Bernie Sanders, Dr. King, and the Triple Evils

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

by Paul Street

Sanders seemed eager to wrap himself in the legacy of Dr. King. Bernie trumpeted his own youthful work in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. He quoted King on the disgraceful existence of mass poverty in a land of prosperity and on the obscenity that (as King noted in Memphis, Tennessee just days before his assassination) “most of the poor people in our country are working every day…and…making wages so low they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation.” After praising King for understanding that (in Sanders’ words) “it is useless to try to address race without also taking on the larger issue of [economic] inequality” (one might counter that it is essential to fight racism and racial division to struggle usefully against economic injustice), Sanders moved into long, fact-filled reflections on wealth and income inequality and corporate plutocracy in contemporary New Gilded Age America. He reiterated his standard campaign denunciations of the Republican Party, the right-wing billionaire Koch brothers, and the Supreme Court’s oligarchic Citizens United decision. He denounced Republican efforts to disenfranchise Black voters. He called for major federal jobs programs and infrastructure investments, combined with progressive taxation and single-payer health insurance, to fight poverty, create good jobs, and redistribute wealth and power in the U.S.

It was a good progressive speech on numerous levels. Dr. King would have politely applauded throughout most of it. At the same time, the great Civil Rights leader would have been disturbed by the absence in Sanders’ oration of any comprehension or concern whatsoever regarding the last of King’s “triple evils.” As King would certainly note if he were alive today, Bernie is – just like some of King’s fellow democratic-socialist Civil Rights and anti-poverty leaders (Bayard Rustin, Michael Harrington, and A. Phillip Randolph) in the mid-1960s – hung up on the U.S. war machine.

Sanders’ silence on the final component of King’s great triplet at the SCLC is consistent with his long and ongoing record of supporting Washington’s criminal military adventures (when they are commanded by U.S. Presidents from the Democratic Party) abroad and Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. The Senator barrels ahead, calling for expensive (and desperately needed) domestic social and environmental programs without making any serious reference to how the United States’ gargantuan war budget devours more than half of the nation’s federal discretionary spending – without any attention to Dr. King’s warnings on “spiritual death.” He upholds the social-democratic Scandinavian welfare states as a role model for the U.S. without noting the critical fact that Denmark, Norway, and Sweden dedicate comparatively tiny portions of their budgets to military spending. He seems unwilling to acknowledge that the U.S. cannot have the progressive changes he advocates as long as it remains a military superpower with tentacles of deadly and vastly expensive force in nearly every corner of the planet.

"Once again make the United States the leader in the world in the fight for economic and social justice, for environmental sanity and for a world of peace." But when was the US ever such a leader? It was a curiously propagandistic statement with little respect for the historical record. Dr. King would rightly have found it very odd.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42535.htm

[merrily]

1. "As King would certainly note if he were alive today," "Dr. King would rightly have found it very

odd."

I find it very odd that Mr. Street is purporting to know how someone who is died 47 ago would be reacting now, in a world that is very different.



King shifted his own positions and priorities in the too short time he was doing his life's work. I think this author is very presumptuous in writing as though he could have been in King's head 50 years ago, let alone today.

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. No ...

Dr. King did not "shift his own positions and priorities" ... he remained focused on racial equality until his death.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

3. While the author is engaged in a kind of speculation...

...as to how MLK might have reacted to Sanders' speech, I don't think it was at all an unreasonable stretch. The gist of his piece is to point out Sanders' lack of opposition to the US war machine and apparent inability, unlike Dr. King, to see it for what it is.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (From his "Beyond Vietnam" speech Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City):

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech is truly a great one -- I imagine you've read it, but please have another look if you really think Mr. Street is being "very presumptuous" here. The world may be "very different" as you say from the 1960s, but I think you'll find Dr. King's words in this speech to still be highly relevant today.


John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman) sees the US war machine for what it is, and has been for quite some time:

[KoKo]

4. Good points....but, I disagree with Paul Street on Bernie

And I read Paul Street's article earlier today and have agreed with some of his views in the past about "Populism" and how the Dem Party has failed us on populist issues in many ways the past decades as we move further to the right and support for Wall Street and the MIC.

The problem Bernie faces is that the minute he opens his mouth about our "War Machine" he will be tagged as the "Kucinich Candidate."

"Anti-War" will be ongoing attack meme if and when he's invited on any of the Sunday Shows.

Bernie is focused on "Income Inequality" with a laser beam which neither Hillary, O'Malley will devote total focus to. I don't know what Biden will do if he decides to run but, I don't think he will focus on war sucking funds out of the youth of America who need to have a future that spends money on them and not on recruiting them to participate in Invasions to get a College Education or Skills Training that will give them a future. Our Infrastructure is a Mess and our Education system is under attack from the Arne Duncan forces along with a total lack of emphasis on what All America needs after years of endless spending for the Pentagon, NSA, NeoLib/NeoCons guise of Bringing Freedom & Democracy to countries that end up destroying them and their youth, families, businesses, livelihoods, family structure along with their homes, health and even ability to feed themselves.

I'm taking the bet that Bernie's focus on the "99%" is the correct one for the terrible times we live in. I don't think any other candidate can do it better and sidetracking him into the I/P or into Raging against the MIC at this point will be the end of his candidacy.

I say this as a DU'er who has been against our Invasions and who is against Israel's attacks against the Palestinians. So, this is a strong issue for me when I say that I will trust Bernie that we need the money here at home and to do that we will have to stop the money for Pentagon/NSA and the other clandestine groups benefiting from endless wars. It won't be easy and will have to be done incrementally as President. Even Obama hasn't been able to stop the mighty MIC...but, I trust Bernie to try harder than the other candidates and to not be dependent on MIC influence as the others have been.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. I sincerely hope your assessment about...

...Sanders is accurate and your trust is not misplaced KoKo.

I'm afraid my confidence in Sanders, as well as our socalled democratic process, is not as high as yours. My sentiments are pretty aptly expressed by ICH poster Guesst commenting on Mr. Street's editorial:

If I may say, I believe commenters, not only here, on ICH, but across the web, may be missing a key portion of the 'bigger picture', which is that no one outside of the 0.001% richest individuals in the world has the means to know the true nature of the power structure that, by now, rules the entire globe.

There is no longer any such thing as a 'nation state', anywhere in the world [except when borders come in handy for political purposes]. Elections and the celebration of the 'democratic process' function as a smoke screen to distract and placate enslaved plebs, worldwide. The 'democratic process' is pure theater, at this point.

The wealthiest of the world finance and appoint electoral candidates on the basis of their abilities and willingness to play the game and function wholly and exclusively as highly paid Publicity Agents, to sell the elites' political and global military strategies.

Look at Obama. What is he if not a bad actor reading off a script? Or Merkel, Hollande, or Cameron, for that matter. Then there's Matteo Renzi, in Italy, imposed on Italy by the ECB … And Syriza?, we know what the financial industry had in store for them and the Greek population …

Yet even so-called 'progressive' media still waste their [primarily our] time focussing on electoral candidates, such as Bernie Sanders, of all people, whose role is nothing more than to maintain the grotesque illusion of a 'democratic process'.

The question, today, is where do we the 99.99% intend to go from here? It's long past time to break out of the literally Orwellian theater piece in which we live, to which we contribute labor and natural resources, to the detriment of fundamental quality of life.

No? Yes?

[KoKo]

6. I saw that reply at ICH and it is a sign of desperation. I'm not there yet....

And, while creating a strong "Third Party" is important it can only work if we can at least get Social Democrat like Bernie in there to begin the process. I have hope that Bernie could do that by attracting enough voters through his inspiring candidacy to begin a structure for a more Populist Party for the future.

The Green Party just isn't there yet with enough visibility to win and charismatic candidates to capture the imagination. If one lives in a Safe State then Vote Green but if one is in a swing state where the vote could sway the election then I'd hope Bernie would get those votes.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

7. "A sign of desperation," or...

...a sign of someone who has awakened to the ugly and quite daunting reality of what we (humanity) worldwide are actually faced with?

I think the latter. Further, I believe the more who wake up to this reality, the greater the chances are that we, collectively, can overcome it.

A leaking tire can never be repaired by blowing air into it without first patching/plugging the leak. Our "Democratic" system has multiple very bad leaks in it and all we ever do is continue to blow in more air. Won't work.

[KoKo]

8. How do you think we can do this, then?

I've given you my view...what is yours? BTW: I'm not a subscriber of the "Lesser of Two Evils" continuing.

I see Bernie as a Break Through. But, then I think there are enough angry people in the USA that for "SOME" ....Donald Trump is a Breakthrough ...even though I see them as the Sarah Palin Crowd still searching..I loved one thing about Trump. He went after John McCain. For that I will laugh and say Right On! The rest of Trump is just Sara P. "Shock & Awe" that rallies the troops...though he does take it further hitting some Right & Left Talking Points ...and, when he "goes too far" in approval and winds down in support... THEN...Bernie can be seen as the "REAL Truth Teller." For the LEFT...of course... "The Donald" splits his support through the years...

Its going to be an interesting election.

I've edited this a few times to make my position clearer....just so you know to re-read.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

9. I'm not certain what form of revolution will...

...have the best chance to be effective. What I do feel sure of is that a people's revolution of some sort (not talking about violence and destruction) will be required, and on a worldwide level. It looks to me like the criminal elite who actually run things, at least who run the West, hide within the walls of international banking and high finance, and draw their illegitimate power via their control of world monetary systems. Further, I don't believe this is a new development either.

Here is a video addressing the topic of revolution which I consider to be a good place to start:

Note

While I believe it's good for DUers to be able to post how they truly do feel about where we stand and what we're facing these days, I don't wish to discourage anyone from participating in our US elections and trying to make a difference working within the system. I just think it's so badly stacked/rigged against ordinary citizens now that revolution MUST come before meaningful and much needed change ever will.

I appreciate your thoughtful, intelligent contributions to this thread KoKo, and you do give me things to think on. Thank you for that.