American Prophesy
Some thoughts on our young American gods.
We are a young and large country, and our American Pantheon is more commodious than we have gods with which to fill it. We do have some, of course. Our mythology teaches us that Washington is the God of Virtue, Lincoln the God of Truth, Edison the God of Innovation. We’ve got two Armstrongs, Neil and Louis, vying for their own places in the Pantheon. Our gods are sparse but potent.
American women do not figure much among them. It’s not that American women haven’t earned their places but that the larger American public has rarely afforded them their consideration or due except as they relate to American men (Abigail Adams and Eleanor Roosevelt come to mind). There are some exceptions. Harriet Tubman. Susan B. Anthony. Ruth Bader Ginsberg may have some staying power.
The problem with our American gods, whatever their sex, is that the nation is too young for myth to have eclipsed reality. Our American gods are figures whose historicity is in no doubt, their deeds – good and bad – recorded and attested to. As such, it’s impossible to escape the truth of their lives and all which that truth entails. Washington could be cruel, for example, particularly to the people he enslaved. Edison was a genius, but also a thief. RBG is criticized for overstaying her welcome on the Court.
We Americans do not have the luxury of deep time from which to assess our gods. Instead, we must take them as they were, with all their flaws and foibles. Which really denigrates the whole idea of godhood. It’s hard to worship anybody who wears false teeth.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in America, the day we pause to celebrate the civil rights leader who told his fellow Americans that “The time is always right to do what is right,” despite the fact that he did not always adhere to this ideal. Today is the day we reflect on the power of a single voice to elevate a nation, even if too many in that nation do not wish to rise. Today we remember a time - still within the lifetimes of many of us - when American law permitted racial discrimination and segregation., and we remember the people who chose to stand against injustice.
Rather than fight oppression with fire, King chose music. Singing, marching, the rhythms of a preacher’s sermon. Voices raised in unison in Montgomery and Selma and Birmingham and the city named for the man who once owned men like him, Washington DC. King is obviously best known for his work on behalf of the American Black population, but he also fought for unions, against the war in Vietnam, and advocated for the redistribution of wealth. He was beloved, yes, but also despised. According to a 1968 Harris poll, his disapproval rating at the time of his death was an astonishing 75%.
He was only 39 years old at the time of his assassination.
A dozen years earlier, in 1956, segregationists bombed his Birmingham home while his wife and children were inside. Fortunately, there were unharmed. When informed of the bombing, King rushed home from a meeting, stood in front of his partially destroyed home, and, with the smell of smoke still in the air, said to the assembled mob, “Don’t do anything panicky. Don’t get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home… we are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies.”
Love was the primary weapon in King’s crusade. King’s love could be hands held at segregated lunch counter. It could be both shield and cudgel. Love could be a prayer or a rebuke. Always, though, I think King’s love was a vision. Maybe even a prophesy.
And I think it is prophesy, above all else, that transmogrifies Americans into American gods. Sometimes, as in the case of Washington and Lincoln, the prophesies involve the successful conclusion of war. Sometimes, as with Edison and Tubman and King, the prophesy is about an America they can see, but which others cannot. It’s an America they attempt to create through a vision that may not be theirs alone, but it is the strength of their singular force which pushes this vision closer to reality. King didn’t secure equal rights for Americans any more than Edison invented the lightbulb (he didn’t, but was the first to make it commercially viable).
Our American gods reflect the times in which they’re honored. When I was growing up, Christopher Columbus was such a god. So was JFK. Both have fallen from their pedestals in the decades since my youth, although Columbus’s fall has certainly been steeper than Kennedy’s. We raise our gods when we need them.
We need King now.
The same nation that honored this man with a federal holiday – despite fierce opposition - only fifteen years after his death seems unable to hear his message now. We are a nation sorely in need of the kind of love that King preached, particularly as we head into an election year in which one of the leading candidates for the presidency has made his campaign one of retribution, divisiveness, and rancor. We need him today because the same ugliness that required a King to step forward then are thriving in this unsettled time.
I suggest we would do well to not denude King and his message. Equality comes at a price. Justice comes at a price. Conservatives have been very happy to remind us that freedom isn’t free when it comes to defending obscene military budgets, but they are less happy to pay the price when it comes to improving the lives of the least among us. What good is all of our national wealth if we keep it in the hands of so few? As King said, “Money in its proper place is a worthwhile and necessary instrument for a well-rounded life, but when it is projected to the status of a god it becomes a power that corrupts and an instrument of exploitation.”
Our American gods are, perhaps, greater for us knowing the fullness of their humanities. Lincoln’s depression, Tubman’s threats to shoot feeble slaves in her care if they should choose to turn back, etc. If we honor them, it is not because they are more than any of us, but because they are us. The myth of Martin Luther King Jr. does not compare with the truth of Martin Luther King Jr. We were lucky to have him. On this day, I’m taking a moment to contemplate the content of my own character (Spoiler: it’s not great) and to consider my own hopes for this nation we share. Who will we choose to be this election year? Whose vision will you choose to embrace?
Well said. One point; in the Jim Crow south, race based discrimination was not permitted. It was mandatory. The distinction is worth remembering.
Somewhere, today as we write, there is an MLK, Jr. who could save, or at least move us in the right path forward. There's no telling who it could be. They could be anywhere. But who could blame such a visionary for NOT WANTING TO ACTUALLY BE PRESIDENT, and I have to believe one exists (i.e. I know one exists and her name is Michelle) because we recently had such a man, a good and decent man, as our President, and he was Michelle's husband. I can surely understand why Michelle Obama would seek peace and serenity after living through her husband's eight year tenure. But there is a nation here worth saving, and it's not looking good for the most acceptable decent candidate (intentionally left singular), and I'm thinking that Michelle Obama might be our best hope.