Once the dust has settled on our country and it is long gone, the ideology that marked its legacy will weigh heaviest on a scale of justice. The two strongest ideologies in our country are racially based, whether we recognize it or not. We fought the Civil War over racial justice, the result echoing through to today. There has never been an extended military conflict on our soil that didn't involve race. It runs through our blood, like the pathogen of a incurable disease.
Martin Luther King Jr. would have been a prophet in Biblical times. He stood up for the oppressed, gave up his life for the opportunity to change society, and preached for equality like none before him. He was crucified by tyrants of oppression, like the religious zealots of antiquity. He charged his sermons with so much racial activism that it disrupted the established order. Being imprisoned 29 times didn't phase him. Many times he willingly turned himself in, to make the power of civil disobience stronger. The effect made his followers all the more adamant that they were right, that the law didn't apply to them, that nothing could stop them, for they were sanctioned by God.
Fast forward to today and we have a similar public figure who is fanatically lauded for his determination and charisma, but for the opposite ideology. Trump's positions on race and immigration are the reverse of King's principles of inclusion. Misinformation and ignorance are given a pass for the sake of staying consolidated. A poorly handled pandemic and attempted insurrection didn't change people's minds. Anything he says and does is applauded by mobs of people, as if he were the same caliber preacher King was, albeit a corrupt one. Perhaps the most amazing parallel is that his recent legal proceedings are perceived in the same manner King's was: unfair prosecution that is politically motivated in an attempt to silence an enlightened and dangerous person, someone who threatens the perceived order of establishment.
King was given a holiday and canonized by the Holy Orthodox Church. If Trump is victorious in changing society, imagine the accolades he will receive. He may be far removed from sainthood, but Evangelicals are the most vociferous of his advocates. Trump is a hero in the eyes of many religious fanatics, having populated the Supreme Court with justices that overturned Roe v Wade. And what would the court say after America turns to ash, when the ideologies of King v Trump clash for the final determination of our legacy by historians? The 5-4 vote will have to favor someone.
Progress is sometimes a bumpy road. It will depend on whether the next bump lasts longer than America's death.
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