The Dark Side

originally published April 9, 2008

On Friday morning, April 4, I sat tying my shoes and listening on NPR to the speech Robert Kennedy gave on a campaign stop in Indianapolis, in 1968, when he had to break the news to a largely black audience that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. From 40 years past came that clear, familiar Boston brogue quoting Aeschylus: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Dr. King was the conscience of the nation, trying to lead us out of the wilderness of racial segregation and hostility to that future when “one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” He was gunned down in Memphis 40 years ago, and three months later Bobby Kennedy was shot dead in Los Angeles, joining in death his brother, John Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas five years before.

All three men had come to the realization that the ruinous Vietnam War must end, as they also knew that poverty and injustice in our nation were intolerable. They were killed; the war continued for seven more years of devastation and loss of American and Vietnamese lives. Poverty and injustice remain among us today, while the resources that could be brought to bear upon these scourges have been squandered instead in another senseless war lasting five years, and how many more?

Our bright and shining nation has always had its dark side. We took this land from its native inhabitants. We worked it with slaves and with children in factories. We fought wars of aggression abroad and propped up dictators inimical to every principle of our democratic creed. Our prosperity has dulled our concern and left the work of government to those who serve the corporations that fatten off our needs and fuel the wars abroad.

There are many, powerful people who believe that dark side is necessary to our survival and dominance as a nation. Such people have, throughout our history, fought our wars and policed our country, enforcing our power at home and abroad. Their operating principle is that nothing must get in the way of government’s ability to fight our enemies, that our rights and expectations as citizens must always be subservient to our ability to defend ourselves.

When the Kennedys and Dr. King began to question the validity of the Vietnam War and its effects on our own country, as well as in Southeast Asia, they put themselves at odds with those whose creed is perpetual war. For the sake of the nation, they had to be removed. They were removed, and our nation, its conscience lobotomized, lurched forward into continuing foreign wars and domestic poverty and injustice.

The dark side of our nation killed John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as it resists any efforts to lift us up through appeals to our brighter side: our traditions of justice, fair play, protection of rights, equality—democracy.

Now comes Barack Obama, a man who has demonstrated his ability to inspire people to believe our nation can do better, a man who combines in his person the ethnic diversity of our nation, and in his public persona the moral challenge of Dr. King and the political instincts of the Kennedys.

Obama is not perfect, as Dr. King and the Kennedys were not perfect, but he stands as a clear challenge to those in both political parties who want business as usual. Obama summons us to believe that we can do better, to dream of America the beautiful, to ask not why, but why not?

Such a man, such a candidate stands for all that the dark side abhors, and he stirs the people whom they would control. Barack Obama is anathema to the dark side. They will do all they can to defeat him. They will do all they can to silence the message. Please, God, do not let them kill the messenger. Our nation cannot survive another violent death of hope.

Pete McCommons

editor@flagpole.com