The events of this week have made it easy to see the utter and total hypocrisy of President Obama, as he once again tries to associate himself with Martin Luther King, while at the same time going against everything King stood for. Obama gladly inserted himself into this week's 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington, the one in 1963 where King made his most well known speech. Behind the scenes, Obama was making plans to rain cruise missiles down on Syria.
Obama enjoys being the beneficiary of King's civil rights legacy, but he has no real respect for King. He clumsily quotes King, incorrectly and out of context, to improve his own image. In 2009, Obama was bizarrely given a Nobel Peace Prize after only being in office a few months. In an even more bizarre twist, during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (for which he had done literally nothing to deserve), Obama both cited King as an influence and utterly repudiated him in the same speech. Obama was a hypocrite then and he's a hypocrite now, as he continues to shamelessly pander to King's legacy while preparing to make war on Syria.
What I am calling Obama out for is doing what so many others have tried to do: to somehow pretend that Martin Luther King's positions on civil rights and economic justice can be separated from his position against war and violence. King made this quite clear in speech after speech that they are inextricably linked. To act otherwise is to demean and diminish his legacy.
That post includes a YouTube clip of an amazing appearance by Dr. King on the Mike Douglas show in 1967, in which he endures unfriendly, confrontational challenges from Douglas and his other guest. King keeps his cool and takes the high road, making brilliant points as he lays out his anti-war position.
Above all, one must always return to this stunning speech MLK gave in 1967.
Absorb what is said, and then decide whether it is time to take your stand against the senseless violence that Obama is about to inflict on not just Syria, but all of us.
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It has become an annual tradition for somebody who is selling some idea totally antithetical to what Martin Luther King believed, to declare that King "would have approved." I wrote about one such story in a blog post from 2011, "Pentagon Celebrates Martin Luther King Day?" in which I broke down the absurdity of a Defense Department lawyer's claim that Dr. King would approve of war, as long as it's in response to the threat of terrorism.
Now here we are again, another MLK day, and here are more absurd self-serving distortions of Dr. King.
Larry Ward, a political consultant who created the National Gun Appreciation series of pro-gun rights events that occurred last weekend, went on CNN to proclaim that he wanted to “honor the legacy of Dr. King.” Pretending to tip his hat to Dr. King, blacks and civil rights activists, he went so far as to say that slavery may never have happened in the United States if African-Americans had owned guns.
We could just mention that Larry Ward's business is, plain and simple, Republican party public relations. As always, many people who were part of the recent gun appreciation events do not know or care that the main interest of its organizers is not about gun rights, it's about Republican party politics. http://politicalmedia.com/about
But the mis-representation of Martin Luther King goes further. Some recently published articles are being cited to point out that at one time in the mid-1950's, during an intense period of violent attacks on civil rights activists, Martin Luther King kept guns for self-protection. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/mlk-and-his-guns_b_810132.html
A shallow reading of the article (and they count on that) would suggest that King would have endorsed today's pro-gun rights activism. What is ignored or marginalized is the fact that over time, Dr. King moved further and further in the direction of complete non-violence, and eventually renounced guns altogether.
The point of this story being shared at this exact moment is clearly to attempt to overshadow and implicitly belittle King's monumental later commitment to non-violence. It is also meant to ridicule people that think King was always completely against violence and guns - as if to say, "ha ha, wrong again you naive liberals. King appreciated the value of a gun just as much as any gun rights supporter, until he so foolishly went in the wrong direction." http://www.redstate.com/candicelanier/2013/01/17/mlks-arsenal-the-racist-roots-of-gun-control-in-the-u-s/
It is amazing indeed to see hard-line conservative writers twisting themselves into knots to try to make this argument work (as, for example, when their argument forces them to come down on the same side as the radical Black Panthers of the 1960's.). But it fails because it so obviously tries to re-define King by extracting one little slice of his vast and complex life and using it out of context to score a political point.
The fact is, it is central to understanding King to know that his ideas about non-violence evolved over time. His eventual renunciation of guns and violent action was an amazing accomplishment in his life. At the same time he was showing that like any intelligent person, he was capable of changing his views when presented with credible new ideas. The life and work of Gandhi were very powerful and credible indeed. Encountering, learning and absorbing Gandhi gradually changed King's life, in a dramatic way. This is the rest of the story, and the failure to tell it in relation to the story of his earlier gun ownership is not just willfully ignorant, but intellectually dishonest and disrespectful. For more on how Dr. King's indeas developed, read this excellent article: http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v17n2p21.htm
This leads me to a related observation: one cannot in good conscience ignore the racism that continues to assert itself in our country.
The clues are sometimes subtle, as in this news report from ABC's 20/20 on the "myths" of gun control.. Notice at about 2:30, when the scene changes to a prison, and the color of the skin of the people on camera makes a point without needing any words.
It makes me think that gun rights advocates ought to look with great suspicion on the political motivations of their leadership, and their willingness to partner with racists while they pretend to sympathize with Dr. King.
So where does Truth Dots stand on gun rights issues? Well as always, I stand outside of either-or.
On the one hand, it seems futile to support greater governmental involvement in restricting gun ownership, when our government reserves the right to wield vast amounts of the most destructive weaponry in the world, and directs our military to kill with impunity. But we are stuck there, aren't we, because we willingly give our government that power. In fact we are conditioned to think of violence as heroic and even patriotic, as long as it's directed by the institutional "us," the good guys.
Here is another area where Dr. King's position gradually became unequivocal, and in 1967 he took the exceptionally bold step of publicly condemning the U.S. government's perpetration of violence around the world as well as at home. This is another aspect of King's legacy that is willfully neglected and even intentionally distorted by many. But in the year before he died he made it quite clear what he thought. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
There is no better symbol of governmental hypocrisy than President Obama himself. Obama
enjoys being the beneficiary of King's civil rights legacy, and clumsily quotes King, incorrectly and out of context, to improve his own image. But Obama's record of commanding violent and destructive military actions goes against everything King stood for. In an even more bizarre twist, during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech (for which he had done literally nothing to deserve), Obama both cited King as an influence and utterly repudiated him in the same speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AORo-YEXxNQ
On the other hand, I have heard so many times that 99% of all gun owners are patriotic, responsible, well trained, full of wisdom and common sense. It is pretty easy to see that this is not really so cut and dried. I'm not talking about anyone I know, of course. But I am sure this, this, this and this barely scratch the surface of the large numbers of angry, ignorant and careless people, many of whom are in positions of influence and authority, who insist on carrying guns. This troubles me greatly, and that feeling is amplified by adding in the possibility of racist attitudes and emotional instability into the stew.
Am I exaggerating? I don't know, what do you think? When you have an authority figure like this ex-military/ex-police chief/professional weapons trainer going on YouTube, vowing to take to the streets and start killing people in the name of preserving his 2nd amendment rights and urging others to do the same, I think I have a point.
I don't have a problem with anyone claiming their constitutional rights. What I object to is the way people on both "sides" of this issue constantly respond and react out of fear. Indeed, we are constantly being pushed by authority figures and the media to believe we only have two choices: support one position, or be very afraid of what will happen. You must support unrestricted right to carry guns - the only alternative is to cower in fear. Or you must support greatly expanded government restrictions on guns, or else - that's right, cower in fear.
This choice is phony. It dis-empowers us and it denies the human capacity for creative, innovative thinking, for compassion and courage. We must move past this fake either-or paradigm and stand up for the highest spiritual and ethical principles at every level, starting from the personal to the family and community, instead of expecting our society's institutions to somehow change the way they've always been, just because we demand it.
But there are a million ways, big and small. Find your own way. And always, always refer to Martin Luther King himself, not other people's mis-interpretations of him.
We are living in Bizarro world. I recently learned the Pentagon has an annual commemoration of Martin Luther King day. This year's keynote address was given by Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's general counsel. It was a pretty decent summation of King's life and work, right up to the part where he decided to speculate on what King would think of the wars we're involved in today:
"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our Nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack."
To me this clearly implies that he thinks King would approve of war, as long as it's in response to the threat of terrorism. What??
Johnson also characterized our military's missions in Afghanistan and Iraq as Good Samaritan efforts, suggesting that MLK would have approved, since he himself urged people to act like the Good Samaritan of the biblical parable:
"Those in today's volunteer Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have made the conscious decision to travel a dangerous road, and personally stop and administer aid to those who want peace, freedom and a better place in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in defense of the American people. Every day our servicemen and women practice that "dangerous unselfishness" Dr. King preached..."
The ludicrous nature of this will of course be apparent to anyone who has ever heard King's later speeches, in which his rejection of violence led him to oppose the Vietnam war, and in fact to oppose war, period. No amount of humanitarian missions, no invocations of fear of terrorism, could ever justify or mitigate the violence that war brings, as far as King was concerned. Over and over, he made that crystal clear.
Johnson also recalled President Obama's Nobel prize acceptance speech, as if this would somehow bolster his case:
"In accepting his own Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, our President recognized that, in response to an unprovoked terrorist attack, war is inevitable to secure peace, and that the role of the military is to keep peace."
Here's a video clip of the relevant excerpt from Obama's speech:
This is doublespeak, right out of 1984. I felt like I had entered an alternate universe when I heard that Obama had won the peace prize, and that he had repeated the absurdity that war is necessary for peace. For MLK, war was not inevitable; Gandhi was inevitable. King actually said:
"Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk."
King was deeply inspired by Gandhi whose life was based on total commitment to non-violence. Obama repudiated both King and Gandhi in his Nobel prize speech. To mention Obama's speech in the context of honoring and respecting King's legacy is mind-bogglingly wrong and utterly offensive.
Johnson closed with this:
"The irony of next Monday is that Mrs. King's dream of a national holiday for her husband has become a reality; Dr. King's dream of a world at peace with itself has not."
Is it really so far beyond Mr. Johnson to imagine what King would say - that the reason we are not at peace is because we, the most powerful nation on Earth, have remained committed to violence to carry out our intentions around the world; that the reasons we put forth for our actions are lies, and the real reasons are never justifiable; that it is always about control of people, resources, economic domination, or pure expansion of power; that violence is made more justifiable by an attitude of condescending disdain for the people in the countries we choose to attack; and that our own country suffers physically, economically and morally as a result of these endless wars.
What is remarkable is that the Pentagon sent out Jeh Johnson, an accomplished black lawyer whose family actually has historical connections to King and the civil rights movement, to present this speech, its only possible purpose being to convince the naive and uninformed that King believed exactly the opposite of what he actually believed. The DOD even put out a press release about it to let the world know exactly what Johnson was trying to convey. It proves beyond doubt that this was pure propaganda, a blatant attempt to re-make King and co-opt him into the militarized culture of today. And it is sadly typical of the propaganda, spin and lying that completely permeates our public discourse today.
When King took his adamant anti-war stance, he made a lot of enemies. He became dangerous to the military-industrial complex because his words actually made sense to normal people. He was extremely intelligent, and when he spoke it was well thought out and logical. Combined with his passionate charismatic delivery, he had the potential to actually stir up an effective anti-war movement. His murder ensured that wouldn't happen, but it did not diminish his effect on people. So it is not surprising that in the years since, a sanitized, cuddly friendly version of King started to make its way into the culture, one in which all that most people know about him is that he wanted little black and white children to be able to live together. But now, the propaganda masters are extending the myth of Martin Luther King even further - now King is not just portrayed as neutral on war, he is pro-war. This is just wrong.
Second DOD press release, emphasizing King's civil rights legacy: http://www.defense.gov//News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=62434
The article highlights the Army's commitment to civil rights, touting the large number of African-Americans in the military. Is that supposed to make us feel better about this distortion of King's principles?
And finally:
A terrific interview with King on, of all things, the Mike Douglas show, in 1967. Despite condescending and confrontational questioning by Mike and his other guest, King takes the high road and makes brilliant points as he lays out his anti-war position.
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. I felt like I had entered an alternate universe when I heard that Obama had won the peace prize, and that he had repeated the absurdity that war is necessary for peace. For MLK, war was not inevitable; Gandhi was inevitable. King actually said:
