Dems, Bush, Fear Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.' Words! Shake 'em Up! Quote King!

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By Jay Janson (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Jay Janson - Writer

Its the 15th of the month, the monthly birthday of the giant spirit, whose words, the elite within the un-American corporate governance of this country, still fear. They are afraid we will start throwing King Jr.' words at them while they dissimulate less than peaceful intentions, feign helplessness and stick to a policy of war in other people's countries as a national priority, as a continuing adventure and a 'patriotic' pastime. These pathetic imagination-less corporate lackeys will have no rejoinder to OUR sound bites of King Jr.' truthful words:

"For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Riverside Church, New York City, April 4th, 1967

"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government.!"

Once a year, high positioned members of both parties of the two party monopoly of political power ingratiatingly smile and nod, even bow at Martin Luther King Jr's. grave, eulogizing the memory of a wonderful Black civil rights leader, who determinedly, relentlessly, but peacefully sought peaceful integration (unlike, in the memory of these staid establishment notables, the more demanding Black Panthers or the intimidating Malcolm X). There is also begrudging praise for King that stops just short of putting a handkerchief on his head, and reluctantly accepts that we have premiated his death with a national holiday to make up for his assassination. Their thinking goes - 'that should do it, - calm the outrage and bitterness for King's murder'. Media entertainment features annual reruns of a few non-confrontational sentences from the 1963 "I have a Dream" along with some non-violent documentary footage of civil rights movement history espousing pride that racism is no longer enforced by law, not shame that this institutionalized racial violence was still occurring in modern day post Second World War Amerika during our own lifetime (the 'k' is for the KKK which was then still strong). Corporate commercial media is careful not to mention King's condemnation of brutal and inhuman U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam and seeks to emasculate his image by avoiding any coverage or mention of his speeches during the final years of his life, when he rose to prominence as a national leader with support from all progressives, many constituents of both major parties, and millions of the non-voting man in the street segment of American society.

However, we will not let the media black out and bury King's furious condemnation of U.S. government murderous foreign policy. We shall shout, at least on 15th of every month,

"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government.!"
"For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

We will quote the 1967 King Jr. who by then understood well, the connection between war abroad and the injustices of racism and poverty at home:

"So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home."

What on earth can the Democratic leadership in Congress answer back when we remind them unrelentingly of this awesome pronouncement of Rev. King:

"The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today [is] my own government.!"
"For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

As the Democratic leadership in Congress, ignoring the wishes of the great majority of the American people, goes along with using our military for 'nation building', i.e., building nations subservient to U.S. interests (read U.S. corporate interests), regardless of the increasing terror it causes, multiplying recruits for suicide bombings, we clobber these weak-minded politicians with an appropriate clear-minded King Jr. quote:

"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it."

As our science-fiction-like corporate media fields charm-attempting young women reporters and commentators saccharinely making a show of heralding and hailing our young men and women in military service as "protecting our freedoms" by killing Iraqis in Iraq and Afghans in Afghanistan, "fighting them there so we won't have to fight them here". We call and write and tell them what a real protector, King Jr. taught forty years ago:

"Violence ... is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love."

Up to now, we have allowed our corporate entertainment/news industry to hail Rev. King Jr., civil rights leader, and bury Rev. King Jr., peace activist and analyst of the economic reasons for U.S. wars and predator foreign trade policies, a Rev. King Jr. who called this nation to change. But now we have put forward a plan to zero in on the war promotion of the five giant TV networks. Conglomerate owned networks who sell us, as war watching audiences, to the giant PR agencies advertising on public owned broadcasting frequencies, frequencies only LEASED to the networks whose CEOs find it 'necessary' to deceive us viewers, using the very frequencies that we the public own. We will repeat King's most powerful words condemning war for profit, until they reverberate throughout the nation - or until a media free of corporate bias disseminates honestly King's legacy to us.

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Musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England and the US, and now resides in New York City.

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