For those of us just emerging from the hangover of an election gone awry for the Left, a proclaimed “mandate” from the people, and a string of fun new political appointments, the worst is yet to come. After a long night of ill-fated political exuberance , we roll over to find out we went home with John Kerry. The deed is done and there is no time for regret. Finding ourselves emerging from the haze of a series of embarrassing one night stands with the shrieking Vermonter, the slick Hip-Hop-savvy general, and pretty-boy Edwards — may demand a moment of clarity.  

None of these men seemed like out and out bad people. Their agendas all stood starkly in contrast to that of George W. Bush. Each candidate had his own nostalgic connection to a progressive era we missed. They opposed the war as it was being fought, made gestures towards labor, and even questioned the necessity of the Patriot Act’s most invasive measures. But none were men of substance. The shame of our brief affair with mainstream democratic politics is how little these men stood for. I am embarrassed that I voted for someone who crafted his position on gay marriage in the gutless language of states’ rights. And who responded to the increasingly genocidal violence enacted in the name of U.S. democratic principles with the phrase “find them and kill them.”  

How did it get so bad? Why were so many leftists and young people motivated to campaign and vote for people who represented them so poorly? (The media spinsters who have constructed the “people’s mandate” for Bush will fervently disagree, but as Michael Moore correctly points out, more young Americans voted in the last election than ever before.) What seems obvious now is how convinced we have all become that there is no alternative. What is missing is any kind of real dialogue over the issues.  

Even the “hot button” values issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools were not debated. Both the vice presidential and presidential debates where characterized by vaguery and moralizing, as opposed to reasoned discussion. In a pre-election appearance on the “debate” show Crossfire, Daily Show anchor Jon Stewart pleaded with host Tucker Carlson to stop “hurting America.” What seemed appalling to both the Democratic and Republican hosts on Crossfire was Stewart’s claim that they did not actually debate on the well-rated CNN talk show. Stewart was, of course, correct. The show that is supposed to provide “partisan balance” does exactly what it sets out to do: It gives exactly equivalent doses of pre-prepared democratic and republican sound bites.

A requiem for lost souls

Most of us know that a vote for Kerry was largely a vote against Bush. We found ourselves desperate and hopeless enough to believe anything would be better. In the past decade of an increasingly conservative Democratic party, many have begun to believe the Religious Right’s assertion that the history of America is a conservative Christian history, leaving the Left to settle for “anything but Bush.”

It is with this newfound nihilism that esteemed Princeton Professor Cornel West takes issue in his new book, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. In a sweeping survey of American history focused on what he calls a “Socratic and Prophetic tradition of truth-telling,” West returns to the oft-heralded founding artists and thinkers of radical democracy — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Melville, and their inheritors, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, amongst others, to resuscitate the rich American tradition of questioning and dialogue.

West’s well-known wit and brusque style immediately call out the Democratic party, dubbing them  “pathetic” and “spineless.” He argues that, as a nation, we suffer from a “deadening nihilism.” As West defines it, American nihilism has taken on three forms: evangelical, paternalistic, and sentimental. All, he says, demonstrate a “cowardly lack of willingness to engage in truth telling, even at the cost of social ills.” The sources of this nihilism are not surprising. Citing the increasingly violent and yet directionless infotainment of CNN and other major media sources, West argues that while they show the tragedy of the world, they prevent a “reckoning with the institutional causes of social misery.”

It is difficult to dispute this fact. Consider, for instance, the vice presidential treatment of the domestic AIDS spread. During the 2004 vice presidential debate, moderator Gwen Ifill asked both candidates to comment on the increasing spread of AIDS amongst African Americans and young people domestically. She added that their responses should specifically not address the AIDS crisis in Africa. Both Cheney and Edwards, of course, quickly redirected the question towards Africa. Finally, Cheney admitted that he was not aware that AIDS was spreading more rapidly amongst African Americans. However, he showed no remorse for this ignorance and instead enacted what West seems to mean by “sentimental nihilism.” Cheney used this opportunity to repeat with heartfelt sincerity the “tragedy” of such occurrences, as if such a compassionate performance was sufficient to address the AIDS crisis. West has aptly identified the role that admitting the horror of social ills has come to play in postponing any significant response to modern day injustices. His assessment of the Democratic party is equally correct. Edwards’ predictable response simply attacked Bush’s policy toward the AIDS epidemic in Africa, rather than taking the risk of proposing aggressive alternative solutions or even answering Ifill’s question.

The dreams that stuff is made of

West responds to this darkening political landscape with vigor. He identifies Ralph Waldo Emerson as the dreamer of American potential and Herman Melville as the dark oracle foretelling where American exceptionalism will lead in pursuit of our great white whale —global military control. West synthesizes these two historical referents into what he calls the “tragicomic position.” Or a historically rooted political ethos that owns up to the troubled and often violent history of the United States, a democratic experiment as indebted to notions of freedom as it is to enslavement and genocide.  In a description of what West feels few Americans are willing to accept, he describes our nation as a “complex intertwining of democratic commitment and nihilistic imperialism.”

West is frank and unflinchingly honest about the troubled histories of our brightest moments in democratic progress. The agrarian-led Populist movement, the social reforms of the Progressive era under Woodrow Wilson, and the Labor movement spearheaded by Eugene Debbs — all of these leaps forward for social justice and class equality also contain a shadowy and often forgotten history of racism, sexism, and profound xenophobia. Many of these advances occurred under the Wilson administration, which reasserted the Monroe Doctrine and exported American Manifest Destiny to Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines, while renewing racism at home through increased segregation and the re-segregation of Washington, D.C. In emphasizing the at times schizophrenic policies of reform and democratic struggle, West hopes to carve out a new space for politics that can be hopeful without the willful ignorance of nostalgia and sorrowful without the melancholy of nihilism.  

West impressively displays the breadth of his historical and philosophical knowledge throughout Democracy Matters. But he sets this work apart from other detailed histories of American progressivism like Richard Rorty’s Achieving our Nation by maintaining a truly global scope in his sources in hopes of renewing the American democratic tradition. Unlike Rorty, who champions the universal human spirit found in Emerson and Baldwin along narrow class lines at the exclusion of race and sexual politics, West devotes the second half of his book to the voices of dissent amongst three groups who are often represented as being united behind their dogma: Muslims, Jews, and Christians. It is this move to disrupt the predictable Christian, Jewish, and Muslim responses to global problems of injustice that makes this book a must-read. What West attempts is a truly ecumenical approach to politics that resonates with the religious and nationalistic tendencies of Americans while holding tightly to the truly cosmopolitan scope of his dream for global democracy. This is a Herculean task that tests the mettle of West as a thinker and a writer.

It is difficult to say West succeeds at the task, however. Democracy Matters concludes as more of an invitation for further striving than a final proposal or policy statement. But West’s attempt to reclaim the ossified history of the American renaissance alongside the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s liberation theology, now mostly forgotten by mainstream religious dialogue, gives pause to cynics who have replaced hope with vitriolic aspersions toward the faith-based communities of this country. Democracy Matters is important because it starts an honest and fearless dialogue between the religious traditions that seem to draw the starkest lines of global division and conflict and have gained undeniable power, whether it be direct theocratic rule or the proxy wars of the Religious Right. West’s invitation to Judaic, Christian, and Islamic thinking is not one of banal respect or politically correct multiculturalism. Rather, it is an engaged, committed search for a common history that demands social justice and ethical lives in a world many have given up on. He crosses the lines into religious and spiritual debate that our “born-again” leaders run from as they profess their religiosity. Engaging new power centers of American politics within their belief structures presents political possibilities that Democratic leaders have not even considered. Given the new political landscape of values and beliefs, it is difficult to imagine competing with the church-led grassroots Republican organization until opposition leaders can dispute their claims to righteousness. West lays the groundwork to develop such a political vocabulary, concluding that “to be a Christian is to live dangerously, honestly, freely — to step in the name of love as if you may land on nothing, yet to keep stepping because the something that sustains you no empire can give you and no empire can take away.”

Out of curiosity, I wondered what the opposition response would be. I went to the Christian Coalition website, and typed into the search box, “What is a Christian?”  I received the following response: “Sorry, your search for ‘What is a Christian?’ yielded no results. Please try again.”  

Luckily, despite the confusion, I still received an invitation to make a donation using my Visa, Mastercard, or American Express.

Player Haters and Hater Players

Given that West intervenes in questions of capitalist greed, military empire, racial subjugation, and the fate of our nations souls in ways that have gotten many men shot, it is not surprising that his work should stir controversy. What is troubling is that the controversy has centered around his competence as a scholar rather than the validity of his claims. In a recent media frenzy over West’s scholarly credentials started by Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, one of the most accomplished men of American letters has had to defend his significance.  

Democracy Matters, however, lays those question to rest. The trajectory of this work points to a corpus of new philosophical developments that address the continuing legacy of American arrogance and political nihilism. For those like Summers who criticize West for his forays into Hip-Hop or appearances in movies such as The Matrix: Revolutions, bravo, you are correct. The man has no mic skills in that department. (His music reminds me of Christian rock; it is awful and embarrassing to listen to.)  But what makes West’s work exciting is his willingness to put himself on the line for what he believes. He finds hope in the possibility of a democratic youth that most politicians and thinkers write off all together. His attempts to speak in the idioms of science fiction or Hip-Hop are laudable, if not successful. Although his attempts at infiltrating popular culture have had mixed results, West’s invocation of Christian grace and generosity is undeniably powerful even amidst the best arguments for civic secularism.

West confronts the Left with a deeply powerful and difficult question, one that it must engage in a world increasingly dominated by theocratic politics. What must be discussed further is how well West can maintain his spirit of ecumenicism in an increasingly divided world.  

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Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornell West
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Jairus