{"id":104959,"date":"2018-01-15T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=104959"},"modified":"2018-01-15T09:54:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T09:54:35","slug":"martin-luther-kings-revolutionary-dream-deferred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/martin-luther-kings-revolutionary-dream-deferred\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Luther King\u2019s Revolutionary Dream Deferred"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cWe are now experiencing the coming to the surface of a triple prong sickness \u2026 [that] has been lurking within our body politic from its very beginning \u2026 the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism. \u2026 the plague of western civilization.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2014Martin Luther King, Aug. 31, 1967<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mug shots of Martin Luther King Jr. following his 1963 arrest in Birmingham, Ala., for protesting the treatment of blacks. (Wikimedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

13 Jan 2018 – <\/em>We kill the most beautiful among us\u2014anyone, it seems, who reveals the nastier, brutish elements of American society and has the audacity to imagine, demand even, a better path: peace, unity and tolerance. Abraham Lincoln, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and so many others.<\/p>\n

This year marks the 50th anniversary of King\u2019s tragic assassination, and though countless publications will brim with commemorations and retrospectives of this misunderstood icon, most will miss the mark. Long ago co-opted and sanitized by mainstream political figures, the King of memory bears little resemblance to the radical, complex man himself.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s remembered by Democrats and Republicans alike as the \u201cgood,\u201d \u201cpeaceful\u201d civil rights leader\u2014a useful foil for the \u201cbad\u201d activists of the black power movement, the Stokely Carmichaels, Malcolm Xs and Huey Newtons of the world. In reality, the categories were never so neat, the commonalities staggering.<\/p>\n

In a sense, we all\u2014white and black, liberal and conservative\u2014have our own King. My King is the provocative King, the critic of bigotry but also of capitalism and the Vietnam War. The King, in truth, who has been willfully concealed from view.<\/p>\n

When I arrived at the American history department at West Point in 2014, I\u2014a white, heterosexual, military man\u2014was handed the portfolio and teaching load on civil rights. Everyone else, it seemed, studied the American Revolution or the Civil War, and, well, I came across as vaguely progressive and willing, at least compared with my peers. A former student of counterinsurgency operations in Northern Ireland, I decided to ditch the old scholarship and embrace my new role. I\u2019ve never looked back. I taught classes and led an annual summer excursion for cadets<\/a> to visit with movement veterans across the South. I, along with two academy law professors, faced an immediate challenge: the cadets\u2019\u2014and most Americans\u2019\u2014utter misunderstanding of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King himself.<\/p>\n

After 50 years, with the United States again locked in racial conflict, culture wars, gaping inequality<\/a> and perpetual global war<\/a>, now seems as good a time as any to take stock of the state of King\u2019s \u201cthree evils\u201d: racism, materialism and militarism.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s Original Sin: Race and Privilege<\/strong><\/p>\n

The cry of \u201cBlack Power\u201d is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we\u2019ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear \u2026 the economic plight of the Negro poor. <\/em>
\n\u2014MLK, 1966<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They are all linked, by the way. To treat each challenge as discrete is to rob them of their intertwined, inescapable power. Racism is a no-brainer. We\u2019ve not come as far as we like to believe. Sure, there\u2019s been the Brown v. Board ruling, Civil and Voting Rights Acts, even a black president. Nevertheless, each of these historic victories is being rolled back before our eyes. Schools are again as segregated<\/a> as they\u2019ve been in two generations. Conservative courts have dismantled key provisions<\/a> of the Voting Rights Act. Heck, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions\u2014a man too racist<\/a> to serve as a federal district judge in the 1980s<\/em>\u2014heads the Justice Department.<\/p>\n

Race and empire are intimately connected. Look only to the unprecedented militarization<\/a> of the nation\u2019s police\u2014decked out in camo fatigues and sporting the same armored vehicles we drove in Baghdad\u2014and the never-ending catalog<\/a> of racially charged brutality cases nationwide for evidence. America resembles two armed camps, physically and intellectually isolated from each other. Five decades into an unwinnable and racially biased war on drugs, black men still fill the prisons<\/a> in this nation\u2014which has by far the highest rate of incarceration<\/a> worldwide. In 2018 in the U.S., a black male is nine times<\/em> as likely to serve time<\/a> as a citizen of the next worst country: Cuba. We\u2019ve got a long way to go.<\/p>\n

The Unspoken King: Anti-Capitalism and Counter-Materialism<\/strong><\/p>\n

The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.<\/em><\/p>\n

The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.
\n\u2014MLK, 1967<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We inhabit a peculiar moment, when most Americans hardly look up from their smartphones long enough to realize they\u2019re missing \u201cReal Housewives.\u201d The vacuous world of celebrity worship and material preoccupation does not lend itself to the impassioned activism King demanded. Unfettered, free-market capitalism\u2014enabled by neoliberal Democrats like the Clintons\u2014has gutted the American dream and rendered it an unattainable nightmare for many. The empirical evidence is staggering.<\/p>\n

Income inequality in the (ostensibly) egalitarian United States has reached its worst levels since the Gilded Age<\/a>. Wages for the working class have been stagnant for 40 years<\/a>, while the superrich bask in an embarrassment of riches<\/a>. The federal minimum wage is worth less<\/a> in real dollars than it was 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s all so much worse than that. Obsessive materialism and big money (think pharma, oil, fracking) in politics have set American culture in the express lane to existential disaster. Most of us live a delusion, wishing away the gathering storm of global warming while chasing immediate gratification from social media clicks. Soon after President Trump pulled the U.S. out<\/a> of the Paris climate accord, Syria finally joined up<\/a>, making America the true, lone international pariah. Really doubling down, Trump\u2019s recently released National Security Strategy completely removed climate change<\/a> from the Pentagon\u2019s list of threats. I\u2019m sure King would approve.<\/p>\n

The Greatest Purveyor of Violence: U.S. Militarism, 50 Years On<\/strong><\/p>\n

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.<\/em><\/p>\n

I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. <\/em>
\n\u2014MLK, 1967<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One could plausibly argue that the United States remains a prominent purveyor of death, or at least chaos, across much of the planet today. It is this\u2014the third of King\u2019s evils\u2014with which I am myself most familiar<\/a>. Alas, in 2018, American militarism is alive and well, ranging from the symbolic martial pageantry<\/a> pervading the National Football League to an ongoing, expanding and genuinely global war. Thanks to painstaking research at Brown University<\/a>, we now know the U.S. military is conducting counterterror operations\u2014all undeclared wars<\/a>\u2014in 76 countries. The bill so far? Some 7,000 dead American soldiers (eight of my own), 1.3 million war-related Arab\/Muslim deaths, 10 million refugees and $5.6 trillion dollars. For this, we\u2019ve gotten 30 times more worldwide terror attacks<\/a> than occurred in 2001. What a steal.<\/p>\n

Taking further stock of the state of U.S. militarism requires a macabre tour of direct and sponsored operations across the greater Middle East. In Yemen, the United States is complicit in Saudi terror bombing<\/a>\u2014providing munitions and in-flight refueling\u2014that is causing famine and a world-record cholera epidemic in the Arab world\u2019s poorest nation. In Syria and Iraq, the (perhaps justifiable) campaign against Islamic State resulted in far more civilian deaths<\/a> than originally reported. Ceaseless backing of the far-right Israeli government has helped facilitate an incessant state of siege<\/a> of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. also backs dictators, kings or strongmen with abhorrent human rights records far and wide across the region, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. Sure, they\u2019re crooks, sure, they gun down protesters<\/a>, sure they behead women<\/a> for \u201csorcery,\u201d but hey, at least they\u2019re our<\/em> crooks.<\/p>\n

The point is as simple as it is disturbing: While there are many \u201cpurveyors of violence\u201d in the world today, the United States is far from innocent. Militarism is alive, well and growing in our increasingly martial culture. In King\u2019s time, young Vietnamese girls burned in napalm strikes signified this mindset. Today, perhaps the consummate image is a starving Yemeni child.<\/p>\n

Appropriating the Dead: Willfully Misremembering King<\/strong><\/p>\n

In America, in the fifties and sixties, one of the important crises we faced was racial discrimination. The man whose words and deeds in that crisis stirred our nation to the very depths of its soul was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/em>
\n\u2014President Ronald Reagan, 1983<\/p>\n

When a Hollywood performer<\/a> [Reagan], lacking distinction even as an actor can become a leading war hawk candidate for the presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events.<\/em>
\n\u2014MLK, 1968<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That neoliberal and neoconservative voices\u2014along with mainstream figures in both parties\u2014annually pay dutiful homage to King, without uttering a word about materialism or militarism, is a national disgrace. That former President Reagan, hero of the contemporary right, would publicly praise him, borders on the absurd. Lest we forget, Reagan, after all, made the first stop<\/a> on his general election campaign in Neshoba County, Miss.\u2014praising \u201cstates\u2019 rights\u201d in the city where three civil rights workers were famously murdered<\/a> in 1964. He also initially opposed the bill<\/a> officially designating Martin Luther King Day. Refusing to deny that King was a \u201ccommunist,\u201d Reagan would only say<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019ll only know in about 35 years, won\u2019t we?\u201d And by the way, there are still four sitting (Republican) senators who voted against the MLK holiday<\/a>: Richard Shelby of Alabama (no surprise there), Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Orrin (There\u2019s No Blacks in Utah) Hatch and (disturbingly) John McCain of Arizona.<\/p>\n

Every year, we\u2019re treated to the same hypocrisy. Mainstream figures in both parties\u2014some who vote for massive tax breaks for the rich, nearly all who support America\u2019s endless wars\u2014publicly laud and then invoke the ghost of King. None lays out a 21st century plan to implement MLK\u2019s still incomplete vision. They have no such plan. They were bought and sold by corporate elites and the military-industrial complex long ago. On the right, some even engage in the fantasy<\/a> that King was actually a Republican<\/em>. He wasn\u2019t. Truth be told, King would fit into neither of the two parties today. His platform and favored issues hardly receive public airing anywhere but the fringe left. Nonetheless, both Democrats and Republicans invoke King\u2019s ghost every January for petty political gain. It\u2019s heinous.<\/p>\n

Republicans especially, but also centrist liberals, want us to believe King was one thing only: a narrow, nonviolent civil rights activist. That he gave only one speech: about a dream of his black daughters attending school with young white girls. They\u2019ve sanitized him, castrated his message, omitted (through strikingly Orwellian \u201cnew speak\u201d) his uncomfortable quotes. They\u2019ve done so with nefarious intentions and political agenda: convince the masses that King\u2019s revolution is over, completed, final. Stop complaining, stay out of the streets, there\u2019s no reason to protest. Be thankful for what you have.<\/em><\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=j8d-IYSM-08<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t fall for it. Read, study, unearth the real King<\/a>, the radical King, and take up the torch of his fight\u2014a dream deferred\u2014against the three evils still alive and well in the United States: racism, materialism and militarism. The owners of this country are counting on your apathy. Prove them wrong.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/p>\n

Maj. Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p>\n

The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. <\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 truthdig.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

13 Jan 2018 – My King is the provocative King, the critic of bigotry but also of capitalism and the Vietnam War. The King, in truth, who has been willfully concealed from view. Read, study, unearth the real King, the radical King, and take up the torch of his fight\u2014a dream deferred\u2014against the three evils still alive and well in the United States: racism, materialism and militarism. The owners of this country are counting on your apathy. Prove them wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104960,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[225],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}