Thursday, March 28, 2024

Americans can idolize King, not protest like him

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would bellow words eloquent and provocative if he knew now, in this American political climate, that his birthday is celebrated as a token gesture of “diversity,” or whatever Band-Aid platitude politicians like to slap on our diseased society.

Yes, lauding King is preferable to saluting somebody like murderous imperialist Christopher Columbus and yes, Monday’s celebrations did enliven many citizens but there is a catch to King’s day and the American interpretation of his legacy.

Americans can celebrate King but our totalitarian society forcibly limits our involvement with King’s philosophy to idolatry. With police batons and increasingly sophisticated ways of dispensing tear gas, surveillance efforts, senseless harassment and arrests and propaganda, the federal government delivers a stern message: Call him a great guy, even march in his honor, but don’t dare try to employ his methods of resistance to fight racism, depressing gaps in classes, voter disenfranchisement, the criminalization of people of color and supporters of accountable democracy and other social injustices.

The message was the same in King’s day. Though the civil rights movement was favored by a majority of Americans and was a social mobilization that tended importantly to the purity and humanity of our democracy, the FBI obsessively spied on King, hoping to thwart him. FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover called King “the most dangerous man in America, and a moral degenerate.” In fact, as King’s FBI file was exhumed after his death, the uproar over the extent of federally supported harassment led to a 1977 investigation over whether the FBI actually assassinated the activist. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that though James Earl Ray shot King, investigators estimated there was a 95 percent probability of a conspiracy to kill King.

So, if one of our country’s most respected contemporary activists may have been killed by the very government that pretends to now idolize him, where does that leave people like me who will ring in George W. Bush’s inauguration with a march to the Supreme Court with the Rev. Al Sharpton heading the procession?

I am scared but still defiant. Activists seem to have enemies in both the White House and in living rooms across the nation. The federal government treats us like a terrorist threat and the majority of Americans think protesting or really any effort at insisting on an accountable government is the work of granola-chewing, tree-hugger, Luddite radicals. I expect our government to try to quash any citizen-led movement for real change: It’s their scaredy-pants tradition and when there’s such a small minority of us actually working for it, it is so easy for them to try to stomp us out.

I am so disappointed in my fellow Americans, who treated the contested presidential election like a Monica Lewinsky or any other tabloid story with exhausting exposure and advocated bipartisanship, good sportsmanship or anything to get it off the tube. How sad it is that Americans are so turned off by people who take politics to a level beyond voting and know what battles are worth fighting, because I think a majority would support the kind of initiatives that we do.

Democratic people who disdain those who utilize the avenues for political accountability betray the foundation of their society’s core values. Successful democracy is about more than voting, especially in a country like ours, which seems to dangerously value the purity of its capitalistic principles more than the sanctity of its democratic identity. That does not mean people have to agree with the so-called protester agenda, though I think its populist streak is accessible, sensible and appealing to Americans who don’t have Gucci suits and limousine drivers. Citizens should at least respect dissidents and hopefully contribute dialogue.

Many who find dissidence disgusting object because they say this country is too great to fight. I say without fighters, our country would be nothing. Without watchdogs our proclaimed greatness would be far more of a farce. Until vigilantes like King and the thousands of Americans who are using voice, foot and pen to manicure this country’s greatness are treated with the respect and loyalty they deserve, there is no reason to celebrate. There is only reason to turn off the narcoticizing television and keep up the fight.

Erica Saelens, State News wire editor, can be reached at saelense@msu.edu.

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