← Eye Of The Storm Podcast (with Yanis Varoufakis and Raoul Martinez)
Eye Of The Storm Podcast (with Yanis Varoufakis and Raoul Martinez)
WE NEED A MORE SPIRITUAL POLITICS | Cornel West and Raoul Martinez
00:36:24
SOUL, BEAUTY AND POLITICS | Podcast 11
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- [00:00]
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- [02:00]
Interviewer
how are you today?
- [02:01]
Cornel West
Oh, I'm blessed. Blessed to see you and sister Francesca and brother Castro too. But I know she she's such a towering artist in her own right. She really is. She's already made a big difference in her life artistically, politically, morally, spiritually and and of course yourself though, brother, you you force for good as well. For us for good as well.
- [02:28]
Interviewer
Thank you. Before anything else, I have to ask what made you take the decision to join the presidential race as an independent?
- [02:36]
Cornel West
I just felt he didn't have any voices that really zeroed in on France, on the plight of what Frantz Fanon called the wretched of the earth. Poor and working people around the world, beginning in the midst of the American empire, but connected to the global south, connected to Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, and just working people, you know, in Europe, working people in Asia. America itself as an empire is undergoing deep decay and decline. And it's very important that to try to be some people, try to tell the truth.
- [03:09]
Interviewer
I mean, I feel that there's been a parallel in the US and the uk. We had our hopes all raised with Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the uk and ultimately those, those hopes were dashed and we're now back to a system where we have essentially two factions of a one party state, a business party. Right. Is that how you see the situation with the Democratic Party?
- [03:39]
Cornel West
Yeah, but because I primarily look through international lens. I mean, the heroic struggle of Brother Jeremy in the UK is certainly noteworthy, but when you have the mightiest empire in the history of the species, it's been roughly 70 since we emerged from the caves of Africa. The United States number 68. Britain had its moment in the sun, there's no doubt, peaking in 1900, let's say, and slowly but surely beginning to unravel all the way up to suez Canal episode 1956, it was clear it's over Britain. You've gone 700 million and now about five and a half million under your aegis, under your sovereignty in that sense. And so it is with the United States now. See, we peaked in about 1990 or so and we've been unraveling slowly. And now the veil has been ripped and you can see the criminality, you can see the mendacity, you can see the immorality in Gaza, but you can see it in other places as well. So even though there's parallels between Bernie Sanders in 2016, 2020 and brother Jeremy Corbyn, because the American empire has a very different situation, position, power, status in the world. And I'm looking at it from the vantage point of being inside the belly of the beast, as it were, and coming out of a tradition of black people who have been enslaved and Jim Crow, Jan Crow, degraded, demeaned, exploited economically as well, from that vantage point, that it is very similar in some ways and very different in another.
- [05:24]
Interviewer
Absolutely.
- [05:26]
Cornel West
Do you.
- [05:27]
Interviewer
I mean, this podcast is launched in part to coincide with the release of the documentary series that I've made on Yanis Varoufakis. And something that Yanis has said publicly and to me a few times, is that he'd Wish that Bernie maybe could have started a new party in 2020. Is that something you would have backed, that you'd have liked to see?
- [05:46]
Cornel West
Oh, very much so. I think brother Bernie I love very dearly we have our own disagreements, but I still love my brother. I thought he was very weak on empire, very weak on imperialism, very weak on bds. We got Palestinian struggle and very weak on Israeli occupation. But I think if he had broken, we'd be in a different situation now. There's no doubt about that. But I didn't think he ever had a real inclination to break that. He's been independent for so long. Once he began to caulk his with, collaborate with the Democratic Party and began to gain significant positions within it, it was clear that he was not willing to make a clean break from that party. Still not a member, but he's caucusing, he's collaborating with and what was needed was a break and he was not willing to do it. But I mean, you know, he had his choices, he had his reasons, and it was plausible but not persuasive. You know, it was an argument that in the end many of us didn't accept.
- [06:58]
Interviewer
Brother west, you, you've been an incredibly brave and articulate voice highlighting the genocide in Gaza which is being perpetuated by the State of Israel. First of all, I want to thank you for that because there haven't been enough voices and I wanted to ask, does that change your perception of, of this current moment, particularly in the realm of electoral politics? Because for so long we are told to apply the frame of the lesser of two evils that, you know, maybe you don't have your ideal candidate, but you have to vote for the lesser of two evils. And I just wonder if that argument has now run its course because we've seen Biden in the US and you know, similar things in the uk, so called progressives supporting militarily, financially, diplomatically genocide. Has that changed the calculus, do you think? For voters and progressives, I think for
- [07:53]
Cornel West
the general public, for most of my fellow citizens, they, they're able to see very clearly what raw power and raw money and moral decay that goes with that is all about in Gaza. There's no doubt about that. They could have seen it in Iraq invasion, they could have seen it in Afghanistan, they could have seen it in various US interventions in Latin America, in Africa, with Africom. There's so many other possibilities they could have seen it. But Gaza makes it very, very difficult not to see. Very difficult not to see. So I hear what you're saying, I appreciate the question, that the American empire has been involved in a number of enabling acts or direct acts. Now Gaza, it's an enabling act. The American empire is enabling this genocide. It's been enabling apartheid like conditions. It has been enabling ethnic cleansing. But now it's very clear. You can see just how intertwined the two are. So you're right. I mean, Nathan Yahoo and State of Israel. The elites who run that nation state are making certain kind of decisions. I thank God you still got some Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel who are critical of it, even though we don't have enough. But you do have some. And of course, we in the United States, we got a whole wave, very courageous, visionary, young Jewish brothers and sisters, if not now Jewish voices for peace. And other than me, Medea Benjamin is probably one of the great prophetic voices in the American empire, the Jewish system. We haven't even got to know Machomsky yet. So you've got a variety of Jewish brothers and sisters who are courageous enough to tell the truth. But when it comes to the elites who are running things there, the US enabling is undeniable. And the direction genocidal attack and assault on Palestinians by the idf, Israeli Defense Forces is just inescapable, unavoidably genocidal. I don't see any other word that one can use, even though they're trying to rationalize it and justify it.
- [10:18]
Interviewer
And do you think that race is playing a significant role in. In the way the establishment is finding ways to defend and justify what's happening?
- [10:28]
Cornel West
Oh, I think there's no doubt about that. I mean, it's clear that United States imperial policies can facilitate the killing of anybody of any color. It could be European, it could be indigenous, it could be black or white. But there's no doubt that the white supremacist dimension of US Imperial policies is at work as well. So that the very notion of a Jewish, of a Palestinian baby or Palestinian innocent life not having the same value as a Jewish baby or an innocent Jewish life, we can see that so clearly. You see it in the corporate media. For example, there's hardly any talk in the American corporate media about the Palestinian babies. Very little talk about Palestinian innocent folk. It's all Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas. But there's a whole lot of talk about the Jewish brothers and sisters who were attacked by Hamas. That's been the major preoccupation. Even when Schumer gave his talk on the floor of Congress calling for a change in government in Israel, he hardly said a Mumbling word about over 30,000 Palestinians killed or nearly 15,000 Palestinian babies killed. Now, when you flip the script and you say, ah, let's say those were Jewish babies who were killed, 14, 15,000, 30,000 Jewish folk who had been under occupation and domination for 76 years, who had been living under apartheid light conditions, who had undergone ethnic cleansing, we know the response would be qualitatively different. Schumer would have been on the floor of the Senate supporting the Jewish version of Hamas. We need to equip these freedom fighters with all that they can as they're resisting this vicious, genocidal attack. But some of us want to be morally consistent. If Palestinians were doing it to Jews, I would be insolidated with the Jewish brothers and sisters. If Jewish folk are doing the Palestinians, I'm consolidated with the Palestinian brothers and sisters. Why? Because it's a moral issue, it's a spiritual issue, it's an ethical issue with immense political consequences. So the level of not just mendacity and hypocrisy, but outright criminality for the Schumers and the Bidens and the Harrises and the Austens and the Kirbys and the Sullivans, we can go right down the line. And they know it would be a qualitatively different response if Palestinians were doing that to Jews. They know that. The world knows that. It's undeniable. You got caught. Checkmate. Your criminality is now under the limelight, period. What you gonna do? And you start all of a sudden, oh, well, we'll have a pier. We'll have a pier to make sure. Maybe we can get some food in, in another month or two. Oh, please, please, my God. The deep racism tied to the imperial policy, tied to predatory capitalist processes is undeniable. Biden knows, as an Irish brother, if those were happening to Irish babies and Irish people, you think you'd be the same response? No way. Under God's heaven.
- [14:15]
Interviewer
We know that you mentioned the word spiritual, that this, as you know, it's a spiritual issue as much as it's a political issue. And I'm really keen to. To hear your view on what the relationship between spirituality and politics is. We, we know that large segments of the left traditionally have been quite dismissive of religion and spirituality. I've come to believe that's a mistake, though. I understand how people reach that conclusion. I've always loved the way that you communicate, calling people brother and sister, talking to people with whom you disagree. But respectfully, how do you see this relationship between spirituality and politics?
- [15:05]
Cornel West
Well, I mean, for me, it's just a choice that I make. It's like this brother right here. It's the Love Supreme. It's John Coltrane. See, he's not just an entertainer or an artist. You see, he comes out of a tradition of the love warriors of a black people who've been hated and respond with deep love of truth and beauty and goodness and even of God for those who are religious. You see, people terrorize. But you don't want to form black version of the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize back. No, you get Frederick Douglass, you get Harriet Tubman, you get Martin King, you get Malcolm X. Self defense, yes, but you don't want to just terrorize. Been traumatized for 400 years. You don't want to just traumatize back. You want wounded healing. Listen to a little Aretha Franklin. Listen to a little John Coltrane. Listen to a little Luther Vandross. They will heal your soul. So that every institution has a certain kind of guys to it. I mean, the Communist Party had its spirituality. Socialist parties have their spirituality. Brother Jeremy got his own spirituality. So no matter how secular they say they are, of course there's nothing wrong with secularity at its best. That's just Socratic energy, questioning, critical engagement, finding out how power operates. That is indispensable. But every person and every institution has its own kind of spirituality. It's just your way of being in the world that pushes back callousness and indifference and allows you to have a sensitivity and a care and a concern and even a love for something bigger than you, outside of you. You can start with your mama. Daddy got a certain spirituality in your family. You got spirituality in the bar mitzvahs, in the Ramadans and so forth and so on. So spirituality understood in that way is inescapable. You and I share a deep indictment of any form of institutionalized religion that accommodates itself to structures of domination, the forms of oppression. And that's where the left is absolutely right. We thank Karl Marx and the others for that critique. But that doesn't mean that that exhausts all the spirituality. You see Sister Francisco on the stage doing her magnificent comic thing. She got a spirituality working that will touch your soul, remind you of Richard Pryor and Mom Madeley and some of the great comics, George Carlin and others. And they all have their forms of spirituality tied to their personality, tied to their style, tied to their signature in space and time and their brief trek on the earth from Mama's womb to tomb. So you're right. I Mean the left to think that somehow they can eliminate all forms of spirituality is, was, is nothing but what but a modern illusion.
- [17:48]
Interviewer
And it seems even just strategically a mistake apart from anything else. It concedes this foundational territory, which there's a part of every human being that yearns to be part of something larger, that yearns for the sacred. And if you concede that territory politically, it becomes occupied and weaponized by your political opponents. And I think the, the right historically have very skillfully manipulated and channeled those energies. It. Is that how you see it?
- [18:19]
Cornel West
Oh no, that's exactly right. I mean I, I, I, I usually never begin with the tactical or the strategic. But I think that the. You're absolutely right in terms of a tactical strategic mistake, colossal mistake in terms of trying to get a sense of what the life worlds are of oppressed people. And don't allow that spiritual terrain to be hijacked by either the fascists, the neo fascists, the neoliberals or anybody else. You're absolutely right. But for me, I always begin at the visionary Lake. I leveled up, brother. That's what it is to be a jazz man or a blues woman. You see, Billie Holiday, she had her tactics and strategies, but when she opened her song and sang Strange Fruit, she was singing about something visionary and artistic. And beauty is inseparable from politics. It's inseparable from goodness, it's inseparable from truth, but it's not reducible to those things. It still has its relative autonomy to use Alarian language these days. It still has its status that's not identical with those things. And beauty is very much about a vision of getting us through this tear of a certain fortification, getting us through this despair and a certain style getting us through this callousness and seemingly hopelessness that the world presents us. This is part of the greatness of art and why the artists are always the vanguard of the species. They're the ones that we look for as the exemplars of the highest levels of truth telling, of beauty making, of justice seeking and God wrestling, as some of them are still love. Concerned about the God question.
- [20:18]
Interviewer
And when we
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- [20:51]
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- [21:33]
Interviewer
Look back historically at some of the major achievements of progressives. Often you see these forces fused, the artistic, the spiritual, the political.
- [21:43]
Cornel West
Oh, absolutely right.
- [21:45]
Interviewer
I mean, when going back all the way to the Quakers in the UK and the abolition of slavery, to Gandhi in India or Martin Luther King in the United States and Thich Nhat Hanh, who's a hero of mine, the Vietnamese
- [21:58]
Cornel West
Buddhist monk, Absolutely towering bell hooks was crazy about that, brother.
- [22:05]
Interviewer
Oh, really? Okay.
- [22:06]
Cornel West
Yeah.
- [22:08]
Interviewer
For me, the, these are the examples of people who manage to fuse these two. So often I look around and I get the sense that we need more spirituality in our politics and more politics in our spirituality that too often they're kept apart and they can't be kept apart. The world, life is, is one and united. And you know, our identities sometimes get attached to one particular mode. And it seems to me that progress depends on breaking down the divides between these parts in ourselves so we can break them down in the world.
- [22:46]
Cornel West
That's, that's, that, that's so well said. But you also think, I mean, I think Anton Chekhov is probably the greatest a literary artist in late European modernity. These Russians, some people say, well, the Russians aren't really European. Well, it's complicated. But yes, let's, let's say no story to gain your Chekhov still deep part of the European tradition. Now he's secular, you know, he's agnostic. Brecht is another towering, towering secular artist who has a deep sense of what it is to wrestle with what it means to be human. And there's a spiritual element in what it means to be human because they're saying, in fact, there's always something more than simply the protons and neutrons that we're shot through with. There's something more in terms of our interactions with our loved ones, something more in terms of constituting forms of solidarity. And community doesn't necessarily have to be tied to sacred entities, but there's still something that's sacred about the dignity of human beings. And with Breck and Chekhov or you can think of other secular artists that still made that connection, even given their critique of forms of religiosity. And religiosity is very different because there you usually get the institutional outline. And once you begin to get the hierarchical institutional manifestations in Judaism and Christianity and Buddhism and Islam and so forth, you're going to have the Marxist critique kicking in, and rightly so.
- [24:19]
Interviewer
Many have commented that we're living through very polarized times, culturally and politically. Is, is that something that you perceive? And, and if so, what. What do you attribute it to?
- [24:31]
Cornel West
Well, I mean, one, I would go further. I think we're living in some of the most gangsterized times. And because it's gangsterized, it certainly generates forms of polarization. See, when you, when you gangsterize, you just feel as if this. There's no accountability, there's no responsibility, there's no answerability to say and do anything to get away with it. There's no appeals to any kind of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy itself, as we know, is the. Is the way in which vice stays in contact with virtue and vice versa, because it's still. You have a standard of what the virtue is, you just violate it. So you're hypocrite. A gangster has no sense of what vice and virtue are. They all gone. Like Trump, they're completely eliminated. He just acts as if he's thrasymachus every day of his life. Coming out of Plato's Republicans might makes right. Power dictates morality. I'll do anything that I want to do that I can get away with because I am who I am. And that's true for his ego vis a vis anybody. It could be family, it could be community, it could be a staff, it could be country, it could be empire. And he's not alone. See, that's a sign and symptom of the ultimate amoral logic of predatory capitalist processes. It's all about me, me, me, money, money, money, status, status, status, blitz and glitch. And therefore, the very fact that he can get over 60 million votes in the American empire means it's not just about him. You talking about a sick society. You talk about a spiritually bankrupt empire. Now that's not for every individual in the empire because you got people who are fighting against it. You got traditions of resistance that are fighting against it. But those traditions are getting weaker and weaker, especially given the escalating repression that comes our way anytime empires begin to implode. And that's what we're dealing with right now, little brother. We're dealing with an imploding empire of organized greed, out of control, institutionalized hatred escalating every day. And with big money and big military, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll accommodate themselves to anything any longer. They can keep their profits going. We've seen this with the fascists, we've seen this with the right wing populist so forth. And so as long as big money and big military is still in control and have the politicians captive, they'll just watch the thing implode and create their own little security spaces with the gates and the walls going further and further up as we plebs and, and folk on the outside try to deal with the catastrophes and the crises.
- [27:25]
Interviewer
And their major strategy over the centuries has always been to divide and rule.
- [27:30]
Cornel West
Divide and conquer. That's exactly right. You take the words out of my mouth, my brother. That's the exact, keep us at each other's throats, scapegoat the most vulnerable so that we cannot confront the most powerful.
- [27:44]
Interviewer
I sometimes reflect on the fact that at the level of values, I can perceive commonality between the left and right in that you talk to ordinary people anywhere and they're against, they're against theft, they're against exploitation. But the targets, the people they think that we should be focusing on differ radically depending on whether they're on the left and the right. And so on the left we're saying, look, look at the corporations, look at the imperial states, look at the empires. And on the right, our attention is often directed to the most vulnerable, be it the immigrants, the, the welfare claimants. But the question I have is how do we, how do we make the most of that commonality to try and heal some of the rifts, to, to neutralize the strategy of divide and conquer.
- [28:34]
Cornel West
You know, you just have to continually appeal to the humanity and the best of the humanity of people across the board. And people are not static, they're not stationary. They change over time. They often change based on what they're exposed to. And if you get a neo Fascist Pied Piper that says, look, this professional managerial class is winning all of the economic gains and we ought to go at them. And then you trash the new immigrants coming in who are as vulnerable as you can get. And then you zero in, of course, on the ultimate scapegoats in American empire who are black people. Even though indigenous people of probably been treated more viciously than anybody. But they're not as visible, you see. So you keep. You keep scapegoating the black folk as well. That's almost a given for the right wing in the United States, you see. And because it has such a long history, you push that button. People recognize that right away. And so the only thing you can do is try to reach out, continue to tell the truth and seek justice. Keep your sense of humor and your style and try to stay say that lo and behold, you're being duped, you're being blinded. The lenses that you're looking at, the world will be clouded. Truth ought to have some status here. And the truth is you have the capacity to be better than you are. The truth is, in fact, that if we were to come together, you'd be able to live a life of dignity and decency. More so than you accommodating to this big money and big military that's trying to convince you based on the carrots that they dangle in front of you and that that's the best alternative for you. That's all we have to work with, my brother. That's all we have to work with. But when the powers that be, you know, they've got control of the cultural apparatus of TV and other instrumentalities, and they want to control social media more and more and more. And they want to keep the people pacified and distracted and distracted. And that's very important. Keep them focused on something other than the most fundamental. Life, death, joy, sorrow, freedom, equality, democracy, integrity, honesty, decency, generosity, tenderness, gentleness, kindness, soulfulness, sweetness. Hey, that's tradition that I come out of, brother. That, that's our fundamental focus on try a little tenderness. The soulfulness, sharing of a soothing sweetness against the backdrop of grim catastrophe. That's a blues people, you see. But this is at our best. We got our black gangsters, we got our black cowards, we got our black thugs like any other community. But I'm talking about the best of the tradition that I come out of is one that says, of course we have the blues. Not a whole planet has the blues. Now the American empire has the blues. We've had the Blues for 400 years. In the midst of the American empire. What do a blues people do? Well, you honestly confront the catastrophe. You keep your sense of swing and time and temporality. So you don't feel as if all options have been foreclosed. What was in Britain? It was Tina, right? There is no alternative. There is no alternative, but that's what black folk have been told for 400 years. Pharaoh's on both sides of the bloody red seas. What are you looking to look? Looking for the promised land force, Pharaoh everywhere you look. And we said, oh, really? I guess we're going to have to make a way out of. No way. I guess we're going to have to play some notes y' all ain't never heard before. They're going to flatten these notes. We're going to be on the side, we're going to be under the notes. We're going to be on top of the notes. We're going to use some European instruments in such a way that Europeans themselves never can play them this way, even though they're their instruments. Thank you, Adolf Sax, for the saxophone out of Belgium in 1848. Watch this brother blow your instrument in a way that you ain't never conceived of. Not to put you down, but to say he's confronting catastrophe. He's keeping his sense of temporality in swing. And he's improvisational, he's flexible, he's fluid, he's protean. He's looking for options and alternatives you know not of. And that's what artists always do. They authorize futures that we cannot see. That's what Shelley meant when he says poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. He wasn't talking about people writing script. You talking about people use their imagination and empathy to envision a different world that other people oftentimes can't conceive of. Keep track of these grand authorizers of a different world. That's what our artists play a fundamental role. And in the end, we can become artists of our lives. Not just artists on the stage, in the auditorium, the stage of history. Artists conceiving of a world that seems to be impossible. And then when we help create it, the powers that be say it was inevitable. Oh, you don't say no. That's blood, sweat and tears. That's struggle. That's social movement. That's solidarity activity. That's who we are at our best as human beings.
- [34:08]
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- [34:26]
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- [35:07]
Cornel West
As human being that if we can't do it, we go down swinging. We go down swinging, fighting, loving, laughing.
- [35:20]
Interviewer
That's beautiful. I mean, I think it gets to just such the heart of the matter here, which is the challenge to respond to the injustice of, of the world and perhaps the oppression you experience directly to respond in a way where you, your own spirit is not corrupted. You bring. You turn it. There's a kind of alchemy of turning the pain and the injustice into something beautiful. Whether that manifests as activism or art or if there's any kind of division between the two. I, I think that's a constant struggle for the left as a whole not to. Not to retreat into our narrower identities and not to allow our anger to corrupt our goodness. Because I, I think sometimes. And we're all human, so this is inevitable. But sometimes we become part of the problem and we, we can contribute to the polarization by dehumanizing and alienating those with whom we disagree.
- [36:29]
Cornel West
You're absolutely right though, brother. That's a very slippery tightrope to walk. It's very, very difficult. That's why you can't do it by yourself. You have to have a sense of community. The French used to call it fraternity, but it might be a bit too patriarchal. It's really a sense of steadfast commitment to welfare of others in a community that's making and remaking itself so that its high marks are its landmarks. But the landmarks are inseparable from the question marks. So the tradition has a Socratic energy that keeps the innovation going, predicated on the best of the tradition. And that's really what jazz. That's basically what it is. No Miles Davis without Charlie Parker. There's no Sarah Vaughn without Shoot. That goes off about the Marian Williams, because she comes out of Mount Zion Baptist Church. So you got the great gospel singers spilling over into jazz. But they're innovative. They're building on the best, you see? And that's what we have to do in our politics. Can you imagine? No, man. Especially in the American Empire, man, we had just a few politicians that had the courage of the Alonius Monk and Mary Lou Williams and the style of a Ben Webster and Jerry Allen, man. We'd have a whole different kind of country, brother. We'd have a different kind of country, brother.
- [37:56]
Interviewer
West, I know you. You have other appointments to get to, but I wanted to say, look, you're a light in the darkness. You're an inspiration. And if. If. If people listening are to take one thing from the conversation, I hope. I hope it's the depth of the cliche, that it does come down to love in the end, it does come down to expressing that, holding on to it, connecting to others through it. And I think you're a great embodiment of that. So thank you for all you do.
- [38:29]
Cornel West
But I salute you. I salute Sister Francesca and all of those who choose to try to be forces for good, for truth, for beauty of money, and to do it with a smile. You know, we're not here that long, man. You got to find joy. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Got to be joy in your soul. And even when you're dealing with the genocide in. In Gaza, how come? Because these are great people who are resisting, who are fighting, who still have victory signs in the midst of all of those barbaric bombs being dropped on them. And that's the best of the human spirit. We saw it with the Jewish brothers in concentration camps with the Nazis. We see it with Dalit peoples in India. We see it at landlord peasants in Brazil. We see it with Gypsies in Europe, you see it with the Haitians. I mean, it's a human thing at its best, and it's manifest in a variety of different. All the different cultures and traditions and communities of resistance that constitute the human family. And I know I might be a little bit too humorous. We could really talk about sentient creatures, you know, go beyond the human in that sense and how they're able to sustain their sense of dog dignity, cat dignity, and so forth. But I'm focusing on human beings right now, primarily. And so I'm just hoping that people don't get discouraged in this moment of overwhelming barbarity and grimness and dimness. Don't be surprised by evil. Don't be paralyzed by despair
- [40:11]
Interviewer
and and that's where it becomes a spiritual crisis when we do succumb.
- [40:16]
Cornel West
That's exactly right. Yeah, absolutely right. It's been a joy talking to you though, brother. You stay strong now.
- [40:23]
Interviewer
You too, my friend.
- [40:24]
Cornel West
All right though, brother. Thank you. If you enjoyed this podcast, please like
- [40:33]
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- [41:52]
Cornel West
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- [41:59]
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Interviewer
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- [42:40]
Cornel West
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