{"id":360306,"date":"2018-05-09T01:15:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T00:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/wake-up-mr-west\/"},"modified":"2018-05-09T01:15:56","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T00:15:56","slug":"wake-up-mr-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/wake-up-mr-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Wake Up Mr. West\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<div itemprop=\"articleBody\">\n<div id=\"attachment_101907\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-101907\" src=\"https:\/\/uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/dropzone\/2018\/05\/Screen-Shot-2018-05-07-at-9.36.53-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"510\" height=\"367\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Mike Barry | <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/\">CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It seems we living the American dream<br \/>But the people highest up got the lowest self esteem<br \/>The prettiest people do the ugliest things<br \/>For the road to riches and diamond rings<\/p>\n<p>\u2014Kanye West,\u00a0<em>All Falls Down<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Another week, another controversy for Kanye West. As sexy as the Uncle Tom narrative is for the mainstream media, Kanye\u2019s comments about slavery were more reckless than malicious. Mr. West explains: \u201cTo make myself clear. Of course I know that slaves did not get shackled and put on a boat by free will. My point is for us to have stayed in that position even though the numbers were on our side means that we were mentally enslaved\u2026The reason why I brought up the 400 years point is because we can\u2019t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought. It was just an idea. Once again I am being attacked for presenting new ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As historically insensitive as Kanye\u2019s statements about slavery were, we have to concede that Kanye gets a few things right. The echo chambers that we live in take away from the ability to freely think. We are rendered complacent by the mental slavery of neoliberalism. We live in a society that hates each other, thinks little and organizes even less. Technology, short term jobs, economic uncertainty, the coming climate change apocalypse, the division of communities thorough globalization, mass incarceration, the growth of the police state&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2018\/05\/08\/wake-up-mr-west\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by Mike Barry | CC BY 2.0 It seems we living the American dreamBut the people highest up got the lowest self esteemThe prettiest people do the ugliest thingsFor the road to riches and diamond rings \u2014Kanye West,\u00a0All Falls Down Another week, another controversy for Kanye West. As sexy as the Uncle Tom narrative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-360306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}