Martin Luther King Would Fuck Bush's Shit Up (2005 Edition):

Here's something you might not have heard before on MLK Day - From a sermon King delivered at New Covenant Baptist Church in Chicago on April 9, 1967 (taken from a recording - the parentheticals are the responses from the parishioners):

"I remember down in Montgomery, Alabama, an experience that I’d like to share with you. When we were in the midst of the bus boycott, we had a marvelous old lady that we affectionately called Sister Pollard. She was a wonderful lady about seventy-two years old and she was still working at that age. (Yes) During the boycott she would walk every day to and from work. She was one that somebody stopped one day and said, 'Wouldn’t you like to ride?' And she said, 'No.' And then the driver moved on and stopped and thought, and backed up a little and said, 'Well, aren’t you tired?' She said, 'Yes, my feets is tired, but my soul is rested.' (All right)



"She was a marvelous lady. And one week I can remember that I had gone through a very difficult week. (Yes) Threatening calls had come in all day and all night the night before, and I was beginning to falter and to get weak within and to lose my courage. (All right) And I never will forget that I went to the mass meeting that Monday night very discouraged and a little afraid, and wondering whether we were going to win the struggle. (Oh yeah) And I got up to make my talk that night, but it didn’t come out with strength and power. Sister Pollard came up to me after the meeting and said, 'Son, what’s wrong with you?' Said, 'You didn’t talk strong enough tonight.'



"And I said, 'Nothing is wrong, Sister Pollard, I’m all right.'



"She said, 'You can’t fool me.' Said, 'Something wrong with you.' And then she went on to say these words, 'Is the white folks doing something to you that you don’t like?'



"I said, 'Everything is going to be all right, Sister Pollard.'



"And then she finally said, 'Now come close to me and let me tell you something one more time, and I want you to hear it this time.' She said, 'Now I done told you we is with you.' She said, 'Now, even if we ain’t with you, the Lord is with you.' (Yes) And she concluded by saying, 'The Lord’s going to take care of you.'



"And I’ve seen many things since that day. I’ve gone through many experiences since that night in Montgomery, Alabama. Since that time Sister Pollard has died. Since that time I’ve been in more than eighteen jail cells. Since that time I’ve come perilously close to death at the hands of a demented Negro woman. Since that time I’ve seen my home bombed three times. Since that time I’ve had to live every day under the threat of death. Since that time I’ve had many frustrating and bewildering nights. But over and over again I can still hear Sister Pollard’s words: 'God’s going to take care of you.' So today I can face any man and any woman with my feet solidly placed on the ground and my head in the air because I know that when you are right, God will fight your battle."



By this point, King had expanded his fight to include all poverty and the Vietnam War. By this point, he had advocated for guaranteed income. Now, what the fuck do you think King would say about a debate over whether or not we can afford Social Security in its current form? And do you think torture would even be up for discussion?



Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all like to create our fantasy MLKs. Yeah, he was a philanderer and a man who loved dirty jokes. But the Rude Pundit once talked to a friend of King's from Birmingham, and he told the Rude Pundit all about how King would take off the suit and come alone to the local barbershop, how he would hang around all afternoon, sharing, no preaching, not pretending, just sitting there on Eighth Street, like anyone else, until he went to preach at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.



And that's why King would fuck Bush's shit up, and the reason why Democrats oughta take a look at King beyond his having had a dream and his having been to the mountaintop and his having been assassinated. Because King knew - he fucking knew - that one thing that made him a leader of the disenfranchised is that he spoke their language. Even as those around him believed (and some still believe) that King made a mistake in his expansion of his movement, King knew that no one is truly free until we all are free. He had to bring whites into the movement on a broad basis or the fight was never going to end. He had to undercut the trump card of the powerful in their ability to divide the underclasses, and that meant owning the rhetorical God to the point that whenever God is mentioned, the automatic association is with the civil rights, economic justice, and anti-war movements (think of how successful the right is in the use of the word "Christian"). Look at the speech up there. King is not conditional here - he says, "when you are right, God will fight your battle."



The thing is that as Democrats scramble like rutting hedgehogs on the last day of the forest fuckfest to find someone, anyone who will represent them to "the people," they'd be wise to look at how King used "God" in his speeches. See, in the Sister Pollard story, "God" for King represents the poor, the beaten, the disenfranchised, and if that God is on your side, then how can the powerful win? If someone could genuinely lasso that rhetoric and have the balls to use God against Bush in very clear, unambiguous, loud tones, then the right will be thrown into disarray - what will they have if they don't have God? Bush? Oh, fuck, they'll be running into the streets of D.C., screaming, coming up with new gods to worship. There will be blood orgies at the Watergate the likes of which that town hasn't seen since Ronald Reagan smeared himself with pig feces and demanded the cherries of a dozen College Republican girls be popped in front of him as he masturbated slowly, deliberately, eyes glazed over with mad power and semi-deified glory.



Last year, there was a near riot when President Bush dared to lay a wreath on King's grave. This year, he'll be in a far, far more controlled environment, the Kennedy Center, where the noisy, violent life of King will be reduced to a consummable, pleasant hum.