Observing MLK Day -The iPINIONS Journal

If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would marvel at America’s schizophrenic march towards the Promised Land of his famous dream. After all, America elected its first Black man as president in 2008; elected its first Black woman as vice president in 2020; and, even closer to his home and heart, elected the Black pastor from his old Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, to the US Senate also in 2020.

Yet, against the backdrop of all that progress, no less a person than the sitting president of the United States incited a ragtag band of white supremacists to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That now is a day that will live in even greater infamy than December 7, 1941.

More to the point, though, Trump convinced his MAGA followers that it’s better to take their country back to the Jim Crow days, when people were judged by the color of their skin, than to live in one, where they are judged (more than before) by the content of their character – democratic elections, and even the welfare of the country itself be damned.

Meanwhile, screaming headlines about “online chatter” among these Capitol-storming domestic terrorists have the entire country now living on egg shells inside a de facto police state. No doubt this is because so much is being made about law-enforcement officials failing to heed that chatter in the days prior to January 6 to prevent that attack.

Never mind that, just like Muslim terrorists after 9/11, these white-supremacist terrorists can sit comfortably in their man caves and spread their terrorizing chatter until kingdom come. Because, evidently, that’s all it takes to get major cities to lockdown and fortify – as if the mere threat of white-supremacist violence is a billion times worse than any Covid-19 super-spreader event.

In other words, you probably resented having to take off shoes, put liquids and gels in small bottles inside plastic bags, and comply with other post-9/11 airport security measures. Well, beware, because post 1/6 measures could soon impose restrictions on our daily lives that make wearing masks seem natural by comparison.

As it happens, I need only reprise last year’s commentary to show the enduring, endemic, and inevitably implosive nature of this chatter. Therefore, here in its entirety is how I observed MLK day last year:

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It speaks volumes in this respect that President-elect Trump marked observations of this holiday three years ago with a racist rant against MLK protégé John Lewis.

I commented in “Observing MLK Day,” January 16, 2017.

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After Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said that Russian interference undermined the legitimacy of his election, the preternaturally thin-skinned Trump reacted by impugning Lewis’s character and life’s work:

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk – no action or results. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2017

This he said of a man who bears well-known scars from marching with MLK for civil rights. Lewis also happens to be the most revered black man in America today – as Obama himself would concede.

As for his district, far from ‘falling apart [and being] crime infested,’ Atlanta is the very manifestation of that ‘shining city upon a hill’ former President Ronald Reagan envisioned in his farewell address. Moreover, no less a Republican bible than Forbes named his district ‘the ninth best place in America for businesses and career development, and among the best for job growth and education.’

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Yet, remarkably, then President Trump marked observations two years ago with a racist rant against “sh*thole countries” like Haiti and all those in Africa.

Evidently, when it comes to immigration, he wants people to be judged by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character. This is why he reportedly huffed that too many are coming from those Black countries and not enough from white ones … “like Norway.” I commented in “Only an Asshole like Trump Would Call Caribbean and African Countries ‘Sh*tholes’,” January 12, 2018. But I see no point in elaborating.

The point is that, given the way he marked previous ones, it’s no surprise that Trump seems hell-bent on marking this MLK holiday with more racist taunts. In fact, he’s inciting a Charlottesville redux.

For a little context, white militiamen were planning to turn a yearly gun-rights rally in Virginia into a “Unite the Right” protest against Democrats. This, because Democrats now control both houses in the state legislature for the first time in 26 years. What’s more, they are in the midst of passing a series of gun-control bills, including stricter background checks and limits on gun purchases.

But recent FBI arrests betrayed these militiamen’s intent. Specifically, agents arrested armed-for-war white supremacists for planning to use that rally in Richmond tomorrow as cover to launch terrorist attacks:

Alarming calls online for a race war. The arrest of three suspected neo-Nazis. Memories of the explosive clashes in Charlottesville, Va., three years ago.

(The New York Times, January 19, 2020)

Given that context, a responsible leader would be calling for peace and planning to maintain law and order by any means necessary. That, for example, is precisely what Ralph Northam is doing.

The Virginia Supreme Court has upheld Gov. Ralph Northam’s temporary ban on guns in Capitol Square, which went into effect Friday at 5 p.m. and will continue through a major gun rights rally scheduled for Monday.

(The Washington Post, January 17, 2020)

Unfortunately, Trump has shown time and again that he is nothing if not irresponsible, hence his tweet, which can easily foment disorder, even gun violence:

Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they will take your guns away. Republicans will win Virginia in 2020. Thank you Dems!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2020

Of course, as is so often the case, there’s not a shred of truth in his tweet. But talk about lighting a fuse!

MLK could never have imagined the America of his dream having a president who would mark a holiday in his honor by inciting racial hatred, division, and even violence. We’re clearly living his nightmare; he must be rolling over in his grave.

That said, I would be remiss to pay this homage to MLK without acknowledging that I was constrained to write “MLK Wasn’t Just a Womanizer, but a Gang-Bang Rapist Too..?” May 28, 2019.

But, hey, this is MLK’s day.

It is most noteworthy that he is the only private citizen (Black or white) to have a federal holiday declared in his honor. Even Washington and Lincoln have to share one holiday on Presidents’ Day. And, with the August 2013 dedication of his memorial, MLK is now perched on the Mall alongside them in perpetuity.

All of which might explain why Washington’s monument is glaring down on MLK’s … Seriously, though, am I the only one who thinks the Washington Monument looks eerily like a stonemason’s homage to the KKK?

There was considerable media coverage last week of workers rappelling down the Washington Monument to inspect damage caused by the recent earthquake. However, while most people seemed mesmerized by the acrobatic feat this entailed, I could not help noticing how much up-close images of the cone of the Monument resemble the hood of a Klansman.

Is it not a curious thing that this everlasting monument to the slave-holding Washington pays unwitting homage to this everlasting symbol of white supremacy?

(“Washington Monument’s KKK Imagery,” The iPINIONS Journal, October 2, 2011)

Whatever the case, this holiday is not just a testament to MLK’s greatness. It’s a symbolic down payment on the promissory note that represents the unpaid, if not unpayable, debt America owes descendants of the Blacks it enslaved.

That said: