Andrew Bacevich on Reverend King's admonition — about the interplay of racism, materialism and militarism

© 2021 Peter Free

 

11 February 2021

 

 

Alleged American democracy . . .

 

. . . is continually about missing the ethical point.

 

It is as if a group of moral ignoramuses got together and overtly tried to pave our nation's way to Hell.

 

Rampant capitalism fuels this fire and the soul-disregarding attributes that spark it.

 

This unfortunate mix is why I write as I do.

 

 

With regard to voice . . .

 

Former Army colonel Andrew Bacevich often writes sharply about American leadership's ability to indulge the equivalent of evil. Professor Bacevich is generally too polite to use that word, but it's what he means.

 

His most recent essay says so:

 

 

When Martin Luther King preached his famous sermon “Beyond Vietnam” at Riverside Church in New York City in April 1967, I don’t recall giving his words a second thought.

 

[H]is call for a “radical revolution in values” did not resonate with me. By upbringing and given my status as a soldier-in-the-making, radical revolutions were not my thing.

 

To grasp the profound significance of the “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” to which he called his listeners’ attention was beyond my intellectual capacity.

 

[E]nsuing decades have filled a void in my education. I long ago concluded that Dr. King was then offering the essential interpretive key to understanding our contemporary American dilemma.

 

The predicament in which we find ourselves today stems from our reluctance to admit to the crippling interaction among the components of the giant triplets he described in that speech.

 

[I]t’s the way that the three of them sustain one another that accounts for our nation’s present parlous condition.

 

Saving that soul requires moral imagination, a quality not commonly found in American politics.

 

King knew that salvation begins with an admission of sinfulness, followed by repentance. Only then does redemption become a possibility.

 

Only by acknowledging the evil caused by the simultaneous presence of racism and materialism and militarism at the heart of this country will it be remotely possible for the United States to take even the first few halting steps toward redemption.

 

We await the prophetic voice that will awaken the American people to this imperative.

 

© 2021 Andrew Bacevich, Beyond Donald Trump, When Poisons Curdle, TomDispatch (11 February 2021)

 

 

That's quite a statement, coming from a former military careerist.

 

 

The moral? — Accurate prophetic voices are few in America

 

Add yours.