Between MLK and Mark Twain
Never before has the American people had so much authoritarian goulash flung at them by a presidential administration at one-time. With the assistance of enablers in the judicial and legislative branches, the executive branch hurls Molotov cocktails at America’s democratic norms with impunity.
Doing nothing will not suffice; nor will taking momentary delight at the administration’s public demonstrations of ineptitude. Change must occur while conducting proactive and reactive measures.
For those not caught in the vortex of the MAGA cult, the solution may rest between Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
The Letter from Birmingham Jail is a guideline for American civil disobedience. King’s Letter is the reactive measure to push back against the administration’s assaults on democratic norms. Perhaps replicating the intensity that some displayed when standout college quarterback Shedeaur Sanders was not taken until the 5th round of the recent NFL draft might be in order?
As King opined: “Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? – ‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? – ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?”
The evidence indicates, for the past several decades, America has been extremists for apathy, allowing an authoritarian minority to methodically reach the point where it now holds the knife at democracy’s jugular vein.
It will be not be enough to cite the Constitution, articulating where the administration has strayed from its meaning and purpose. America is in dire need of committed extremist, willing to challenge certain practices by the executive branch for the preservation of democracy. It must also hold the Republican-led legislative branch accountable for its passivity, failing to exert its responsibilities prescribed in the Constitution known as checks and balances. They are silent coconspirators in the current malfeasance.
Because so much is coming at the American people, it’s not enough to fight for one’s particular cause. We can ill-afford to justify such behaviors based on “Oppression Poker.”
“I see your Jim Crow and raise you Japanese internment camps; I see your Japanese internment camps, and raise you Trail of Tears!” Are not these episodes, as well as others, reflective of dark chapters in American history? What does it matter if the dark corner that one stands appears slightly brighter to others when all inhabit the same suffocating domicile of injustice?
But reactive measures of civil disobedience will not be enough. The country needs a paradigm shift, one that demands that we become inconvenient allies to each other.
As King offered in his Letter, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” It’s not enough to be an ally, one must become an inconvenient ally.
An inconvenient ally is one who is willing to risk something of themselves. This brings us to Mark Twain’s magnum opus, Huckleberry Finn. It is, in my view, required reading for anyone who wishes to be an inconvenient ally.
The social construct of race convinces Huck in helping Jim, a runaway slave escape, was a sin that would land him in hell. For Huck, hell was a real place, where people go when they’ve done unforgivable wrongs. Not revealing Jim’s location would qualify for admission into Hades.
Huck writes a letter to Jim’s owner telling of their location. Initially Huck is certain he’s done the right thing. Looking at the letter Huck ponders with relief how close he actually came to going to hell.
But then, Huck hesitates. He reads the letter and begins to think about Jim the man, his kindest to him, their relationship, and their travels down the Mississippi. Holding the paper in his hand, Huck says:
“I’d got to decide forever twixt two things and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, then I says to myself: ‘Alright then, I’ll go to hell!’”
Huck tears up the letter to stand in alliance with his friend Jim.
“Alright then, I’ll go to hell,” is the moral awakening—the prerequisite to become an ally. It is the courage to move beyond the comfort that privilege, however defined, affords us in order to authentically align with those deemed “other” by the larger society.
This is the unique challenge that’s required to save the democratic norms that have fortified this nation for 237 years. Otherwise, some unfortunate survivor of the melee will be forced to repeat Martin Niemoller’s words in First they came:
“First they came for the Communist and I did not speak out because I was not Communist.” I think you know how his poem ends.