MLK Day Parade, Chattanooga, TN, Jan. 20, 2025 |
Today the United States simultaneously observes two things: 1. A holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2. The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second, non-consecutive term as US President. This coincidence offers as succinct a summary of where my country is morally and politically as anything I could imagine: many of my fellow Americans both claim to admire Martin Luther King, Jr. and voted for Donald Trump.
How did we get here? And drawing on the title of King’ s most challenging book, where do we go from here?
How did we get here?
A few months ago, I discussed Plato’s critique of democracy, both in class and in an event on campus. A few students admitted to me that they had not heard about the US Supreme Court decision concerning Presidential immunity. Others said they did not remember the armed mob breaking into the US Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 Presidential election.
Rather than criticizing my students, I reflected on the fact that many (perhaps most) Americans simply do not follow the news. I sincerely thought that Jan. 6 would be the end of the whole Trump phenomenon, as it was clear that he inspired, if not encouraged, this attack (there is some evidence he at one point wanted to personally take part in it). Instead of reacting to this deeply disturbing event in the history of US democracy, we seem to have entirely forgotten about it.
I don’t think the larger phenomenon is so much mis-information as it is a total lack of information. I think this played a huge part in the 2024 election and in our political climate today: people simply do not know what they are voting for. But this is not the only part of the story.
Personally, I think anything as complicated as a Presidential election in a country of over 300 million people could never be reduced to any single explanation—not voter turnout, not reactions to “wokeness,” not election interference, not voter suppression, not misinformation, not reactions to specific policies, not money in politics, etc.
And as clear as it is to me that good old American racism and misogyny played a major part, I don’t think that’s the only part. I don’t even think “the economy” is the total explanation many think it is (I acknowledge the economy is a major issue when life has become unaffordable for a lot of Americans, but because money is the only real value Americans are allowed to express publicly, “the economy” often provides a convenient masquerade for relatively economically comfortable Americans).
I also think there’s a structural issue in the fact that if you allow someone like Trump to obtain the nomination of one of our only two major political parties that have any chance of winning the Presidency, that candidate is conferred with a measure of legitimacy in our political system. And then voters, many of whom lack much other information, see that person on equal terms with their opponent.
Hierarchy anxiety
An explanation that I think might add to the above list: what I’ve started calling “hierarchy anxiety.” People have a sense (often not consciously acknowledged) of where they fall in the larger social hierarchy, and when they sense (again, perhaps without acknowledgment) any threat to their place in this hierarchy from those they perceive below them, they lash out in ways that may not make much sense in terms of their other values or behavior.
This is related to the idea of “status anxiety,” but whereas “status anxiety” could be about any perceived status on a more personal level, “hierarchy anxiety” is related to one’s sense of where “people like you” fall in a larger social hierarchy.
This could partly explain, for instance, the increase in Trump’s support from men of color in the 2024 election. Straight white men, of course, have always been at the top of the American social hierarchy, but men are higher than women, cis straight people above LBGTQ+ people, wealthier people above less wealthy people, longtime citizens above recent immigrants, and so on. Some, but certainly not all, support for Trump from groups you might not expect could be a result of such hierarchy anxiety.
It might also account for the rise of the “manosphere,” “incels,” and other such troubling gender-based trends among young American men of all races: a sense that one is not getting what “people like me” are entitled to.
I’ve noticed hierarchy anxiety in other areas as well. Academia, for example, is a rigidly hierarchical system filled with self-professed egalitarians who can get suddenly nasty at the mere thought of upsetting this hierarchy. The “Sad Puppies” and other such nonsense in science fiction fandom might also be partly explained by hierarchy anxiety, not to mention the weirdly vehement criticism you often see from relatively decent and well-meaning Star Wars fans.
Again, I’m not so naïve as to think hierarchy anxiety completely explains something as complicated as the 2024 US Presidential election, but it at least could add some nuance that our current political discourse increasingly lacks.
How did we get to the “Santa Clausification” of MLK?
Given the national historical amnesia that allowed millions of Americans to forget about Jan. 6, 2021, it should come as no surprise that we have largely forgotten how divisive Martin Luther King, Jr. was during his lifetime and how many Americans vehemently hated him and his work in the years before his murder.
Americans love rose-tinted nostalgia. Like all nostalgia, our historical nostalgia distorts the very history it pretends to worship (consider the slogan, “Make American Great Again” – When was this? For whom was it great?). We largely refuse to engage in any serious self-criticism. See, for instance, Ronald Reagan’s promise of “morning in America” (incidentally, Reagan was initially opposed to the MLK Holiday, but he later signed it into law in 1983). Consider many Americans’ persistent refusal to come to terms with the legacies of genocide and slavery upon which our country was founded (this country was also founded on some great ideas about equality; such are the contradictions of America).
Given this history, it should be no surprise that any attempt to come to terms with racial injustice and gender oppression have met with the resistance and gas-lighting that they have.
All of this has led to what Cornell West has called the “Santa Clausification” of Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s radical and challenging ideas about nonviolence, racism, militarism, and economic justice have been boiled away, and many Americans today think of him as a nice Santa Claus-type figure who assures us that as long as you think of yourself as a nice person, everything will be okay. No need to come to terms with hundreds of years of past oppression or contemporary injustices: just try to judge people by the “content of their character” (which can mean whatever you think it means) and you’re good.
It's the type of simplistic, comforting story that white America has always loved. It’s the type of story that, in my opinion, has always prevented the United States from being the great country it could be for all Americans.
Where do we go from here?: Bending the moral arc toward community
I don’t blame people for not following the news. A lot of it’s confusing, contradictory, and toxic. Misinformation and social media algorithms have turned our political discourse into a hellscape, and given how tired most Americans are from working so hard and how easy today’s information silos make it to tune out anything you don’t like, it’s no surprise a lot of Americans say, “no, thanks” to politics.
Now, I think this is a travesty for any attempt at real democracy in the US. But what do we do about it? I don’t think shaming or brow-beating people into paying attention is going to work. As much as I love comedy news programs, those require knowing something about the news, and besides, they’re preaching to the choir.
I don’t know what to do. But in the weeks after the 2024 election, it occurred to me that we might have to talk to people. In person. One-on-one. Get off social media. Limit cable news. Engage with people as messy individual humans rather than stereotypes that make money for billionaires and social media conglomerates.
Here’s the thing: I don’t actually believe most Trump voters are bad people. I don’t believe they are all irredeemable Nazis. I don’t think yelling at them online and off is any way to run a democracy.
To be clear, some Trump voters probably are irredeemable, bad people. And nothing I’m saying here, nor anything King ever said, means you don’t fight for what’s right. Kingian nonviolence is not being passive; it’s a constructive and active response to injustice using all the political, economic, and moral force you can muster.
On MLK Day 2017, I wrote about King’s famous remark that, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It would be easy for people of decency and conscience to despair on a day like today, when it seems like the moral arc is bending any way but toward justice.
As I write this, mere hours after Trump’s inauguration, his administration is already planning to unleash a huge number of harmful policies upon this country and its people. It seems that America has answered King’s question – Chaos or Community? – with a resounding answer of “chaos.”
Yet I think, contrary to all that, there are signs of hope. Indeed, the mere fact that things seem so bad to so many Americans is, paradoxically, a reason for hope. It means that there are enough of us who do not accept the inevitability of chaos, who will work for community.
We should also remember that while Trump won the popular vote, he received less than 50% of the vote, and nationwide only about 63% of eligible voters cast a vote. Many American voters sat this one out. This means we have a lot to work with, a lot of fellow human beings with whom we could make common cause.
I’m a philosopher, both by profession and personal inclination. In general, I’m better at thinking than doing. Yet I’m also a US citizen, a resident of the state of Tennessee and the city of Chattanooga, a friend, a family member, a worker, a neighbor, a colleague, a human being, and an aspiring member of what King called the Beloved Community.
We are all part of what King called the “inescapable network of mutuality.” Bending that moral arc is the business of all of us. It will not bend on its own.
And there’s no one way to do this. The best way to honor Dr. King is to work with a union, join a social justice organization, run for office, be kind to your neighbors, educate yourself about past and current injustice, give food to the hungry, speak out against injustice, seek economic justice for all, root out hierarchical concepts in your own thinking, make connections to your local, national, and international communities … work for justice wherever you are in the network of mutuality.
And if enough of us do that, that moral arc might just bend after all.
Happy MLK Day!
PPS: Another thing we all need, of course, is to remember joy and love and all the things that make being human worthwhile. Few things bring as much pure joy as the music of Stevie Wonder, so please enjoy his song about Martin Luther King, Jr.!
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