Saturday, May 30, 2020

Had a Dream

All my life, I have heard people make glowing references to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. That speech, in particular its most famous line about hoping for a day when all people would be judged "by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin," seemed to be a very popular and pain-free place for politicians and others to stop by to express support for the concept of civil rights and the hope of human brotherhood. Other things that King called for, like economic justice and an end to corporate greed, violence and militarism, are far less frequently-cited themes. However sincerely or cynically King's speech has been utilized over the decades, one thing is crystal clear: his dream has not been realized. The continuing inequality that limits the lives of so many Americans affects African-Americans most of all. The c higher incarceration rates for African-Americans, higher death rates from Covid-19,  the barriers being raised to limit voting by African-Americans and other minorities, and the continuing police aggression against African-Americans that we now see on disgusting display in the knee-on-the-neck killing of George Floyd, can leave no doubt that America remains today just as afflicted by racism as it was in the lifetime of Martin Luther King.  To quote another assassinated visionary, John Lennon, "One thing you can't hide, is when you're crippled inside." The crippled moral character of America is now on view, front and center, for all the world to see and judge.

And as Minneapolis and other cities are rocked by fiery protests against police brutality and a racially biased justice system, the man in the Dark Tower--I mean, the White House--laments the death of Mr. Floyd in one breath while actually encouraging police to use more force against black protesters with the phrase, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," signalling that he expects aggrieved black citizens to shut up and submit to the knee on their neck, and if not, to prepare to be shot by the police. 

I had a dream too. About three year and a half years ago, on the November night in 2016 when Donald Trump would win the election over Hillary Clinton, I was on a plane to Finland on my way to an academic conference. I flew out of JFK airport that evening confident that Clinton was likely to win, and that there was little chance of the racist real estate developer and reality-show con-man winning the White House. However, when I fell asleep for a few hours on the flight, I had a very disturbing dream of angry crowds of people out in the streets fighting and shouting with fires burning.and gunshots exploding.  I woke up thinking, oh, it is just an anxiety dream about what could happen if a racist, brutality-loving person like Donald Trump were to become president, but of course, he won't. When my plane touched down in Helsinki, I learned who had won the election, and I felt numb with shock and apprehension.

And now I see streets aflame in city after city, with the racist-in-chief signalling to police that brutality is acceptable, even laudable. King's dream has not come true, but I am afraid my own dream may have.

This is our Ragnarok. Not the Second Civil War or Race War that some neo-Nazis and right-wing conspiracy believers are hoping for, but a battle against forces of spiritual ugliness, political brutishness and a white supremacy that doesn't even have to name itself to be known for what it is, as it is on plain view for anyone willing to look at reality in the face. We must rally our forces to defend what is good and true and enduring and fight for compassion and cooperation and caring and the long-term future of our fragile environment, against those who seek to crush the weak and glorify the brutal, whose only consistency is sociopathic aggression, and who seem to understand very little about anything beyond their own self-glorification. More and more Trump reminds me of Loki, who used slander and rumor to besmirch and belittle the other gods, and Surt, the fire-giant who seemed to want nothing more than to burn down the world. Ragnarok ends with the world destroyed, the gods all dead, but then a new world rising and the gods reviving. Let us carry on in the same faith that a better world can rise out of the broken pieces of the world we now see collapsing all around us.

1 comment:

Ananta Androscoggin said...

'tis why I have begun shifting the name of their party from "Republican" to "Neo-Barbarian." That is for their glorification of cruelty, their never-ending crying out for the mass murder of people who are not just like themselves, their overweening selfishness, their insistence that their coprolite selves are superior to members of modern humanity, their inability to deal with the real world being so entrenched that they are trying to drag the rest of the world into their delusional fantasy world, among other barbaric practices.

The republicans have been America's Most Destructive Enemy over the past 40 years. The barbarians are already inside the gate, and they hold the Cesspool Formerly Known as The White House.

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