You can tell that O’Reilly wanted them on the show so he could wag a finger at them — He, Bill, is the final arbiter of what is right and just. But Dix and West got in some good points that O’Reilly just dismissed.
Apparently, we are not now supposed to judge a politician on the basis of what he has promised to do.
Okay, just watched it here – no TV so didn’t watch it last night.
My initial reaction? I was said that they did not make the point that running a campaign for president IS taking action. Bill O’s constant insistence that Trump “hasn’t done anything yet” is just false.
MOREOVER, he’s criticizing West & Dix of bad behavior (mostly of being “unfair”) because they’ve taken out an ad that articulates their perspective to the masses …or signed someone else’s ad, I’m not sure if they were or weren’t involved in the authorship.
If West & Dix can be accused of bad behavior,. if Bill O knows enough to know that he opposes West & Dix, wants to bring West & Dix on his show to wag his finger, then why the heck can’t West & Dix know enough to know they are anti-Trump? to know that they wish to wag a finger (or light a candle, or whatever) in legal, communicative protests against Trump?
Fuck Bill O for making them out to be somehow bad when he’s doing the same thing with LESS justification than an entire presidential campaign on which to base his own critical actions.
MOREOVER MOREOVER, Trump has actually named people who will fill his cabinet, assuming they are confirmed. Each public nomination (even if the nominations are not official until he takes office) is an act, not “merely” speech [as if speech does not have real-world consequences]. On top of this, he has also named some people to positions that do not require Senate confirmation – we can expect these persons to take their offices of trust later this month regardless of what anyone else might or might not want. And we can also state that his actions in refusing to put his money in a blind trust and in his attempts to redefine the anti-corruption standards of the federal government are pro-corruption actions. No weaseling, no “words only,” and no uncertainty: Trump has acted to make corruption and conflicts of interest more common and less legally dangerous. Seriously, seriously fuck that.
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and, finally, I hate to say it b/c I know it’s trivial compared to the substance, but labeling this clip as “West and Dix” when from left to right it’s actually “Dix & West” was constantly throwing me off – or at least annoying me (I’ve seen West speak too many times to actually confuse the two, even if I don’t really know Dix). I wish whoever posted this youtube clip would re-title it. Don’t know why it bothered me to that degree, but it did. Heck, it would even be better if the title just disappeared during play, but on this computer it certainly doesn’t.
I normally avoid viewing or listening to clips of Bill O’Reilly due to the powerful and unavoidable visceral reaction he produces within me. But I felt the need to watch this one. His arguments are so puerile and threadbare that he is largely reduced to simply talking at the same time and at a louder volume than his guests. Bill O’Reilly is truly despicable.
Yeah well, West did not support Hillary for president. So as far as I’m concerned he owns this himself.
I said it in the other thread: if there’s apparently no connection between was Trump ever said, ever did and the things he’ll do as a president, on what basis did O’Reilly vote for him?
O’Reilly actually said of Trump, “It doesn’t matter what he says.”
It does matter.
The look on West’s face when O’Reilly said it doesn’t matter what Trump says was priceless.
re @5 wrote:
I bet West’s priceless face was silently saying “what planet do you live on? If it don’t matter what the president-elect says, why do we have presidents, ain’t that their JOB, to be the voice of the entire country? Words matter, as much as #all_lives_matter, when spoken by the POTUS, what do you think ‘bully pulpit’ means? I bet not what you think it means.”
grrrr
Hi ,to all those brave people who watched the said interview ,i salute your courage and your strong stomachs .
#3 Cervantes
He doesn’t own Trump, the people that voted for him do, as well as a democratic party that decided that “her turn” was more important that addressing actual issues, and even looking at the polls that basically predicted this if Hillary was the nominee.
It would be great if, for once, the democratic party stopped playing circular firing squad, reached deep to find some guts, and actually fought for something.
Instead it’s just “The Russians!” and if you ask for proof that the “Russian’s” did it, well then you’re on the payroll of the Russians. Stupid.
#9, nd5001,
you Putin-fellating apologists look even dumber than usual now that CIA intel has been leaked that links the DNC hacks with senior Russian officials.
The first thing that made me sit up and take notice was how Bill sounded half out of breath, no volume, and he whistled when he talked. The man looks and sounds o-l-d. He can still wag a finger, but he’s getting long in the tooth. That said, the points made above seem right on target. Donald is a clown.
Cornel West is a buffoon who helped give us Trump:
I have no idea why anyone who supported Clinton for President over Trump thinks West is worth paying any attention to. West may pander to those who are full of fashionable anti-fascist fervor, but he’s not someone you can count on when it matters most.
That hurt to watch. O’Reilly is such a jackass.
“Bill, he’s said he’s going to do these things. When you say ‘give him a chance’ you’re saying, what, that you think he’s not going to do what he says? Either you think you can’t rely on anything he says, or he actually means what he says in which case he’s a dangerous fascist.”
You know who else said nasty stuff, then went out and did it? Hitler. Osama Bin Laden, too. Of course O’Reilly’d say “we did give them a chance” well, yes, but that makes us pretty stupid doesn’t it?
applehead, #9 (10?)
Not to mention a beautiful reference to “the polls”. Which polls projected massive disenfranchisement and an electoral college loss after winning the popular vote by a great margin?
starfleetdude, #11
Somehow, many of our comrades have never learned about pragmatism.
If your choices are a terrible, hideous thing, and a neutral thing, why distract yourself with a “good”, but impossible outcome?
At the same time, Stein wasn’t precisely a good candidate. She thought wireless network access would harm kids. A bit of a misstep. But what about the vaccine question? No, it seems that would’ve been a terrible choice.
Greta Samsa, #14
West also pulled the same stunt back in 2000 when he supported Bradley over Gore, and then backed Nader. Given there wasn’t even a nickle’s worth of difference between Gore and Bradley policy-wise, it’s clear that West is untrustworthy.
“Apparently, we are not now supposed to judge a politician on the basis of what he has promised to do.”
That’s not what I got out of the interview! What I got out of it was that we are supposed to judge them on only the positive things they promise to do, like creating jobs. When it comes to the promise of a Muslim registry? We’re supposed to wait and see!
@starfleetdude, #15
That’s not the definition of untrustworthy. He’s trustworthy as all heck. You’re just not understanding what you should trust West to do.
People supporting the candidate they actually wanted rather than the lesser of two evils may have helped Trump win the election. But lesser-of-two-evils-ism is what allowed the political system and culture to decay to the point of making a Trump candidacy viable and the Democrats complacent enough to run their lukewarm arrogant Clinton campaign in the first place. It’s a downward spiral.
It was arguably too risky a time to start voting one’s conscience. But people are going to have to start doing that at some point, or those in power will continue their efforts to present them with increasingly eviller evils to choose between.
Zeppelin @18: Hillary was running on the most progressive platform any Democrat presidential candidate has ever done. Her loss isn’t going to convince Democrats that they need to run more liberal candidates, it’s going to convince them that they need to run more conservative ones. That’s how we get a downward spiral. It’s not by deciding that we really, really don’t want the Nazi-Approved candidate elected and voting for the person most likely to prevent that.
nd5001
Which issues did they not address?
Dr. West is and has always been an independent thinker, he is not likely to act in a purely pragmatic way. It is what I would expect. He is not primarily a political thinker and actor.
I am not sure where he votes but I am pretty sure he did not vote in any of the crucial swing states that proved so important in this election.
I forced myself watch the “interview” and I doubt it swayed anyone but Bill O sure seemed out of his depth and reduced to a childish “Nu’ ah!” equivalence
uncle frogy
“Give him 6 months.” It would only take a second for this petulant twit to mistake the nuke button for his twitter feed.
@19
Right… If you only count the last.. 20 years or so. Because.. no one, at all, even the Republicans themselves, have *ever* been more progressive than this… Really hope that is what you mean, because, otherwise.. its a complete joke. Progressive.. since when is “progressive” supposed to mean, “There are a handful of things I might make better, if the other party lets me, but mostly I am just going to keep doing the same thing that pissed everyone off the last 5 administrations.”?
What an absolute waste of 6 minutes when I could have done something far more productive. Wink. Wink.
Staging a massive anti-fascist protest will not change the unalterable course of Pumpkinhead sitting in the oval office. West’s moral platitudes are totally useless at this time. The outcome will not change. Rather, they should expend their energies to mobilize votes in 2018 midterms and for 2020. Arguing with Bill O’Reilly may make for mindless entertainment value but serves absolutely no practical purpose. Carl and Cornell should instead have spent 6 minutes with Elizabeth Warren convincing her to run in 2020.
This sounds awfully like the “Republicans are the Party Of Lincoln(TM), Democrats were against Civil Rights” memes trotted out on Fakenewsbook and elsewhere. It’s an undisputable fact the two parties performed a 180 in their politics. All the progressives who happened to be members of the GOP 60 to a hundred years ago would join up with the Democrats if they saw into what their party had degenerated.
The Rethugs haven’t been the party of Lincoln since the moment Lincoln got murdered and his racist Southern VP (“balancing the ticket,” ladies and gentlemen…) sabotaged Reconstruction. From that moment on the Rethugs grew ever more regressive and the Democrats ever more progressive, reaching its turning point during CRM or the Nixon administration, as the case may be.
When Carl Dix brought up Germany around 5:20 and O’Reilly threw back at him about communist killing more people in Russia, Dix should have pointed out that, yes, Stalin was a fascist, Hitler was a fascist and it’s not the form of government that is fascist, it is fascist people who make the government into a fascist government.
parasiteboy wrote:
I don’t think that’s right. I think what you’re describing is totalitarianism, which is something both Nazism and Stalinism shared (and are indeed their worst traits). Fascism has a few features, like strong nationalism which stand in stark contrast to the Stalinist idea of a “international proletarian revolution”.
ck, the Irate Lump@27
You are correct, thanks for pointing it out.