January 20, 2025
This time around, the US presidential inauguration falls on our national holiday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. More so than ever, today, it’s essential we remember who MLK was, what he stood for, and how we can emulate his moral fortitude in our own lives.
Now having Presidential Immunity (née, Führerprinzip), Trump will have carta blanca to rule with cruelty and impunity. On his first day, Trump is expected to issue over 200 authoritarian decrees. In a perversely poetic stanza of the American story, Trump is expected to eliminate DEI programs from the Federal government on MLK Day.
Yes, things will be getting worse in America for the foreseeable future. And as they do, it will be easy to lose hope. It may be enticing to disconnect, hoping to spare ourselves from the heartbreak of our collective national embarrassment. But, it is complacency that fuels our descent. Instead, we recommit ourselves to the principles of the Civil Rights era.
Five years ago, I was passing through Memphis for the first time. In the American Heartland, it’s common to see random mid-century modern structures in various states of decay or preservation. But as I walked around downtown, this building captured my attention. It has an aura:
Some of you will recognize this as the Lorraine Motel where MLK was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
In the years since I stumbled upon the Lorraine, I’ve spent countless hours reading about MLK and rewatching his speeches. I watch them when I am alone, short on hope, deflated. While any discussion of MLK will rightly focus on his foundational leadership in American Civil Rights, I’ve come further to see him as one of our finest Americans and truest men of faith.
America is a nation of “cosmetic Christianity.” Our people like to be seen with symbols of the religion, but whilst working actively against its principles. Christ says to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39); Trump’s team is rounding up our neighbors. Christ says “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Matt 19:21); Trump and his oligarchs horde capital and gut social welfare.
This was not lost on MLK, a Baptist minister. It’s worth noting that MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech is actually one of the few he didn’t give in a church. His theology was grounded in Christ’s Sermon of the Mount: the Beatitudes teach empathy for the disadvantaged, and the Six Antitheses guide us to universal love and non-violence. But, nothing better certifies his religious conviction than the final words of his last speech, the day before he was murdered:
“Like anybody, I would like to have a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And so I’m happy tonight; I’m not worried about anything; I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
For MLK, empathy was required by his faith in the Gospel. In today’s authoritarian right America, we see the opposite: an obsession with one’s own ego and needs, and the unchecked instinct to gain authority over our brother to soothe the ego. We see this in the national praise of Strongman leaders like Trump and Musk — but equally, we see it in the rank-and-file apathy of those who prioritize trivial comforts over their brother’s basic needs.
MLK discusses this human instinct in his speech “The Drum Major Instinct,” drawing examples from modern psychologists, contemporary affairs, and of course, the Gospel. He examines how Jesus Christ harnessed his Drum Major Instinct not to command authority, but to serve the collective good.
Not all of MLK’s speeches were so sermonic: even though this 1967 NBC interview was given in the Ebenezer Baptist Church, it is a secular discussion. King cogently draws connections from throughout American history, arguing the inextricable link between racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. He again calls out apathy and complacency as barriers to progress:
“I must confess the vast majority of White Americans will go but so far. It’s a kind of installment plan for equality. And they are always looking for an excuse but to go but so far.”
King depicts the underpinnings of economic disparity between the races in America:
“America freed the slaves in 1863 through the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln, but gave the slaves no land — or nothing in reality and as a matter of fact— to get started on. At the same time, America was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest. Which meant that there was a willingness to give the White peasants from Europe an economic base, and yet it refused to give its Black peasants from Africa — who came here involuntarily in chains, and had worked free for 244 years — any kind of economic base.”
The business world is filled with individuals who have worked hard. Some left their home countries, making great sacrifices to gain their current economic postures. “Where is my privilege?” we hear some white Americans troll, citing hardships. It misunderstands the cascading effects of structural disadvantage. It is complacent to the intellectual investigation needed to understand our world. It is to be held captive to one’s own Drum Major Instinct.
As we look today at two very different versions of strength, I know I will look around me and find community in those picking the one rooted in compassion.
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
