The only national holiday for an American who did not hold "public office" belongs to the memory and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Lets face it, many great Americans did not hold public office, and in fact, the Dredd Blog philosophy is that those who hold office too long will suffer the toxins of power, unless they have the immunity of a saint.
Dr. King was a force for moving from the right to the left, or to a kinder, gentler nation, as Bush I was fond of saying.
From slavery to citizenship is a long haul, but we did it, with a lot of help from Abe Lincoln and Martin King.
His words ring very true today, that violence has no race or color, it only has hate:
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it ...(Martin Luther King, Jr., Quotes). The tenor of the national psyche, the sails of our ship of state, have been filled with the winds of hate, thus we have been blown off course of late.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends ...
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true ...
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity ...
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
The dignity of Dr. King shines through today, in the wake of his assassination, John Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy's assassination, Judge Roll's assassination, and the murder and maiming of others in Tuscon recently:
Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?(Abraham, Martin, and John). We live in the age of fill in this blank:
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.
Anybody here seen my old friend __________________?
Good post today Dredd. Lots of people believe the light went out for good in the 60's with the assassinations and the ascendancy of the right, starting with the paranoid criminal Nixon, the escalation in Vietnam, etc. The right could never forgive the left for passing civil rights and other social welfare legislation, disgracing MOMCOM in Vietnam, and for tearing down one of their presidential icons and banishing them to the political wilderness until Uncle Ronnie brought them back again in 1980. We've been living with that venom ever since, and it shows no signs of abating anytime soon, NoBama's calls for "civility" and "bipartisanship" notwithstanding. At this point, "kinder gentler" is no longer even on the table; merely holding the line until the right's madness runs its course is as good as it gets.
ReplyDeleteDr Martin Luther King was a great inspiration for us all. No one group "owns" him. He took on one of the most evil double standard of all, Jim Crow, by speaking truth to power. Today, another Dr is doing that, and is the target of hate from those who do not want to shape up, just as Martin Luther was.
ReplyDeleteI lived thru the 50s and 60s as a student, and can say, it is hard to differentient which evil is worse, anti-communist ferver led by McCarthy, et al, or anti "colloured" led by David Duke et al. Then of course, we must not forget anti Semitism, and the confusion that come when folks realize that palestineans are actually semites not Arabs.
Yes, ignorance fueled by hatred is the common engine used in all these hate fests. Today, aids in Sen Kerry's office have not viewed the Collateral Murder video, and the US Gov has made viewing any of the WikiLeaked materials verbotin, even to the Congressional Library, and their research staff!
Yes indeed, our elected officials are bound and determined to keep on their blindfolds, their ear plugs, all the while hiding under rugs with their heads in the sand, just like it was in the 1950s, and just like it was in the 1960s.
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
take care, better bunker up if you live in Sunny California!
And with this I guess we REALLY know the fix is in:
ReplyDeleteHeadlining in Chicago: Bill Clinton, stumping for Rahm Emanuel
I'm sorry, but I can no longer take anyone who even sympathizes with the official "Democratic Party" seriously. These guys are more corrupt than their GOP counterparts by several orders of magnitude.
It's time to recognize that the fix was in (and HAS BEEN for quite some time) and that we, the liberal fools, got took. With that in mind, it's time to move on to what's next, and whatever it is, it DAMN SURE ain't the "democratic party" as currently constituted under the current band of thieves.
Time to reinvent ourselves America and flush AT LEAST the last fifty years or so of political bullshit. Once again, I can't help but feel that 2012 will be a pivotal year, and if it isn't, even MORE drastic changes will be sure to follow.