I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who 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 that 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.” Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. An excerpt from Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr., where he was imprisoned as a participant in a nonviolent demonstration in August of 1963.
I’ve grown up thinking that the Democrats were liberals, but I was only half right. The Democratic Party during my growing-up years was Fiscally Liberal with Social Security and Medicare, and, except for President Lyndon Johnson and a few others, controlled by the socially conservative southern Committee leaders. Just as the world has changed since I was growing up, so has the Democratic Party changed. It happened right in front of my eyes, and I didn’t even see it. Today’s Democrats are Socially Liberal and Fiscally Conservative. There are outliers like Ocasio-Cortez and a few others who are both Fiscally Liberal and Socially Liberal, but the Party, en masse, is Fiscally Conservative.
On the other hand, according to Anthony Scaramucci, Trump says his supporters are Fiscally Liberal and Socially Conservative. Not counting, I guess, rich tech entrepreneurs who Trump keeps around with big tax breaks and are fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
We live in a society where money has become so important that it demands special treatment. By that, I mean money – and making money – has the status of being more holy than secular. When Trump threatened to have the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unapprove a major merger between Paramount Global, which owned CBS, and Skydance Media, a deal that many in the media said was contingent on appeasing Trump by firing the late-night comedian, Stephen Colbert, over his anti-Trump comedy, the media didn’t blame CBS or Paramount Global. The general attitude was along the lines of They had no choice.
The unspoken inference was They had no choice because it would cost their stockholders money, and that is of a higher value than doing the right thing. The unspoken part of the inference, BTW, is that the top executives will get more money at the expense of employees further down the totem pole. – I think that the Right Thing, the right choice, the moral choice, is to say “We believe in freedom of speech, which we have a moral obligation to protect and is guaranteed by the First Amendment, especially in political commentary, even though it may cost us money; therefore, we will not bow to political pressure.”
Sort of on the same subject, a couple of days ago, I heard William J. Haynes II interviewed on NPR. Hayes was with the Bush Administration on 9-11 and was one of the people, along with the more infamous John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, who gave Bush the Younger political cover on attacking Afghanistan after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Haynes was being interviewed on the Trump Administration’s use of the US Military for a strike on at least four vessels that originated from Venezuela, killing more than twenty people. The pretense was that the boats were smuggling drugs into the US, drugs that have “killed more people than have died in the World Trade Center attack”.
Haynes thought the use of the US Military to attack the boats was illegal. I don’t remember exactly why, or how, but, somehow, Haynes came up with because al-Qaeda was attacking us with intent to harm us, they were a legitiment military target. The boats from Venezuela were not attacking us, even though their cargo killed lots of people; all they are trying to do is make money, so we couldn’t legally use our military.
Speaking of NPR, sort of, I noticed that their commentary is now better, more insisive without being partisan, than I am used to. I think this is because NPR is no longer receiving funding from the Government, and they no longer have the Government looking over their shoulder with the implied threat of cutting off their funds if they were too partisan.
A couple of months ago, every newspaper I read and almost everybody I talked to was outraged that Trump was going to cut off NPR’s funding. I don’t think most people, including people in the Trump Administration, were really thinking about what would happen if NPR funding were cut off; they were just reacting to Trump, ad hominem. Trump is a petty little man who is vindictive and seems to take pleasure in hurting people. He’s a punch down, kiss-ass up kind of guy, and it is very easy to be critical of everything he does, but sometimes, what he does is better for all of us, and I think making NPR truly independent is one of those times.
