Some More News - Revisiting Some News: The Whitewashing of Martin Luther King Jr.

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Hi. Happy New Year! We're posting an episode on New Year's Day for some reason. But it's not a new episode. It's a replay of our January 2022 Some More News Episode about Martin Luther King Jr. and how conservatives (and many moderates) love to pretend that MLK's entire vision was about that one quote from that one speech that they point to over and over and over. Turns out the guy had more to say! So here's that episode with a new intro from Cody Johnston (and writer/director of this episode Will Gordh). PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenews MERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.com Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/30ui1x-eKIw

Oh, we are so back, folks. Well, not really. But you are maybe listening to this and it's a new year and it's not a new episode, but it will be eventually. Eventually, obviously, we're going to have new episodes. But not today. Today, it's a new year, as I said, and maybe I'll say it again. Who knows how many times I'm going to say it's a new year.

There's one. But in this fresh revolution around the sun, we thought we would rerun this older episode, MLK Day is coming up, and we figured it would be relevant. Sadly, sadly relevant. So before we play it, I'm going to read something that our director and writer of this episode, Will Gordord wrote after rewatching this old episode. So here that is, and then here is that episode, and then whatever you're going to do after that. So rewatching this video actually made me really sad.

I know this sounds like a cliche, but what Martin Luther King had to say is more important today than ever and all that. But it's actually true. When we made this episode, there was some hope that finally people might be receptive to his actual message. But the sad truth is that in just a couple of short years, the forces of reaction have prevailed. What struck me so much about researching

and writing this episode is how much more sophisticated his analysis of race and class and justice and morality was than the conversation we were having at the time. But we were at least finally starting to have that conversation again. On the heels of BLM, we were starting to have a real discussion about the legacy of systemic racism and how the hierarchies of white supremacy hurt everyone in the working class and those living in poverty. But the backlash came swift, and to our credit, we recognized it and called it out, and even though we at the showdy all saw the looming threat, I think I underestimated it.

Perhaps I let my hope blind me, but then I watched it all happen in front of me, like a slow motion nightmare. The backlash morphed from panics about critical race theory to DEI to wokeness and somehow the very mention of systemic oppression became successfully branded as cringe, and that everyone who talked about it were blue haired overly sensitive freaks. Richly ironic of course, because the real snowflakes were the people having panic attacks over the sight of a black mermaid in a movie. And the people pushing for racial and social and economic progress became exhausted by the relentlessness of the onslaught of the right-wing counter-narrative. The lies came so fast and frequent that it was impossible to keep up.

The narratives were so insidious and convoluted that it took longer to explain the lies than for them to tell them. They also had the benefit of relying on hundreds of years of American propaganda and myths to prop them up. They waged a war of attrition, and the forces of progress were completely overwhelmed, starved out, and were unable to withstand the siege. But beyond the anticipated reaction from conservatives, the other prescient proclamation from MLK is his criticism of the white moderate and the white liberal, who quote, constantly says I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct

action, who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by the myth of time, and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a more convenient season. These same white moderates and liberals are doing exactly the same thing today that King derided them for 50 plus years ago. Blaming wokeness and leftists and people who care about justice for the victory of Donald Trump. But when will the more convenient season for justice and real equality finally arrive? The truth is, there is no convenient season to fight for justice and equality. There are always reactionary forces who want to divide Americans so that they can exploit them.

That's their game plan. That's their tried and true strategy. That's how they get away with it all. And so, you can't compromise with fascists and their enablers. You need to fight them. Actually fight them. actually fight them, tell a different story and tell it with the same brazenness and ferocity that they tell theirs.

And that's what we have to do. Unfortunately, again, MLK gave us the playbook decades ago, but we didn't listen. In fact, his message has been so distorted and whitewashed and appropriated to the point that it is deployed to support this reactionary vision of America. So don't be surprised when you see MLK quoted as if he would hate DEI or wokeness or some other nonsense like that, whatever they call it in a few months. But luckily for us, MLK actually did say a bunch of stuff. He even wrote some books.

You can watch and read his speeches, interviews, and books. And we can reclaim his legacy. There is never a convenient season to fight for what's right. So you just have to do it. All the time. And so we will. By...again, reposting this old episode so we can have a couple more days off. Um...alright, here we go.

so we can have a couple more days off. All right, here we go. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Hey, here's some news. We've got some birthdays to celebrate today. You know how we always start the episodes

with birthday announcements? You've all seen this. You know how we always start the episodes with birthday announcements? You've all seen this. You all know we do this. So a very happy birthday to National Treasure Betty White, who turns 100 years young today. What? Happy birthday to funny man Jim Carrey. Smokin', somebody stop me.

Life is like a box of chocolates. Ah! Happy birthday to Kid Rock. Bawit da baw, da bang da dang, diggy diggy diggy said the boogie. Said up jump the boogie. And oh yeah, happy belated birthday to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

whose birthday was actually a couple of days ago. But ever since 1986, on the third Monday of each year, we rightfully celebrate the life and legacy of the civil rights leader who utilized nonviolent protests to help bring about an end to explicit legal segregation in America and pressured this nation to enshrine voting rights for its black citizens.

Also pretty good mustache. Like a seven out of 10 on the mustache scale. And so of course we celebrate this day with a variety of store sales. A day off unless you're working at one of those stores or really any service job. And of course the ritual of witnessing conservatives cynically appropriating MLK's message

to promote their right wing reactionary agenda. It's called the MLK Dream Score, which would grade political candidates based on their adherence to Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. So Obama would get a low score because although he was cool, his policies left blacks cold. Biden would get scored zero for excusing physical violence and protests, creating polarization by branding people as racist, and having no interest in a quote, beautiful symphony of brotherhood. You can say that about everyone, from Jesse Jackson to the squad. Compare that to Trump.

His policies were more helpful to blacks than any modern era president. Today is the anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. I was thinking, like, if he were alive today, I wonder what he'd think about such dismissive comments and about a Democrat party that believes it can regain power by living in a constant state of protest or racial hatred and denial. Every one of us has a right to equal treatment

by our government. That right is guaranteed by our Constitution. It's the heart of countless laws passed with well-deserved fanfare by our Congress over many decades. That right is inscribed on a monument on our national mall to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who would be shocked and disgusted if he watched Susan Rice on television today. Well, going forward, she announced this afternoon, every agency in the US government, a government that is by the way, the largest and most lavishly funded organization in human history, every one of them will,

place equity at the core of its policy design, specifically and for the benefit of marginalized communities. Now Susan Rice's speech was carried live by many news outlets, but as far as we know, not a single one of them paused to ask what exactly she was talking about. Now in Vermont, they are saying that you need to be a person of color or you can't, you don't, you don't get to get in that line. How do you react to that? Well, you know, this, this whole identity politics stuff is, is poisonous. you know, this whole identity politics stuff is poisonous.

You know, if Martin Luther King, Dr. Martin Luther King were here today, he would be absolutely offended. You know, he wanted people to be judged by the character and not by the color of their skin. Okay, pause. PAUSE IT! Sorry to interrupt this proud American tradition, but I have to. Quick recap. So apparently Donald Trump is the modern day embodiment

of Dr. King's philosophy. MLK would have hated protests for racial justice and would have been shocked and disgusted, and I guess confused by the very notion of equity. And of course, he would have been absolutely offended by the idea that a vaccine rollout would prioritize communities that disproportionately suffer from the negative health consequences of a novel virus. You know, silly consequences like hospitalization and death.

Yes, I'm sure the man who stated that, quote, of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman, would be absolutely offended by the very idea that a state government might prioritize life-saving vaccines for the most vulnerable populations, particularly the black community, who it turns out are at much greater risk of catching COVID

due to the fact that they are less likely to be able to work from home, more likely to live in multi-generational households, more likely to rely on public transportation, and then on top of that, disproportionately suffer from comorbidities such as diabetes and heart disease and have less access to quality healthcare,

which puts them at much greater risk of dying from COVID, you know, because of that pesky long and enduring legacy of racism in this country. Anyway, happy MLK day, a holiday that comes with just as much accurate historical context as Columbus Day and Thanksgiving because we live in America, you see, surely, you see.

You know, I kind of feel like MLK would be more absolutely offended by the fact that over 50 years after his death, also known as an assassination, the same health disparities that existed in the 1960s continue to exist in the black community to this day, that day being January 17th, 2022, a year we once assumed would have flying cars and robot sports, where's my goddamn cyber ball?

But instead have many of the same tragic inequities from back when computers were the size of living rooms and films were tackling the controversy of interracial marriage. Right, fuck, Sidney Poitier died too. That sucks. But hey, at least we solved the interracial marriage stuff. No?

Still struggling with that too, huh? Okay, well again, America. But I'm getting sidetracked here. We haven't yet finished our MLK day tradition. Are there any other right-wing abominations who want to lie about what Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood for? There are literally colleges that are teaching kids that if they say, I am colorblind, this

is an element of racism. If you say, I don't judge people based on color, this is a microaggression. I am not kidding. This is something that is said at universities across the land. That is a direct rejection of Dr. King's dream. So what is the left doing? They say, well, really Dr. King's dream wasn't the colorblind society. That was just a bunch of sloganeering for the cameras. What his dream really was, was racial separatism and competing interest groups.

His real dream was the Bernie Sanders socialist agenda that would overcome race with redistributionism. He was really a class warrior rather than a warrior in favor of racial integration. This is not why America celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King. And to pretend otherwise is, I think, a bit of nasty revisionist history that has some pretty serious consequences

for the future of the country. That's right, my fellow US of a-holes. According to expert on black history, Ben Shapiro, MLK was explicitly against redistributionism. He wasn't a class warrior, you see. And what he really wanted was a colorblind society. And to claim otherwise puts the entire country at risk. Thanks for piping up race expert Ben.

Specifically and coincidentally, MLK apparently wanted the kind of society and public policy proposals that Ben Shababadoke envisions. Wow, how lucky for Ben. Only wait, perhaps this Ben Shapipu fellow isn't right after all. And we'll get to that. But our special angry boy is at least right about one thing.

Broadly speaking, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is not celebrated in this country for his promotion of wealth redistribution. But perhaps he should be, because wealth redistribution is absolutely something that he advocated for. In fact, there are a whole bunch of things that MLK believed in and fought for

that he is not celebrated for today. But maybe, possibly, definitely should be. And yet, considering how frequently and consistently and mercilessly conservatives invoked Dr. Martin Luther King to justify their agenda, you could be forgiven for believing that he was a free market loving libertarian, at least forgiven a little bit, just a bitty or not.

It's up to you. It's a free country. If you don't count like healthcare and water and food, also the color of your skin and household income matters, like a lot, it turns out. Anyway, the point is that despite the fact that we treat Martin Luther King Jr. like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Noid, a mythical figure

who ended racism with a single sentence about dreams, the truth is that MLK was a real person who said a lot of things and also did a lot of things. And heck, even wrote a bunch of things down. And if you actually look at the things he said and did and wrote during his too short life, you will find that he was far more extreme than the conventional wisdom would have you believe.

By any measure, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a radical leftist. And this is why the right-wing appropriation of MLK is so reprehensible, because you know, it's a lie. Specifically, it's a lie that they are desperate to propagate. After all, the actual principles and policies that MLK believed in and fought for are completely at odds

with conservative ideology. This beloved and vindicated historical figure just so happened to promote ideology that would set the GOP firmly on the wrong side of ideology. This beloved and vindicated historical figure just so happened to promote ideology that would set the GOP firmly on the wrong side of history. It seems damning. The kind of thing you might have to do a bunch of weird lies about if you're the conservative type. Now, you might have noticed that all these clips

that I've shown you of right-wingers invoking MLK have centered around a single speech of his, but even more specifically, a single line from that speech. Because I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

Boy, conservatives absolutely love this one single line. They sop it up like a delicious bread, gnawing and swallowing and shitting out distorted husks like the Sarlacc pit from Star Wars. Here is Congressman Jim Jordan tweeting, we honor the life and work of Dr. King and his belief that it's the content of an individual's character

that matters most. Weird thing for a guy who allegedly ignored slash covered up the sexual abuse of student athletes during his time as an assistant wrestling coach at the Ohio State University to say, but sure. Honestly, Jim, maybe not a great move promoting the idea that people should be judged by the content of their character.

It doesn't seem like that version of the world would work out for you. What with all the stuff I literally just said. But anyway, and yet, conservatives absolutely love invoking the legacy of MLK against current movements for racial justice. Here is former Congressman Joe Walsh tweeting, in fact, if he were alive today,

Martin Luther King Jr. would lead an all lives matter march on Washington DC. Would be wonderful. Yikes and fuck. Yuck, if you will. That sure is a dipshit tweet right there. Imagine using MLK to justify a dismissal of the Black Lives Matter movement. Really imagine the doublespeak dystopian brain at work

to try and argue that America's most famous civil rights leader would definitely be against a modern civil rights movement like that. That's like saying Nikola Tesla wouldn't be into EDM festivals. Like, yeah, I guess we don't know for sure, but come the hell on. And yet ol' Walshy isn't by far

the highest profile dildo making this argument. One thing protesters would like to hear is leaders say, Black Lives Matter. You won't say that. Why? All my life I've been inspired by the example of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ah yes, former talk radio host and vice president Mike Pence. I'm sure Martin Luther King would have hated the phrase, Black Lives Matter. Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything black, ugly,

and evil. Look in your dictionary and see the synonyms of the word black. It's always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word white, it's always something pure, high and clean. the language right tonight. I want to get the language so right that everybody here will cry out, yes I'm black, I'm proud of it, I'm black and beautiful. Ah, geez Marty, did you not hear what Joe Walsh and Mike Pence said? Not very colorblind of you to say that black is beautiful. Did you ever consider the idea that all skin colors are beautiful? God damn, do these conservatives love quoting this one line?

It's like a rite of passage for them. They think of it like a magic spell they can use to minimize any and all prominence of racism in America. It is the I have a black friend of political sentiment. Because if America was a racist country, like some people say that it is, Arbery's killers would not have been found guilty by a nearly all white jury in Georgia.

Now, most Americans, people of all races, truly believe in and are inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King's adage, that we are all God's children. And as such, we should judge each other based on the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Forget the fact that it took more than two months for Ahmaud Arbery's killers to be arrested, and it took a fucking video of the incident going viral to prompt their arrest, because, you know, the prosecutor was allegedly using her position to discourage arrests in the case.

Great example of how our justice system is totally not racist. And yes, I'm calling future vice presidential candidate Tulsi Trump, Tulsi 2024 Gabbard, a conservative, but only because she is. Come at me, Tulsi heads, but like not really. All right, keep your distance, please. I'm a nice man.

And you know, it's pretty ironic, don't you think, that she quoted MLK to make the argument that America is not a racist country and that most people of all races in America aren't racist. When King himself stated, "'I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racist, either consciously or unconsciously.'"

But news, dude, you call out. That was way a long time ago. So much has changed since then. First of all, stop yelling. I can't hear you. We filmed this episode last week, duh. Second of all, has it though?

Like, has it? Has so, eh, has it? Has so much changed since then. So, you know, eh. We'll get back to that question, but for now we need to finish talking about the one line that conservatives actually like, except actually we need to do ads before that.

So we will do the ads, then the speech stuff, then the stuff about how America is still racist in that order, but let's face it, I'll probably have a lot of tangents in there as well. It may or may not be a reference to another 80s video game, maybe Contra? We'll see. The point is, who has paid us to say the name

of their product? Let's find out. Oh mama, we're back and we're talking about racism. Shocking, we never do that on this show. And on this subject, we were talking about how mostly conservative politicians absolutely gushed their britches over misrepresenting a single line

from Martin Luther King Jr. in order to justify really anything they want. These dips probably used him to justify the Iraq War for all we know. I mean, that's probably hyperbole. I get carried away some... Ah, shucks. Fun fact, that's actually an official under Obama

because fair and balanced TMC, Are you ready to rumble? Okay, getting back to the video and that one line, which is of course a quote from MLK's famous I have a dream speech delivered on August 28th, 1963, when King was just 34 years old as part of the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. And here's an interesting bit of trivia. It turns out that he also said a bunch of other things

during the speech. Weird, right? Things the conservatives, but also politicians in general don't tend to mention nearly as much. 100 years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient

from. So we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied? We can never be satisfied as long as the negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. Hmm, I wonder why they don't like to quote those lines. And for some historical perspective,

here's a picture of birthday girl Betty White from the same year MLK gave that speech. She is older than me in this picture. Boy, that's actually recent, isn't it? It's like, despite the grainy black and white footage and our inferior dildo technology back then, within the scope of American history, this wasn't actually all that long ago.

And yet, at this time, less than 60 years ago, Jim Crow segregation laws were still alive and well, making it legal in many instances to discriminate against someone based solely on the color of their skin. About 40% of the states still had laws against interracial marriage. And in much of the country, black people were in effect denied the right to vote.

So you can understand why during this time, one of the main demands of civil rights leaders like MLK would have been a plea to end the era of explicit legal discrimination in America. And one of the primary obstacles to achieving this goal was that many white Americans judged black people by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character,

and therefore did not support the end of legal discrimination against black people. The notion that individuals should be judged by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin, is something that everyone should agree with. Unless you are a literal Nazi, then you should disagree on account of you being a Nazi and all that. It wouldn't be very consistent if you agreed, you Nazi! Ah, gotcha! What I'm getting at is that at the time, it was extremely necessary for MLK to promote this idea,

but not only this idea. And by today's standards, judging someone by the content of their character is a much lower bar. Because in theory, fucking of course we need to judge people by their character over the color of their skin. Everyone decent knows this now. It's the type of message we've grown up seeing in 90's sitcoms. The whole world is messed up right now

and I would like to see that get better, but in order for that get better, but in order for that to happen, white people are gonna have to start making positive assumptions when they see people of color. And people of color could make positive assumptions when they see white people. Man, things are just messed up. Huh, wonder what that show is. Doesn't matter.

And boy, to be clear, not saying we like nailed it yet in terms of not judging people by the color of their skin. We still have a lot of work to do in that department. But even so, the process of discussing race needs to evolve and continue past this one line from one speech that MLK gave. And so still using this as a benchmark is like judging a television

based on whether or not it features color. We're just way past that. But this is where conservatives seem to stagnate. And often jujitsu, this one line against efforts to achieve better racial equality and pervert its meaning to further their selfish agenda. They twist a concept that promotes interpersonal respect, community harmony, and genuine equality

into one that ignores the impact of history, dismisses the legacy of slavery and systemic racism in America. Instead promoting myths about meritocracy and the ideal of individualism in order to maintain the accumulated privileges and advantages afforded by white supremacy.

All in support of enabling the exploitation allowed by our current system of capitalism. You know, like making people work on a federal holiday celebrating a civil rights leader. Hey, speaking of that, fun, extremely ironic trivia for you. It turns out that this holiday was started by this guy. Thank you, Ron. You definitely racist president you.

But at the time of his presidency, Reagan was like the Hulk Hogan of racist dog whistling, not to be confused with the real Hulk Hogan, of course. As you probably know, dog whistling is the act of making racist statements or policies while not directly talking about a race. This is often excused after the fact by claiming color blindness.

See, this twisting of the statement that we should judge each other by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin is what's often used to promote this concept of colorblindness. Deployed in a political context, this claim of not seeing race is utilized to obscure the role of history and systems

on the life outcomes of groups that have been socially and legally disadvantaged, and instead place the burden of success solely on the individual members of those groups. So what do you as an individual black person do to change your life? And I don't think it's helpful. And in fact, I think it's actually quite hurtful

to spend an enormous amount of time talking about the legacy of discrimination and racism instead of talking about what can you do right now to fix your problem? Oh yeah, thanks to black history professor Ben Shapiro. Glad you keep showing up. Miss you, love you. You see, not only is it not helpful

to spend an enormous amount of time talking about the legacy of discrimination and racism, but it's actually quite hurtful. It's all up to the individual, apparently. What are you doing right now to fix your problem? This systemic racism against you is like forest fires, you see, only you can prevent it. This leads to an extremely insidious false dichotomy,

which is the idea that focusing on what to do to fix your problem and recognizing the systemic issues that led to the problem are somehow mutually exclusive. Hey, now, why are you griping on and on and on about who pushed you into that hole when you have all the digging out to do? Seems like maybe the thing a person who helped push you into the hole might say,

or at least someone who greatly benefited from you getting shoved in the hole. Like perhaps if someone made their living, implying that it's okay to push people into holes. Now, there is nothing wrong per se with the notion of colorblindness. Colorblindness would be fine if the concept of race had never been invented in the first place.

And I do mean invented because race is not real. That is to say, it is not a biological reality, but it was invented. I'm not being abstract here. The concept of race was literally invented. The word itself had only a broad meaning until the 18th century, and it was invented for a very specific reason,

namely to prevent enslaved Africans and European indentured servants from forming coalitions over their shared economic interests in opposition to the wealthy ruling class that was exploiting their labor during the early days of colonization. Not sure who the official inventor of race was, but I'm guessing he had a name like George or Andrew

or Fish or Chips. Our money is on Reginald. So certain advantages were given to Europeans and heavy restrictions were enforced for Africans in order to protect the rich and powerful elite. And to justify this lie, more lies were told about the essential and inherent differences between the races.

This social and legal infrastructure provided privileges to individuals that belonged to the newly created social category of whiteness and shackled, literally, individuals assigned to the made up constructed classification of blackness, which you can imagine severely limited the opportunities afforded to them.

And so when King said, "'I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,' he is challenging the idea that the superficial phenotypic trait denotes anything whatsoever about intrinsic worth.

He is challenging the notion that there is something inherently less valuable about black lives. One might even say, and I will, that he is saying black lives matter. It's also worth noting that he doesn't actually use the phrase colorblind in this quote, because the problem isn't noticing

that an individual has a different skin color. The problem is assigning some kind of fundamental value to this trait. Ultimately in this speech, and with this single line from this speech, King is describing a vision of racial equality. And so, wouldn't legitimate equality mean that you would try to make up for the unfair disadvantages

that have been imposed on a community without justification? Wouldn't failing to do so just fortify that very inequality that has amassed over centuries of unjust treatment? And so the idea that the notion of equality would mean to overlook the accumulated advantages provided to one group and the degrading disadvantages inflicted on another and just say, on your marks, get set, go,

without making up for the fact that one of the groups in the race has been wrongfully stuck on the starting block for centuries is, and I don't wanna sound extreme here, unreasonable. But essentially, people named Ben, and other names too, I guess,

are telling black people to ignore the systems that disadvantage them and limit their opportunities and simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps. This philosophy is used to prevent any disruption to the status quo, which of course has historically benefited white people. But hey, don't take my word for it. At the very same time that America refused

to give the Negro any land, through an act of Congress, our government was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the midwest, which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor. But not only did they give the land, they built land-grant colleges with government money to teach them how to farm.

Not only that, they provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, they provided low interest rates in order that they could mechanize their farms. Not only that, today many of these people are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies not to farm and they are the very people telling the black man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. Okay, Marty, that's all well and good. But what do you want to do about it, huh?

Some kind of bootstraps pulling machine, robots that create more land? Oh, maybe the robots can also learn to pull up bootstraps and we cover all of our angles at once. Now, when we come to Washington, in this campaign, we're coming to get our check. Ah, that makes sense.

Much better plan. So Martin Luther King won, Ben Shapiro, zero. Hey, that rhymes. You know, it's funny. It kind of sounds like MLK was talking about reparations in that clip. Weird. And some of the things he was saying kind of sound like the sort of history that conservatives are currently trying to ban from schools, and in some cases succeeding. Gee, I wonder what kind of quotes those people are invoking to accomplish such a ghoulish thing.

We're trying so hard to live up to those immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who implored us to be better than we are, to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. And so let me be clear. Let me be clear on day one, we will not have political agendas in the classroom and I will ban critical race theory.

Yummy, yummy, yum. What a surprise. That was of course, the newly inaugurated governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, who ironically assumed office on MLK's actual birthday just two days ago on January 15th. Youngkin won the governor's race in part by hyping the manufactured hysteria

over critical race theory. And not to be outdone, Florida governor Ron D. Santus has taken things even further and introduced big eye roll incoming, the StopWoke Act, allowing parents to sue over the teaching of critical race theory in schools. And how did he unveil this new bill? You guessed it, he also invoked the words of Martin Luther King.

You think about what MLK stood for. He said he didn't want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. You listen to some of these people nowadays, they don't talk about that. Boy, I kind of fucking hate that. The sadistic cynicism of conservatives quoting MLK

to justify a ban on the supposed teaching of critical race theory in schools can't be overstated as a super villain level hate fucking of the American soul. Especially considering that MLK was one of the major influences for CRT in the first place. It is the political equivalent of beating someone with their own severed arm,

a brazen act of racism that every American should see right through, except, you know, America. And the appropriation of MLK's words to push the anti-CRT agenda is not isolated to just these two behemoth stains. Once and future president Donald Trump stated, critical race theory is a Marxist doctrine that rejects the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said, critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us. Don't judge us by the color of our skin and now they're embracing it. That's right, Kevin. That one sentence is everything Martin Luther King ever told us.

It's their mantra. They love it and fuck it. They fuck the words from every position. This one part of a single speech, always used for some variation of the idea that we shouldn't go out of our way to give anyone special treatment. Because that's what MLK wanted, they shout,

internally praying that no one actually remembers the specifics of what the civil rights leader believed in or the fact that he explicitly addressed this in the fourth and final book he wrote before he was assassinated, writing, the white liberal must affirm that absolute justice for the Negro simply means in the Aristotelian sense

that the Negro must have his due. There is nothing abstract about this. It is as concrete as having a good job, a good education, a decent house and a share of power. It is however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment. Ah, geez, what about the content of the character

and all that? How can you possibly justify giving a specific race of people special treatment? Well, he goes on to say, a society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him in order to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis.

Do a Kodi a favor. Anytime you see some reactionary ghoul quote MLK in an effort to prevent the honest teaching of our history or the notion of equity in public policy or the idea that we might prioritize vaccine distribution to vulnerable populations, please politely and non-violently shove this quote in their faces,

print it out and hide it under their pillows after breaking into their homes, serve them food with it written on the plate after spitting in their food, paint it on their pets and then take their pets. They don't deserve pets. Also non-toxic paint, of course. Bombard them with this quote until they are forced to,

at minimum, admit that what they really feel is this. And yes, Martin Luther King Jr. was a mixed bag when it came to this stuff. Because the idea that King didn't want special treatment or for America to teach the systemic racism in this country or wanted to encourage bootstraps pulling or any of these other things we hear from the GOP. It is objectively a lie.

And I think we've pretty much proven that here. And boy, that sure makes you wonder what else are they lying about? What are some of the other things MLK stood for that perhaps the GOP loves to downplay? We should probably explore that. In due time, like in the time it takes to watch these neat ads.

Oh boy, ads. MLK loved ads, you guys. He said so, you'll see. We'll show you the quotes after the ads. Hey, look at Mr. Back from ads. That's me, and that's it for ads. I lied about the MLK quotes that support ads. Ha ha ha.

So anyway, we were talking about the fact that despite what conservatives like to pretend, it turns out that MLK said a lot of stuff and things besides that single quote about content of character. And in fact, those other things he said might not be all that popular with the GOP today, or also the entire country when MLK was alive. Because despite the reverence we now hold

for Martin Luther King Jr., it turns out that in his time, he was extremely controversial figure. In fact, at the time of his death, AKA assassination, MLK had a 75% disapproval rating. That is higher than this fascist smudge at any time during his presidency. And you know, this guy's incompetence

led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and he nearly ended democracy in America. Whoops! Trump once got on Air Force One with shit paper, shit glued to his shitty shoe, and yet still was more popular than King was. And when it comes right down to it,

many conservatives disapprove of his most lauded accomplishments to this day. Through his efforts, MLK was largely responsible for pushing through one of the most significant pieces of legislation in American history, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also banned private businesses that serve the public from discrimination. And it's that provision that libertarians like Senator Rand Paul can't quite bring themselves to accept.

If there was a private business, say in Louisville, say somewhere in your home state, that wanted to not serve black patrons or wanted to not serve gay patrons or somebody else on the basis of somebody else on the basis of their, on the basis of a characteristic that they decided they didn't like as a private business owner. Would you think that they had a legal right to do so, to put up a blacks not served here

sign? Well, the interesting thing is, is you know, you look back to the 1950s and 1960s at the problems we faced, there were incredible problems. The problems had to do mostly with voting, they had to do with schools, they had to do with public housing. And so this is what the civil rights largely addressed and all things that I largely agree with. But what about private businesses?

I mean, I hate to, I don't want to be badgering you on this, but I do want an answer. Do you think that a private business has a right to say, we don't serve black people? Yeah, I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form. I would never belong to any club that excluded anybody for race. We still do have private clubs in America that can discriminate based on race. But I think what's important about this debate is not getting into any specific gotcha on this, but asking the question, what about freedom of speech?

Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent? Should we limit racist from speaking? I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior, because that's one of the things freedom requires. And nice sidestep rand.

Sure seems like you're cool with letting businesses discriminate based on race. But hey, that's what freedom requires folks, the ability for the sole gas station or motel on the highway to say, sorry, we don't serve your kind here. Or the only cantina in town to say, we don't serve their kind here. Pretty darn telling that we can frame that as being about freedom. Freedom for whom exactly, Rand?

But at least Rand Paul has some credibility on voting rights, something the vast majority of the party he belongs to can't even say. Because one of the other victories that MLK played a significant role in achieving was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a law that aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African-Americans

from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. A law that coincidentally has been gutted by conservative justices on the Supreme Court twice. First in 2013, the Supreme Court overturned the pre-clearance provision in the Civil Rights Act, which required certain jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting

to get approval from the DOJ when enacting new voting laws. In her dissent, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that, throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. Great point, RBG.

Still wish you'd retired when you had the chance. That would have been neat. But for his part, conservative justice, Antonin Scalia of Antonin Scalia Retire Bitch fame referred to the law as a racial entitlement. That's right. He referred to a law designed to protect the right of black people to vote,

a right which had up to that point been aggressively fought against through tactics like poll taxes, literacy tests, quizzes about how many fucking jelly beans are in a jar, and you know, domestic terror and mass murder, he referred to that protection as a racial entitlement. And since this provision was gutted, around two dozen states have passed restrictive voting laws,

including 10 laws that would have needed that federal approval. And in the 2021 legislative sessions, lawmakers have introduced at least 440 restrictive bills in 49 states. So it seems that while many conservatives like to quote the one line of MLK, they don't actually agree with what he actually advocated for because again, America, America loves propping

these people up without actually respecting their message. We make them bumper stickers and tattoos like they're Bugs Bunny or Jesus, both of whom died for us and came back. And I say America specifically, because let's certainly not let liberals off the hook. You might've noticed that MLK's quote about how special treatment may be required

to make up for the injustice of the past started out with a critique of the white liberal. Yes, it turns out that MLK had a lot to say about the white liberal and the white moderate. There was a lot that Dr. King asked of a lot of people. And I think on this day meant to celebrate him, the question we need to ponder is, what exactly is Martin Luther King Jr's legacy?

What should it be? And are we truly living up to it? And who better to answer that question than a guy who looks like me? Because the conventional narrative tends to go from his I have a dream speech and the legislative accomplishments of the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act

that followed straight to his assassination. But MLK actually had a lot to say in the intervening years that we don't actually talk that much about. For starters, what did he think about the progress that had been made towards achieving his dream? that we don't actually talk that much about. For starters, what did he think about the progress that had been made towards achieving his dream? I must confess that that dream that I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare.

Now I'm not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future, but I've had to analyze many things over the last few years, and I would say over the last few months. I've gone through a lot of soul-sucking and agonizing moments, and I've come to see that we have many more difficult days ahead, and some of the old optimism was a little superficial, and now it must be tempered with a solid realism.

And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go. A long, long way to go in a galaxy far, far away. That's three Star Wars references for you sick freaks. But geez, folks, I don't think it's daring to say that this quote still applies today, just like 50 some odd years later. You might have noticed that I started this video noting that today we rightfully celebrate the life and legacy of the civil rights leader who utilized nonviolent protests to help bring about an end to explicit legal segregation in America.

Wow, I was so young back then. So full of hope. Less beard. Now, I use the words explicit legal segregation for a reason, because unfortunately, even though explicit legal segregation is no longer allowed, schools and neighborhoods are more segregated today than they were in the 1960s.

The racial wealth gap between white people and black people is the same today as it was when MLK was assassinated. Seems like we continue to have a long way to go to get to that dream he was talking about. And maybe the reason that these inequalities persist is because we didn't really listen to what MLK actually had to say. for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. America's opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. And the question is whether America will do it. There's nothing new about poverty.

What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. And the real question is whether we have the will. Now we are dealing with issues that cannot be solved without the nation spending billions of dollars and undergoing a radical redistribution of economic power. Oh, hey, there's that word, redistributionism. Man, it seems like there are very few politicians today to promote a vision as radical as the one MLK advocated for in the 1960s,

perhaps because he was rightfully challenging the very foundation of this country, something that neither Republicans or Democrats like to challenge. In fact, in his quest for absolute justice as early as 1951, when MLK was in his early 20s, he wrote a note to himself that took on America's sacred system of capitalism itself.

I am convinced that capitalism has seen its best days in America, and not only in America, but in the entire world. It is a well-known fact that no social institution can survive when it has outlived its usefulness. This, capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses." Hey! Weird that politicians don't quote that part of him. Seems like maybe they want us to forget about all that stuff or how aspects of King's thinking may have been why FBI domestic intelligence chief, William Sullivan,

once wrote an urgent memo declaring King the most dangerous Negro in the US, stating, we must mark him now if we have not done so before as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security. Gee wizards, this whole American government jazz wasn't too keen on this King fellow.

This may have been why MLK was relentlessly wiretapped and surveilled by the FBI until his death, AKA assassination. This may have been why the FBI wrote a letter to MLK, blackmailing him and urging him to commit suicide, writing, There is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days. You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy,

abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation. Ah, but that's the old FBI. They smoked cigarettes and murdered aliens in junk. They wouldn't heavily surveil a civil rights movement today, right? Do we have an article about how they totally did that to the Black Lives Matter movement? I bet we do.

Yeah, we do. There's the article about that. But it wasn't just King's critique of capitalism that made him the most dangerous Negro in the US, according to the federal government. Because MLK also stated in 1967 that, the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism.

And so the thing that really put MLK in the hot seat was his courageous and wildly unpopular stance against the Vietnam War, and against war and militarism in general, or I guess he loved it, according to the Pentagon. And this stance on Vietnam is one that I and other cool people would argue has been proven correct upon even the lightest historical examination.

Like I think even Operation Dumbo Drop comes down on it, but also who cares if it does. When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective and programs of social uplift suffer. This is just a fact of history so that we do face many more difficulties as a result of the war. It's much more difficult to really arouse a conscience during a time of war. That is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls a conscience.

It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence. And MLK's stance against the war is not the only example where he was ahead of his time. King advocated for a federal jobs guarantee and a guaranteed income, reparations, and, this is important, a massive government effort to entirely eliminate poverty. In fact, the effort he was engaged in when he was assassinated was marching with striking sanitation workers in support of a diverse coalition of people

fighting for better working conditions as a part of the Poor People's Campaign for Economic and Racial Justice. He even had an extremely relevant view of the filibuster. I think the tragedy is that we have a congress with a senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting. And this is literally the same dynamic that is currently at play with the legislative battle over the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Now, majority leader Chuck Schumer has vowed

to take up filibuster changes by MLK Day if the voting rights bill is blocked. So I guess, let me know in the comments if that effort has been successful. I have a pretty good guess on whether or not it has been. Also like and subscribe, and also I probably won't read the comment. My point is that the political stances that MLK took

in the 1960s are more progressive than the vast majority of democratic leaders today. And even then, MLK understood that the biggest stumbling block to achieving absolute equality was the very people that proclaimed to align with his vision. I think the biggest problem now is that we got our gains over the last 12 years

at bargain rates, so to speak. Didn't cost the nation anything. In fact, it helped the economic side of the nation to integrate lunch counters and public accommodations. It didn't cost the nation anything to get the right to vote established. Now we are confronting issues that cannot be solved without costing the nation billions of dollars.

Many of the people who supported us in Selma, in Birmingham, were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negroes. But they were not at that moment, and they are not now, committed to genuine equality for Negroes. And I think we are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle, where we have moved from a struggle for decency, which characterized our struggle for 10 or 12 years, to a struggle for genuine equality. And this is where we are getting the resistance

because there was never any intention to go this far. People were reacting to Bull Connor and to Jim Clark, rather than acting in good faith for the realization of genuine equality. And so while President Joe Biden may claim that he is committed to racial equality, he has still refused to cancel student debt which would significantly narrow the racial wealth gap,

something he could do today, this day with a stroke of a pen or not depending on who your favorite blogger is. In fact, after the largest sustained protest movement in American history, the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, very little lasting concrete action from our government has taken place to achieve genuine racial equality. This dynamic is probably why MLK wrote his famous letter from a Birmingham jail in 1963, which reads, I must confess that over the past few years, I have been gravely disappointed

with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizens counselor or the Ku Klux Klan-er, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice. Who prefers a negative piece, which is the absence of tension to a positive piece,

which is the presence of justice. Who constantly says, I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action. Who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time, and who constantly advises the Negro

to wait for a more convenient season. He's talking about you, Joe. Both of you, Joes, and probably a bunch of other people too. Definitely, probably, absolutely. And so while the right-wing appropriation of MLK is more obviously and blatantly disgusting, neither political party is doing a particularly good job

of living up to King's legacy. And it remains such a tragedy to this day that he was taken from the world by some asshole with a gun, though not necessarily the one that we've been led to believe. And at least according to the jury in a civil trial in Coretta King,

a conspiracy that involved the mafia, local, state, and federal government agencies. So we never got the chance to see what MLK would think about Ronald Reagan's presidency, or mass incarceration, or Black Lives Matter, or Colin Kaepernick, or Donald Trump, or the Matrix. Maybe he would have loved The Matrix. We don't know, but we could have.

If MLK were alive today, he would have been 93 years old, seven years younger than Betty White. And it is a damn shame we haven't had his wisdom to rely on all of these years. We don't know what he would have said or thought about events over the last 50 plus years, but we do know what he did say while he was still here.

And so the first step towards honoring Martin Luther King's legacy is to stop whitewashing it. But for now, I will leave you with this, a portion of the final speech MLK gave before he was assassinated. Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now.

Because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So rest in power, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As they say, thank you for being a friend. Travel down the road and back again.

Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant. No, I'm not finished! And if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me. And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend. Thanks MLK! Also, happy birthday to Betty White, who is definitely still alive!

It's like the song, like, close enough, like, just, just enough like it.