Reflecting on MLK’s vision for America and how good Idahoans can get through Trump | Opinion

I am writing this column on the day we honor Martin Luther King, who famously uttered words that now stand as my greatest hope for the future. I have no interest watching Trump’s inauguration and prefer to focus on the man who offered hope for a better day when he said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Injustice prevailed when King spoke those words in his march from Selma in 1965. Racial discrimination was endemic in the North’s big cities, and it was endemic in the smallest towns of the South. On this day we celebrate King’s life, I remember when I was kicked out of a restaurant in St. Joseph, Missouri, not long before King gave that famous speech. The proprietor refused service to me and my black friend in a simple sentence I remember to this day, “I’m afraid I have to ask you to leave because we cannot serve him.”

A few years after my rude awakening to racist discrimination in that small Missouri town, I would find myself as a young staffer in the office of the Republican speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. I was stunned to hear members of the speaker’s leadership team throwing the “N” word around as though I was back in my old neighborhood. Years later, I served as an elected member of the same legislative body, and I never heard such racist talk.

Justice was eventually served as civil rights legislation outlawed discrimination and the culture adapted and changed the way we treat each other. It took years for some Americans to regard their fellow Americans who didn’t look like them, live near them or worship like them as equals. And to be sure, we still have a long way to go on the justice front as young black men are gunned down by rogue police officers.

When it comes to that arc of the moral universe today, to state the obvious, Trump’s reelection has it in a serious stall. Our nation is in the grips of America’s tech titans, inspired by the wealthiest of all, Elon Musk. Musk seems immune to human suffering, a qualifier for serving as Trump’s sidekick. Here’s a man as popular in Russia as he is in Trump’s oval office, and for good reason. He is intent on installing autocratic regimes wherever his wealth takes him.

As Trump pardons the insurrectionists, injustice prevails, and encourages dangerous and violent criminals to take up where they left off. Where might they apply their lawlessness next now that Trump has blessed them with his pardon?

As dystopian as things seem, I recall these moments in my own personal history to confirm that King was right. Parts of the world I experienced in my early years disappeared over time, and what we will be living with these next four years can also be reversed if we remain vigilant and active in our communities, our state and even the federal government — as far removed as it seems to us both in distance and integrity.

It’s that arc of justice I’m counting on as we now witness what is surely the largest departure from our democratic way of life in my lifetime. The checks and balances the framers installed in our Constitution to prevent the accumulation of overwhelming power in any one branch of government have now been overridden by billionaire oligarchs who have purchased a president. A president hell-bent on revenge and retribution.

So what to do as this autocracy is built executive order by executive order over the next four years, and a Republican Congress faithfully obliges so Musk won’t finance a primary campaign against any reluctant Republican? What to do when Trump’s Rasputin gives the closest thing to a Nazi salute?

First, Trump is likely to take his version of governing too far. Afraid of not outdoing the Obama turnout for the inaugural, he already slithered his way out of the traditional inauguration, leaving room for the oligarchs, but sticking it to those working-class folks who voted for him. They were left out in the cold when their travels to Washington, D.C., ended in the cancellation of the outdoor inauguration which they hoped to experience as proud MAGA supporters. How long before those folks realize they’ve been sold a pig in a poke?

In the meantime, I will not use that big screen in my family room for anything but sports and movies. No TV of Trump’s latest proclamation to crack down on our justice system. In addition to the Statesman, I will read The New York Times, which seems committed to the integrity of the press even though its coverage of the Trump campaign failed to capture his most dangerous and threatening moments at those MAGA rallies. I will give up my subscription to The Washington Post, now a tool of the recently converted Trump oligarch, Jeff Bezos.

Podcasters Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway will be my seatmates watching the absurdist Trump theater and calling out the hypocrisy and ruthless nature of this new administration. They tell it like it is and Scott seems to have taken off the gloves when it comes to taking on Trump.

NPR remains my radio favorite. Steve Inskeep demonstrated last week just how valuable a service it provides when he interviewed Tim Heaphy, a lead investigator for the House Committee on the U.S. Capitol attack. For anyone who harbors any sympathy for those imprisoned after the attack, Heaphy confirmed their guilt and appropriate punishment that should not have been reversed by Trump.

Here’s another good example of Trump going too far as Republicans in Congress raise their eyebrows on that one. Next time the Boise Chamber hosts members of the Idaho congressional delegation, how about one brave soul standing up and asking where they stand? And to enlighten your weekend with hope for a brighter future, do make sure you tune into NPR’s best show of the week, Scott Simon’s Weekend Edition.

For any developments on U.S. relations with Europe, especially news and analysis on the future of Ukraine, I will follow Anne Applebaum wherever she goes. For avoiding war with China, I’ll rely on former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who wrote about “The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict” between the U.S. and Xi Jinping’s China.

Unfortunately, I fear the book will never get to Trump’s desk even if he did read. (Rely on Obama for his excellent annual book recommendations.) To understand the conflict in the Middle East, “One Day in the Life of Abed Salama” by Nathan Thrall provides insight into how we arrived at today’s crossroads and hints at how it must be resolved with corrections to past U.S. policy.

For escape moments, PBS’s “All Creatures Great and Small” just opened a new season and that will take me to rural England in the 1940s and about as far away from Trump as anyone can get.

Life these days is about holding out hope that the arc of justice will pick up speed again. We are blessed with many sources of unbiased and courageous reporting and analysis tracking Trump’s efforts to shut down truth and justice.

The arc of justice will move again if we pay attention, speak up and never give up.