MLK and What It Means to Me
Tomorrow is the national Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Holiday, commemorating the civil rights activist that was born Michael King Jr. on January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia and who preached and led the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. He advocated non-violence during a violent time in America’s history and he used civil disobedience and the resultant publicity that came with his incarcerations, much had his spiritual guru, Mahatma Gandhi did in India. Fighting the lasting repression of Jim Crow and the voting suppression tactics of the lingering and somewhat ubiquitous white supremacy views of the American people caused him to earn a place in Global history with the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and further in American history and the Federal commemoration of his Memorial holiday as established in 1986.
This is one of the winter holidays that none of us gather as families for, but rather use as an excuse to take a three-day weekend either to ski or sun, but generally not to pray for the continuing cause of equality and freedom in America as we perhaps should. I am not suggesting we need to go to church and formally pray for our collective souls, but it would be a good idea to spend a moment to reflect on the state of our union at this yet another fragile moment. I, like most people, am getting worn down by what I think of as now the five year war against our liberal democracy as it began in the days of FDR, carried us through WWII and into Korea and Vietnam, went through a malaise in the 70’s and then became part of the walking wounded or perhaps even dead man walking brigade in the 80’s and through the early turn of the Millennium. What seemed like a bright shining moment during the Obama Presidency began to fade as the forces of darkness had deviously planted the seeds of unfair (dare I say, unAmerican) play by wrecking havoc resurrecting the specter of Jim Crow through gerrymandering and other forms of voter and majority suppression, most notably stacking the judicial deck to favor their views.
There was a time when their views were at least written and stated in a platform and a set of policy initiatives, even if they mostly had to do with libertarian ideals and less government wherever possible. It’s kind of funny that this all began with a movie Cowboy like Ronald Reagan, because it is best and most simply characterized as a return to the days of the Wild, Wild West where the Free Range was the essence of the American spirit. The problem is that most historians properly recognize that the Wild, Wild West was far less pleasant for the population than the silver screen portrays. It was a time of great hardship and great inequality where might more often made right than any sense of fairness. The tragedy and horror of the war to end all wars, fought on a no-holds-barred basis from the trenches and with a blend of archaic and modern weapons of the more gruesome and cruel sort, inflicted on a scale that made us all sit up and pay attention.
By the time the economy, the weather and the excessive inequality of the go-go years of the twenties were over, like a drunk with a very bad habit and and even worse hangover, America got religion again and organized itself to use government to help the common man. Before the forces of darkness could advance and whisk this nascent liberal democracy aside, the rise of global fascism burst forth with a fury that surprised everyone and made it all too clear that it was not in the general interest of mankind. Thank God we were of a mind to recognize that because in a darker time we might easily have allowed that scourge to advance further and truly darken the world, perhaps for good. Instead, we rose to the challenge together with industrialists and laborers alike pitching in together for their own self-interested reasons, but commonly focused on rooting out the demon fascists. The world gave a big sigh of relief and went so far as to pretend that a United Nations could bring about the fabled world peace everyone wants but no one ever wants to take on in the devilish details needed. Idealism fades and people forget all too soon as prosperity and capitalism rage onward to erode the idealistic national psyche.
Capitalism is our greatest salvation and our greatest enemy. It is constantly under attack, less by the progressives who tout socialism and far more by the very capitalists who allow their libertarian thinking to get out of control and run amok to the detriment of their own systemic beliefs. There are many books written about saving capitalism from the capitalists, but they tend to fall on ears that are less in need of such awakening than the deaf ears that are the problem rather than the solution.
But the era we ushered in five years ago has been different and far worse. This is not just excessive greed and detrimental capitalism, this is also at its core the unleashing of our lesser angels, the angels that have always been with man but which norm and convention have usually kept in check, but have now given free reign to be all that they can be. There are several dimensions to this foul wind, but the most notable and most troubling lies in the realm of our old historic “friend”, white supremacy thinking.
It is the nature of man to seek dominance. The natural order demands it between us and the other species and against the natural world itself. It is not illogical or necessarily a perversion to extend it to differing races within the species and that is, indeed, the way in which man has advanced himself over the millennia. He has most often both subjugated the complacent draft animals and consumed the less otherwise useful species to reduce his toil in the fields while satisfying his need for sustenance as he sees it. It is a short hop from that to human bondage and when that went out of vogue, economic, social and political repression was the next best thing to physical bondage. And so it went. And the paradise gained was eventually the paradise lost and nothing burns brighter in the heart of man than reclaiming lost glory.
That all left us in what is now a very bad place. The cognitive capabilities of man and the conscience of which he is capable (unlike most other lesser species) don’t seem to matter to what is now a too-large portion of Americans. Thinking beyond the momentary need or desire and working towards building a better and more just existence should be an innate goal to us all, but it is simply not.
So here I sit on the eve of MLK Day and I know what it means to me. It means that we can do it and that we have achieved that moment in the light a few times before. As dark as it may seem on any given day and as wrong-minded as my fellow man can be, the only solution is to keep the faith that there is not only a better place for us to be as a people, but that we, as that same people, are capable of overcoming the barriers and the non-believers. Ultimately, we want everyone to have a stake in the game, a benefit to be gained by moving towards the light. As I sit here on my hilltop looking at the gorgeous setting sun over the Pacific I have learned not to despair as primal man might have. I know the light has not deserted me, it is simply shining on different souls around the world for their allotted time and it will reawaken me tomorrow and give me yet another wondrous day to accomplish more for mankind and to improve my hilltop.