A lot has been written about what Martin Luther King did. In my view, his most important accomplishment was convincing millions of people that dreams of a better world were still worthwhile. But I’d like to focus on one of Dr. King’s less celebrated virtues: his courage to tell the truth about injustice. That may seem like an ordinary ability, until one considers that exposing the forces of tyranny tends to arouse a storm of powerful enemies. Also, truth is not always as obvious as it could be.
For example, it is well documented that in the 1960s, the FBI collaborated with the media to promote propaganda portraying King as an evil, fraudulent liar and communist insurgent. No reasonable investigations validated those character attacks, but public opinion of the civil rights leader soured anyway. Similar slander persists today. David Garrow recently alleged that “King looked on, laughed and offered advice” while a rape occurred. Several media outlets legitimized that claim, although Garrow provided no proof, and only cited an anonymous note, handwritten apparently by a federal agent during a time the FBI was actively surveilling and defaming King. Grade school teachers do not accept claims backed by such feeble sources, so it seems strange that some major publications do.
If the FBI had incriminating evidence on King, it seems likely they would have released it fifty years ago, considering that the whole point of spying on him in the first place was to find incriminating evidence. In addition, the note Garrow referred to was a summary of an audio recording of questionable existence, which nevertheless could not have depicted that someone “looked on.”
There is not enough information available to determine the whole truth of this matter. Yet neither David Garrow nor anyone else has presented credible evidence that Dr. King committed sexual misconduct. The legitimization of such an accusation is therefore folly, and indicative of the flimsy foundations upon which truth teeters in the United States.
An array of narratives have drawn attention to the lesser charge of King’s alleged infidelity, including Ralph Abernathy’s memoirs and the autobiography of Georgia Powers. Coretta Scott King denied that her husband was unfaithful. Referring to Abernathy’s claims, she said, “Scandal sells books; fidelity does not.”
Just as baseless allegations often miss the truth, or at least distort it, excessive examination of a humanitarian’s sex life largely misses the point. Which is: no American has done more to facilitate the importance of human rights than Dr. King.
Slander did not stop King from correctly recognizing, “The government is emotionally committed to the war. It is emotionally hostile to the needs of the poor.” It didn’t stop him from exposing the failures of law-enforcement: “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” A lot of authorities and citizens didn’t like that, but King understood that acknowledging problems with blunt honesty was the first step toward cultivating progress. “We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive,” he wrote. “We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
Truth: The Unseen Principle
Truth is particularly ambiguous in a modern landscape that finds people relying on the internet for information. It’s not that truth doesn’t exist online. It does, fairly often. However, sensational stories reach readers more often than honesty, social media algorithms designed to engage people disregard facts, and the internet provides a perfect medium for those in the business of deceiving people to perpetuate exclusive political and economic interests.
America has always had a propaganda problem. But that problem has morphed into something like an overlord-inflicted electric-chemical dependence, which thrives under two common tendencies. People will believe something because they want to believe it, or because they fear it is true, even when no foundational evidence exists. (The fantasy author, Terry Goodkind first brought this concept to my attention, though I’m guessing he wasn’t the first person to mention it.) For example, someone afraid of failing to afford expenses might be susceptible to believing fraudulent claims that Mexicans are “stealing” jobs. One who wants to believe that a problem will be solved without effort might end up with a lot of problems.
I think most of us would agree a whole lot of people believe things that aren’t true. Still, deciphering what is true can be tricky. The media, books, politics, industry, science, friends, teachers, and families have all brought us varying levels of accurate and inaccurate information.
The advancement of truth will depend on how much individuals can think independently of convincing falsehoods. Maintaining such balance is particularly challenging in a country on fire. Clips of violent encounters saturate social media. Fear and anger rage over a potential communist, satanic, or far-right takeover. Doomsday articles warn that protecting the environment and regulating business will raise taxes on strapped workers as our government allows many of the most profitable corporations to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. The pandemic has left citizens frantic, irritated with restrictions, and swamped with cabin fever. People who want to believe Covid-19 is trivial or nonexistent have amplified its fatal impact, causing massive frustration for those focused on improving public health. Racist hate crimes have escalated. Economic suppression persists. It would be a major understatement to say a lot of people are frazzled, and that doesn’t allow much leeway for thinking clearly about the truth.
Some things, however, can be definitively determined with minimal objective research. Covid-19 has inflicted bi-partisan devastation; neither Satanists nor communists are taking control of the United States; democratic socialism is not communism; every president since F.D.R., and almost all of congress have consistently favored capitalists; both democratic and republican leaders have traditionally disregarded human rights.
Election fraud did not cause Joe Biden to win the 2020 presidential election, legal voters did. Claimants to the contrary have failed to provide evidence. The Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation, often incorrectly cited as a reliable source, is no exception. On their website, they have compiled “A Sampling of Recent Election Fraud Cases from Across the United States.” Considering the popularity of concerns that the 2020 election was stolen, one might naturally assume that’s what the headline is referencing. The following paragraph alludes to “recent proven instances” of fraud. “And each and every one,” the Heritage Foundation asserts, “ended in a finding that the individual had engaged in wrongdoing in connection with an election hoping to affect its outcome.” The subsequent database of convictions lists tens of cases in 2020 and 2021. When someone interested in truth clicks on those cases and follows the sources, that person finds none of those electoral crimes impacted the presidential election. Almost all of those crimes occurred before 2020, although the mostly-republican perpetrators were convicted in 2020. And most cases involved one or two illegal votes. That is how propaganda works. The Heritage Foundation gives people inclined to believe an untruth a headline alluding to that untruth. And then they follow it up with a confident introduction and a long list of examples that appear credible. Rarely does a casual observer make it to the sources which actually disprove the fantasy that democrats fraudulently overturned a presidential election.
What Would Dr. King Do?
If Dr. King were still among us, I propose he wouldn’t be advocating unfounded claims of fraud. If his campaign had not been terminated, it seems likely he would have compelled our government to significantly address race crimes and poverty. In the absence of such achievements, I believe King would endure. He would relentlessly call our government to task, much like today’s progressives. He would not shy away from uncomfortable truths.
King might remind us to resist complacency regardless of who is elected president: “Dangerous passions of pride, hatred, and selfishness still sit contentedly on the throne of our lives, and wounded truth and love are still lying prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless colonies calvaries. Men are still genuflecting before the false gods of nationalism and materialism. If our world is to be saved from its pending doom it will come not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority.”
Considering the ways in which King’s words have been twisted, some might interpret that quote to suggest the minority of Americans who believe the Big Lie and support the Capitol storming are champions of freedom.
In reality, King’s nonconforming crusaders are people who live in discriminating environments but choose to be tolerant of various ethnicities. They’re police officers who condemn colleagues that commit racial violence. They understand that a person’s moral compass is determined by behavior, not a uniform, or a hoodie, or a business suit, or gossip.
King’s nonconformists point to evidence of low wages, high consumer costs and greed to show that the economy has been stifling most Americans for a very long time. They recognize that stimulus funds helped, but don’t solve the larger problems. They do not subscribe to false optimism encouraged by Forbes or NPR based on a positive trending stock market, which predominantly reflects the well-being of big business and wealthy investors.
As King recognized, so much of every problem can be traced to economics, and that’s no different today. Money followed by Covid-19 are the two most common worries among Americans. But how much are those concerns warranted? Fearing an enemy five hundred times smaller than the width of a human hair that can attack you during a friendly conversation seems legitimate. Regarding money, our foremost authorities and many citizens have stressed the importance of keeping workers working during the pandemic. Of course, every family needs funds for food, shelter, and security. Yet, if most of the overall revenue produced was allocated to employees rather than funneled to a small percentage of the financial elite, people could afford to work less, which would enable social distancing and diminish Covid-19’s fatal effects. The Economic Policy Institute found, “In 2019, the ratio of CEO-to-typical-worker compensation was 320-to-1 under the realized measure of CEO pay; that is up from 293-to-1 in 2018 and a big increase from 21-to-1 in 1965 and 61-to-1 in 1989.”
To speculate further, if the financial elite collectively decided they wanted to take a short break from increasing their fortunes and donate three months of recent profits to the working people that make this country function, then there could be $423 billion available for a number of productive possibilities, including the preservation of public health. Unfortunately, our current model makes such assistance nearly impossible because publicly traded companies ostensibly have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, not employees or impoverished citizens. That allegiance encourages maximizing production and profit for shareholders while minimizing wages and unnecessary expenses.
As the combined wealth of the billionaire class increased by 4.7 billion dollars a day in six months of the Covid-19 health crisis, 65 million Americans filed for unemployment, one in three adults struggled paying ordinary household costs, one in seven households with children did not have enough food, and twenty-three percent of tenants with children fell behind on rent. An Oxfam report concluded: “The increase in wealth of the ten richest billionaires since the crisis began [March 2020-January 2021] is more than enough to prevent anyone on Earth from falling into poverty because of the virus and to pay for a Covid-19 vaccine for all.”
Damned Lies and Statistics
Understanding the truth about income inequality involves looking deeply into what economic statistics reveal. Yes, numbers can lie, but they are predominantly accurate when cited by those with integrity who honestly seek to promote human rights.
In 2017, Bill Gates was the richest person in America, with a fortune of $86 billion, procured over the course of a lifetime. Between March 18 and December 31, 2020, Elon Musk’s net worth escalated $128.9 billion; Jeff Bezos amassed an additional $78.2 billion. Most of that wealth resulted from the appreciation of company stocks as investors flocked to nibble a slice of the pie. During that time, Amazon raised the costs of essential items by as much as 1000 percent while claiming to crack down on price gouging. In the first three months of 2021, Amazon reported $108.5 billion in sales. Investors increased Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth by 46 billion from March to December, 2020. Facebook continues to advance political and virus-related misinformation.