Remembering King’s profound vision for an economy that first and foremost addresses human need and his incisive understanding of the key relationship between racial and economic justice and of the dignity and value of all labor has, perhaps, never been more important as Trump is installed back in the presidency.

Stories like that of Mangione’s murder do more to distract us than inspire us to engage in the kinds of concrete political actions that make a difference for our lives.

And the celebration and heroicizng of his actions tend to fuel a very counterproductive and damaging politics of retribution such as that Trump peddles.

We need a politics of redistribution, not retribution.  If we stop and think, overcoming fear and desperation, we can see the possibilities and the realities before our eyes. 

In Biden’s case, when we put this pardon in context, he isn’t putting family over country. He is in fact protecting our country and the rule of law against Trump who has promised to abuse–to weaponize–the resources of the U.S. government against the American people, including Hunter Biden. Protecting our country entails protecting a family member, and vice-versa.

Trump has already eroded the rule of law and the integrity of our judicial processes. We must recognize this reality as the ethical context in which Biden is acting and making decisions. Not pardoning Hunter and seeking proactively to pardon others would be a dereliction of his duty to fight against this erosion of the rule of law and to protect Americans from Trump’s promised abuses of the rule of law to inflict his vengeance on those he perceives to be political enemies.

 Sanders has persisted in his crusade as self-proclaimed champion of the working class; but his self-congratulatory advocacy has sunk to the level of self-aggrandizing grandstanding that actually gives oxygen to right-wing talking points, levying great harm against working-class Americans and their families.  Moreover, in what seems like it can only be bad faith, Sanders grossly misrepresents the Democratic Party and the realities of the political processes of–and obstacles to–change available in the three branches of government.

 Sanders’ distortions are damaging precisely because they interfere in–and risk disarming–efforts to imagine a narrative of progress in socialist directions and to understand the role of electoral politics within that narrative.

The transformation of hearts and minds will require a profound cultural transformation, and promoting important stories that can define and inform a national self-consciousness and identity and narrate a new direction is one key element of this project of cultural transformation.

Our nation collectively, but especially white America, needs to confront and work through psychotherapeutically the deep cultural and collective mental illness of white male supremacy to understand why it’s damaging to the interests and well-being of white Americans and all Americans. We need stories that help us work this poison out of our cultural bloodstream.

One story that comes to mind is the 1998 movie American History X, directed by Tony Kaye and written by David McKenna. 

I am not suggesting we not act with conscience per se, but I am suggesting that the call on conscience tends to root us in an individualist stance that removes us from our relationship with the many others in our world and prevents us from seriously imagining the impact of our voting behavior on their lives.  We might just need a different term, maybe something like “social justice” or the “public good” which takes us out of our individual sense of rightness to think in broader terms.  Indeed, the very problem with neo-liberalism is its evacuation of the concept of a public good, its denial of its very validity, as it insists we are motivated only by private interests.

Puerto Ricans discovered in Trump and Vance the Hangman coming for them, but we all need to see that the hate informing the Trump-Vance campaign is not reserved for any one group. You don’t even have to look that closely to see through this illusion that only certain groups–certain “others” and not “us”-- are the targets of their hate.