The "Brilliance" Game, and How it Works
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I remember a time during the 60s and 70s when virtually everyone could see what was going on around them. But today, we have PhDs who don't understand as much about what's going on around them as many of us did in junior high school. "Dr." Boyce Watkins is a case in point. Sometimes I have to scratch my head when I listen to that guy. If they're passing out PhDs to people who are that clueless, we're in serious trouble. The dude is, literally, clueless - and Cornel West, with his long, convoluted sentences notwithstanding - is not far behind. But I’m going to focus on Cornel here, because he has the higher profile.
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Even the way Cornel West speaks is designed to camouflage the fact that he's not saying a damn thing. His speeches are designed in such a way that by the time he ends a paragraph, you've forgotten what the subject was. Thereafter, the people delude themselves into thinking that they don't understand what he said because he's so brilliant that they can't keep up. No folks. You don't understand him because he hasn’t said a damn thing.
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Cornel West came into prominence during a time when there was a raging debate going on over the racist claim that due to the "artificial boost" that Black professionals were getting from affirmative action, they weren’t as competent as their White counterparts. And during that same time there was also a debate going on over the claim by some White scholars that Black people were innately intellectually inferior to White people and the rest of the population.
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As a result of those debates, and the fact that West had an association with White Ivy League universities, the Black community embraced him as the poster child for Black intellectual competence without taking the time to vet him like we should have. It was that mistake that has led to the flawed intellectual monster - and the total embarrassment to many in the Black community - that we have today.
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But I have to admit, he has it going on in one respect - he gets $30,000 a speech not to say a damn thing. So if it weren't for the fact that his stupidity is disrupting our political process, I wouldn’t be mad at him. But whenever you listen to him, always keep two things in mind. First, that this is a brother who takes a very long time to say very little, and secondly, if you don’t understand him, it has nothing to do with your lack of intellect - it’s because, again, he hasn’t said anything.
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A good working definition of a pseudo-intellectual is one who relates common knowledge as though he’s telling you something new. That’s what Cornel West specializes in. I’ve never heard him give a speech that couldn’t be fully understood and summed up in one sentence. But West will take that sentence and dress it up in long, convoluted, and endless parentheticals, sprinkle in the names and thoughts of a few long dead White men, and embellish it with over-the-top and super-cool (by his standards) gesticulations, and have you thinking he’s the second coming of Socrates, even though he hasn’t said a damn thing of value.
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The reason that I’m pointing this out is because this is the way that the Black community allows itself to be bamboozled. The powers that be can control millions, by simply controlling the mind of one man. That isn’t to say that Cornel West is purposely conspiring with the enemies of the Black community to undermine us, but social manipulators can simply take the character of a man into account to know he’ll be useful for their purpose. And I think this is the case with Cornel West.
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Think about it. The only reason that we even listen to Cornel West is because he’s been promoted by the White power structure. They’ve proclaim him to be "brilliant" (but of course, any Black man who can read without moving his lips is brilliant by the standard they hold us to), they've given him unabridged access to the media, and they’ve conferred the aura of Harvard and Princeton upon him. In other words, they’ve bestowed all of the symbols and accoutrements of stature, significance, and intellectual gravity upon him, and let there be no doubt about it, the system is expert in controlling our minds with symbolism. That’s why judges sit on a podium looking down upon the people and wear long Black robs. How much respect would you have for a judge if he was sitting at a table with you in a jogging suit? So symbolism plays a huge role in helping those who control the system to control our minds.
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But why would the system want to bestow this favored stature upon Cornel West?
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The answer is very simple. Due to West’s flamboyance, tendency to be self-serving, and lack of true depth, in spite of his highfalutin rhetoric, he doesn’t pose a real threat to the status quo. In addition, his flamboyance distracts the people’s attention away from more serious and sober-minded thinkers with a serious agenda. And I don't mean to imply that this is some kind of covert conspiracy, to the extent that everybody's involved with the expressed purpose of trying to undermining the Black community. The conspiracy is on a much deeper level, on the level of those who manipulate the mores of our society as a whole.
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For example, the television producers who schedule Cornel West for appearances are not engaged in a conspiracy. They're simply doing their jobs. It's just the way that our system is set up - to promote the most entertaining personalities to the public. As a result, people like Cornel West tend to be the ones who bubble to the surface, not the people with the more sober-minded agendas. So the conspiracy resides on the level of those who are purposely conspiring to dumb-down America - those who conspired to abolish the Freedom of Information Act, and those who are coordinating the brutal assault on the nation's public educational system. That's where the conspiracy resides, and it's definitely real.
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The people who control that conspiracy are the social manipulators, and they would have loved to have had someone like Cornel West during the days of Martin Luther King, because with West’s demonstrated zeal to protect "his" turf, and his tendency to attack anyone who might obscure his position in the spotlight, he would have been doing the exact same thing to Martin that he’s doing to Barack Obama, Melissa Harris-Perry, Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, and Jay Z today.
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Just like with everyone else he's envious of, West would have proclaimed that there was a flaw in Martin’s character, and he undoubtedly would have claimed that Martin wasn’t the "down for the cause" kind of brother that West proclaims himself to be. And it’s more likely than not that he would have also attacked Martin for not being militant enough, and for being too accommodating to the White man - in other words, just like he said about Obama, he'd have said that Martin was not quite Black enough - but, of course, in order to cover all bases, he would have wrapped his criticism in the false claim of "love for his brother." By now everybody knows that when Cornel starts talking about how much he "loves" a brother, it's time for that brother to put on his body armor, because Cornel West's brand of love is vicious.
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He probably would have tried to align himself with Malcolm, much like he did with Tavis Smiley. Because he would have been afraid to bad-mouth Malcolm, because as most of us know who grew up in the hood, most people like Cornel try to be super-cool to cover-up the fact that they don't have much heart. Think about it.
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So there’s a very good reason why the White power structure has embraced Cornel West - because he’s a flamboyant clown, the Liberace of faux intellectualism, and they know his antics are more likely to keep the Black community laughing and giving one another high-fives, than seriously thinking about the gravity of our situation, and the dire conditions within our community. And West has demonstrated repeatedly, in spite of his rhetoric, that he's not nearly as wedded to the Black community as he is to Cornel West. Clear evidence of that is the fact that he's never taught at a predominately Black institution in his entire career. He's spent his entire career teaching the children of those that he claims is the enemy - the very "oligarchs and plutocrats" that he claims Barack Obama is beholding to.
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So a good rule of thumb to prevent ourselves from being manipulated, is to never allow ourselves to become so enamored of anyone that we give their ability to think priority over our own. While Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are great in preparing their students for specialized professions, when it comes to pure thought, and the innate ability to assess reality, their water is no wetter than your own. So when the manipulators trot people like Cornel West, or Ben Carson out before you, it's game. Essentially, they're telling you not to believe your lying eyes. For that reason, we should never, ever, take anyone else's word for who's brilliant. Always assess the value of every man for yourself, and if you listen to them carefully, you're more than capable of making that assessment.
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But don’t just take my word for it, check out Cornel West "in concert below" - and while you're doing so, take special note of how all of the supposedly "learned" people in the audience have also bought into his total nonsense as brilliance. Just like you, they're looking up to who they're being TOLD to look up to. It's a weakness in human nature, and requires a pointed effort to educate one's self out of. It has to do with our tendency to go along with the crowd, and our failure to be independent thinkers. Independent thought is frowned upon in most societies, because independent thinkers can't be controlled. That's why they lynched Jesus.
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So in order to see how pronounced this tendency is, when you’re done watching the clip, just ask yourself one question - What did I get out of this that I didn’t already know, or that was of any value whatsoever? The answer to that question should bring you to the very same conclusion that I came to six years ago - not a damn thing.
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Eric L. Wattree http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.