Pentagon Celebrates Martin Luther King Day?

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AORo-YEXxNQ

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.

full text of Johnson's speech:
http://firedoglake.com/dr-jeh-johnsons-mlk-day-speech-at-the-pentagon/ 

Department of Defense press release:
http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=62448 

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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Rite Of Passage

We all have those times in our lives where we discover that something we believed in was false, that we had put our trust in a lie, that we had been betrayed. We realize that we cannot go on believing what we had previously invested our trust in. We learned too much. We wised up. We raised our consciousness.



We realized we have been living in the Matrix, and then we took the red pill, or it was administered to us. A dark and unpleasant time follows in which we experience the anger, resentment, frustration, and even hatred that comes from realizing the unpleasant truth.
What follows is the true rite of passage. The way you handle it determines the course of your life:  what do you do? 
Denial is quite common.
Fear can be paralyzing. Staying stuck in a situation based on a lie might seem easier, if it is all you have ever known - even if it's terrible. Even if you can acknowledge the truth, the prospect of leaving behind all you have known can be too terrifying to consider.
But like it says in that CSNY song Ohio..."how can you run, when you know?"
How indeed. If we are lucky, it won't require the threat of mortal peril to bring us to our senses, but sometimes that is what it takes. Or a whack on the side of the head. Or a short, sharp shock.

The financial crisis of 2008 was one of those. We got whacked with the the truth that there is a financial elite over on Wall Street that is determined to plunder as much of the wealth of this world as they can, even if it means bringing the world's economy to its knees.

The oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year was another. We came face to face with the reality that big oil companies will stop at nothing in pursuit of the mega-profits the oil business brings in, even if it means irrevocably damaging the environment and the atmosphere of our little planet.

These two events essentially represent the same problem, that of huge corporations causing great harm with a brazen lack of conscience or shame. It is just the sort of thing one assumes that government is supposed to be there for - to protect the rights of the innocent and powerless against the sociopathic cruelty of the super-rich. But here, another slap - in both crises, at every step where the government could have been of assistance, it failed. And the reason was obvious: the huge financial powers in question have already wielded their clout and made sure that the government never (effectively) acts against them, never punishes them (in any effective way), and never takes any (effective) steps to prevent such crises. In fact it is pretty clear that the government functions as little more than a tool to assist the super-rich in their mission of endless self-enrichment. They are not there for us. The government is a subsidiary of the corporate elite.

That's a bitter red pill to swallow. But it has been right in front of us, for a long time. We have been in denial because we have bought into the myth that both democracy and free-market capitalism are resilient and self-correcting, so when a crisis occurs we simply assume that things will get better, return to normal, even possibly improve. But now the unethical lawless behavior of those at the top in business and government has gotten so brazen, so egregious, that we just can't look away any more.
As the matrix of illusion dissolves and we begin to see clearly, we start to realize that it has always been this way. It's not a secret, or a hidden conspiracy, and it shouldn't come as a surprise.


The ultra-rich and powerful simply have such great disdain for most people, they see nothing wrong with treating them with complete callousness and cruelty. They will lie, cheat and steal to get what they want, and have absolutely no sense of shame, conscience or regret about whether anyone gets hurt, or killed. The government's function is (evidently) to enable, enhance and defend their right to do this.
So what do you do? How can you run, when you know?


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