On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" speech in NYC. In that speech, made fifty years ago, he stated: "When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." How sad and how unfortunate, that we discover two score and ten years later that King's incredibly prescient warning, demonstrates that the very things King knowingly warned us about, sadly do define what America actually represents and what it is, today.
For instance, machines and computers, have become ubiquitous in our society, which while on one hand, these machines and computers have provided material benefits and efficiencies of scale that have markedly improved our lives, they are also the very same instruments and programs that have allowed this government, favored industries, and its military-policing-justice apparatus, to never hold more people in their thrall, as these powerful and invasive instruments have sucked and vacuumed away the very freedoms that are the bedrock foundation of America, a land that was created to respect and protect individual liberty, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. So too, as major stock market indexes seemingly hit new highs routinely, this is celebrated by certain segments of the population as if this is a meaningful achievement, but broken down to its very core, when profits of a corporation are more important than in aggregate the people that work as part of that corporation, in addition to consumers of such products being viewed by these corporations as people to be exploited in order to enrich those profits, than that edifice as structured is foundationally wrong. Then, there are property rights, things such as eminent domain or its equivalencies, in which laws are misapplied or distorted, so that people are moved about as if they are nothing but inconveniences, so that the property owners or property beneficiaries can maximize their property interests for their benefit, no matter the cost to those humans whose rights are effectively trivialized and trampled upon.
When the people of these United States, are treated as if they are mere pawns to an elite that runs the show, than it becomes a state vested interest to help sow discord and unfairness, by undercutting civil right laws, by effectively ignoring them or gerrymandering them, so that the races are kept on a functioning basis: unequal, separated, and at odds with one another, as if there is an economic pie of opportunity and income that is fixed, so that the sharing of and cooperation towards is discouraged, and replaced instead with a zero-sum dog-eat-dog attitude. So too, businesses of all stripes and industries, rely upon pervasive advertising of all sorts, across all mediums to help convince and to propagandize to the often credulous public, that their products are the very products that they need in order to feel free, to be somebody, to fit in, to have and to own, knowing all of the time, that this is really a sophisticated game of sleight of hand. Then, we have the military budget of America which keeps getting bigger and bigger each and every year, as well as America's long footprint across the oceans of this world, which touches down everywhere and anywhere. This military acclaims and the pliant politicians that dance to them claim, that there are dangers here, there, and everywhere, of which only a strong military and overwhelming power can keep back these barbarians that are at our gates, in which, truth be told, behind the curtain, there is nothing but an automated recording that plays similar versions of the same tired tone over and over again.
Regrettably, values have gotten worse in America, far worse, than what they were fifty years ago, in which, at that time, there really was a chance to change our path, and to truly become that beacon of light, to really become that golden door, but now that door is ancient, and severely tarnished with both mud and grime, and that bright beacon of light now barely flickers. We, the people, are being conquered by the machinery of the system run by the elites, so that the dream of what could be is nearly strangled, and our collective nightmare runs riot.