Uh-Oh Moment for Bernie Supporters

What can I say to get a headline? Am I the Trump of the Left?

Until now, I've been a  Bernie fan, but reading about  Bernie's embrace of Cornel West, his proposing West as a member of the Democratic Party platform committee was a rude awakening. 

It brought back memories of the 60's and 70's, an era which shaped Bernie Sanders politically, psychologically and morally, and era when liberal ideology moved America to the left, and from that many good things evolved:  revision of the repressive, destructive and oppressive sexual mores America had labored under,  rejection of racism, Jim Crow and institutional injustice to Black Americans, rejection of wars of colonial aggression/ anti communism.  But amidst all the push in the positive direction, there was, it must be admitted, a substantial load of sheer lunacy, stupidity and self promotion from figures on the left, and Cornel West is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about.

West has called the Prime Minister of Israel the minister of war crimes.  He has called President Obama a Rockefeller in blackface.  He was, quite rightly, chased out of Harvard when as a faculty member he considered his real future in cutting hip hop records but did not do the sort of "scholarship" which is expected of Harvard faculty, so he decamped to Princeton, where he demonstrated the wisdom of Mr. Summers by becoming a voluble jackass.

Now he is Bernie Sanders' first consequential appointment to a public role.

The kind of revolutionary I can warm to

As a college student, I actually scheduled time in my busy day to walk downtown to Providence, R.I. in a peace rally, but when I arrived to get in line, there was a group of students carrying the North Vietnamese flag, which was not an expression of any sentiment I had.  I wanted to walk with American flags, not the flag of the guys who were killing my former classmates.

I find myself in the same position now, placed there by Bernie Sanders. Yes, I want to change things, but if revolution means embracing a guy like Cornel West, well then that's a revolution which has gone off the rails. We wanted a change which exposed stupidity and hypocrisy and which sent the abusers of our financial system packing, but now we have a grade A fool masquerading as a Princeton professor saying, as Stringer Bell would say, "Such shit."

It might be okay if Bernie brought Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Tom Hayden to the revolution, but when he gets Cornel West and the Black Panthers or a latter day Malcolm X, well we begin wondering how big a mistake we have made.

Sorry Bernie, you lost me.

Suddenly looking a lot better