane's Love Screen. Martin Love Ethic and Tony Morrison's B Love and James Baldwin's Love forces us to take off the mask. We know we cannot live within but fear we cannot live without. Yes, those love warriors. Where are they? Where are the love warriors to teach our young people no matter what color. Put love and justice in your struggle. And get that revenge out. But we acknowledge the pain. And tell those at the top. That the days of you weeping. This chaos based on your greed. Is producing precisely the opposite of what Amos, what Esther, what Jesus. That Mohammed was all about. Justice, justice. Justice rolled down like waters in righteousness like a mighty stream. That's Hebrew scripture. Jesus running the money changes out of the temple in the name of the love of the poor people. Not losing sight of the money changes but knowing it's their greed that choking the best of what was going on in Jerusalem. That's what we need. And if we don't meet that challenge brother Brian, the world will trouble me. I could listen to Cornel West speak forever and never get bored with it. Everything he says is so brilliant and he manages to take all of the emotions and quite frankly the anger that I'm feeling and articulate it in a way that just makes so much sense. And what he's saying here, it needs to be heard by everyone in the country. Right now there's a massive crisis in the legitimacy of leadership. And that is a huge thing that MSNBC has never discussed because we all listen to the pundits on there. They think that changing America for the better is as easy as voting out Republicans defeating Donald Trump. But it's not that simple. It's not that simple. The American people are so demoralized and distraught currently because we understand that Donald Trump isn't the only issue in America. We had a lot of underlying issues, material conditions that weren't being addressed, racial issues that weren't being addressed. He manifested because of our problems because I've said this once I'll say it again. Desperation leads to radicalization. It doesn't always have to be bad. It can be radicalization for the good being more hard-lined in your stance of humanism and supporting human rights. But oftentimes desperate people want answers. And if an authoritarian demagogue comes along and is claiming to give them answers, if they're desperate they may just believe him. So he's not the cause of all of our problems, but let's be real, he's certainly not making things better. He's exacerbating the issues that we're already experiencing. Now, Dr. Cornel West also says we must have a spiritual, moral, and democratic awakening among all of the citizens who care, recognizing we're going to disagree in the public square, but recognizing we're losing our democracy. And that's, I think, a key issue here. We can disagree on issues. We can have policy debates about issues like Medicare for All and whatnot. But there is a lot of people who have misdiagnosed the issue, and MSNBC and mass media is part of the problem. They have misdiagnosed the issue because they make it seem as if this is a partisan issue, but it goes deeper than that. The issues that we're experiencing in America isn't just Democrat versus Republican, and it's as simple as voting. It goes beyond that. And that's what Cornel West is trying to highlight here. He also says our system becomes so choked by greed and hatred and contempt that it doesn't allow for reform. Then the choices between nonviolent revolution or violent explosions that occur over again, that's a choice basically. So, you know, he also talks about how we're dealing with not just crises at home, but we are one country among many. We're dealing with climate change. That is an existential threat to humanity. So, the significance of this moment can't be overstated. And I think that Cornel West does a phenomenal job at speaking to that. Now, I have one more clip from the same interview that I want to share with you, where Cornel West says things that have got to make an individual like Brian Williams and MSNBC pundit feel uncomfortable because he talks about capitalism in a very direct way, and you know, it goes against what MSNBC is supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be propping up the system. There's the Nagra first to power and MSNBC gets hit with some really harsh truths from Dr. Cornel West. The challenge is the gangsterism at the top has been sucking so much of the wealth owing to the greed, so much of the power owing to its connection to the greed. So, democracy can survive when its public life, its public goods are so privatized and militarized and individualized. John Dewey taught us that, one of our great philosophers. We've got to look at the best of our past in this moment and see whether we can mobilize it for these new circumstances. If we can, we'll make it out like Lincoln, like FDR, like LBJ. But if we don't make it out, then we just become another empire that had high democratic possibilities that understood itself as the great city on the hill, but never came to terms with your slavery. Never came to terms with your Jim Crow. Never came to terms with your working class that was unable to gain access to jobs with a living wage. Never came to terms with the humanity of the vast majority of human kind, women. Never came to terms with the rich humanity of our precious trans and gay and lesbian brothers and sisters. Never came to terms with the new immigrants. Now, I do believe we've got a whole lot of magnificent human beings in this country. The problem is, is that it's hard for that to spill over given the rigidity of our structures. And thank God that those in the street, especially during the day, come from all colors, all gender, all sexual orientations. So the public lynching of a precious black brother, our dear brother George, sparks something deep in the souls of every color, every gender in this nation to get to speak. That's why I thank God the industry. But we do have to acknowledge the degree to which we got a key track of the best of who we are and render accountable everybody at the highest level as well as those on the ground. So listen, what he seems to be alluding to here is the fact that it might be too late for our system. He says no democracy can survive when its public goods are so privatized and militarized and individualized. So he's speaking to the need, the desperate need to expand the concept of democracy. It's not enough in a democracy that we show up to vote for leaders that represent us. We need to expand democracy, have democracy in our policing, have democracy in the workplace. Basically be radical in our quest to democratize every aspect of society because the status quo isn't working. Simply voting for people to represent your interests isn't working because those representatives can easily be co-opted by special interests. So he's speaking to the need to fundamentally change our system, opt for more democratization, but we're actually going backwards. We're losing our democracy when we should be going in the opposite direction. And he says, you know, whether we're going to make it out of this moment as Lincoln, FDR and LBJ did, or whether or not we'll become another failed empire with high democratic possibilities has yet to be seen. So what he's getting us to think about is whether or not it may be too late for America. We have to grapple with the reality that America may be broken beyond repair. Our system may not be reformable because think about this. We've seen protests for days now. Is anyone confident that we will have a real policy solution in a functioning democracy? When you see civil unrest on this scale, governments take action. It's only in failed states where they are unable to act that we don't see action. So we are really at a crossroads and whether or not America's broken beyond repair has yet to be determined. But Cornel West kind of alluded to whether or not he thinks the American experiment has failed in an interview with Anderson Cooper that he did a couple of days ago. Take a look. But I think we are witnessing America as a failed social experiment. And what I mean by that is that the history of black people for over 200 some years in America has been looking at America's failure. Its capitalist economy could not generate and deliver in such a way that people could live lives of decency. The nation state, its criminal justice system, its legal system could not generate protection of rights and liberties. And now our culture, of course, is so market driven. Everybody for sale, everything for sale. It can't deliver the kind of really real nourishment for soul, for meaning, for purpose. And so when you get this perfect storm of all of these multiple failures at these different levels of the American Empire. And Martin King already told us about that. When I saw those pictures there in Atlanta, you could see Martin right there in Atlanta saying, I told you about militarism, I told you about poverty, I told you about materialism, I told you about racism in all of its forms, whatever forms it takes. I told you about xenophobia. And what we've seen in America is now these chickens coming home to roost, you reaping what you sow. And in this instant, you have Brother George where it is so clear it is a lynching at the highest level. Nobody can deny it. And I thank God that we have people in the streets. Can you imagine this kind of lynching taking place? And people aren't different, people don't care, people are callous. You have just a few people out there with signs. I recall the moments in which during the Reagan years, there was a few of us out there. In the 60s, you had masses out there. Now you've got a younger generation of all of these different colors and genders and sexual orientation saying we won't take it any longer. But you know what's sad about it though, brother? At the deepest level? It looks as if the system cannot reform itself. We've tried black faces in high places. Too often our black politicians, professional class, middle class, become too accommodated to the capitalist economy, too accommodated to the militarized nation state, too accommodated to the market driven culture tied with celebrity status, power, fame, all of that superficial stuff that means so much to so many fellow citizens. And what happens? What happens is we've got a neo-fascist gangster in the White House who really doesn't care for the most part. You've got a neo-liberal wing of the Democratic Party that is now in the driver's seat with the collapse of Brother Bernie. And they don't really know what to do because all they want is show more black faces, show more black faces. But oftentimes these black faces are losing legitimacy too because the Black Lives Matter movement emerged under a black president, black attorney general, and black homeland security and they couldn't deliver, you see? So that when you talk about the masses of black people, the precious poor and working class black people, poor and working class brown, red, yellow, whatever color, they're the ones who are left out and they feel so thoroughly powerless, helpless, hopeless, then you get rebellion. What he says here is crucial and it's so important every single person in America needs to be listening to what Dr. Cornel West is saying right now. We have to come to grips with the reality of the situation. America is a failed social experiment. Our system may not have the capacity to be able to change at the rate needed to sustain itself. And when that happens, society breaks down. We devolve into either a failed state or an authoritarian police state. So we've got to acknowledge the possibility that we might not be able to save the system as it is right now. In fact, a lot of people already believe that it's broken beyond repair, but I think that normal Americans are starting to wake up to that reality, that our system that we loved and cherished so much, maybe it's not worth saving. This is why Bernie Sanders ran and opted for a political revolution because that was the last chance to get political reform and that failed. We might just not be able to save the system. It may collapse. And a lot of people may think that's a good thing because maybe something better can emerge out of the ashes, you know, a new political awakening in America. But you've got to understand that the power grip that the powers that we have on the minds of Americans is so strong that something far worse could emerge out of what we're dealing with currently. And the worst part about that is Americans might welcome it because it's different. They don't know what kind of change they want or need. They just know that change needs to happen. So when they see the American system implode and something else emerges, like a police state, they might welcome it because it's new. So what we have to do as Americans currently, the takeaway from all of this, I think, is that we have to acknowledge the failure of our system and determine whether or not we can save it. And using that information, grappling with that harsh reality, we have to figure out what we do next, how we get justice for people, how we protect humanity. And I don't think there's a clear cut answer for that. I don't know what the answer is if there is. I don't know. But we're witnessing the collapse of democracy in America, and it's happening really fast. Usually, you know, the shift from democracy to authoritarian regimes, if you look at other countries, where democracy has collapsed, it either happens really quick with a military coup or something like that, or it happens gradually throughout the course of the years, and we've kind of seen a little bit of both here in America. I'm not saying we're a full-out authoritarian regime just yet, but we've been seeing the reduction of civil liberties and attack on our freedoms. And now, within the span of a couple of months and really weeks now, we're seeing a really rapid fall in democracy, where the President of the United States is literally threatening to use the United States military against its own people. If we saw this happening in another country, we would be appalled. The United States government would speak out against these human rights abuses. But it's happening here, and we've got to really think hard and deep about how we affect change for the better, and what to do if our system actually has failed, if it is incapable of adapting to the needs of this moment. Our system might be a failed social experiment. In fact, I think it is. I think he's right when he says that. So the question is, how do we build a new system that's better, that actually does give people the change that they need when they need it, deliver justice to Americans, have institutions that are rigid enough to fend off attacks from fascist agitators, but yet be durable enough to maintain changes that are made for the better. I don't know. This is the age-old question of democracy and politics, right? But I do know that we have to really be real with what we're working with, and fight like hell right now more than ever to make sure we have justice in this country, because things are getting bad quickly, and it's going to continue to be that way. Because the system, it just, it failed. So I'll leave that there because I'm just rambling at this point, but it's hard to grapple with this in real time. It is. We're watching democracy die, and that's hard to digest as someone who has only known democracy in America. Not a perfect democracy, but you know, a system that at least allows us to voice our grievances. But if Donald Trump actually does what he threatened to do, and crush protests violently, and we lose the ability to speak out against the U.S. government and, you know, its tyrannical practices, then really all hope is lost. We can't even voice our concerns and what we need to do for change, so things could get ugly. If we don't fight right now, what we still have, the ability to affect change.