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 premise of pillorying Harris and the Democrats with blame is that somehow there was a vast audience out there in the electorate open to rational argument and hungry to find the truth and engage in thinking about issues and policy in reasoned and evidenced ways, if only Harris had said the right thing, explained her policies just a little more clearly and fully.

If she had only done all this right, she magically would have cured the electorate of their deeply embedded sexism, racism, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant hate and would have been able to cut through the relentless wall of disinformation feeding people lies about the real state of the economy, about the low number of border-crossings, about the fact that inflation has significantly decreased, and so forth.

Giving up power to an authoritarian leader does not seem like the path for workers to improve their lives in America. How is giving up one’s power to participate in decision-making ever a good way to advocate for one’s interests?

Does being in an absolutely politically vulnerable position with no recourse, such as a union or even basic laws, seem like a key ingredient in any recipe to improve your economic life?

Trump doesn’t know what you want, doesn’t care what you want, and will make up lies about what you want as cover for doing what he wants.

I write this asking for you to think in the most basic way about what you want in a president.

While Trump and Vance loudly blow the white supremacist whistles, it should be clear from their own behaviors that they don’t support the interests of white workers and white people generally.  The policies of Trump and Vance that accompany their anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric do not elevate white people, especially not white working people; they work against these people’s and all people’s interests.

Forgiving student loans is an opportunity for the nation to create policy rooted in a recognition of the importance of investing in one another for our collective benefit and well-being and for the sustenance of our democracy.

Trump’s economy is designed to transfer wealth to the top, not serve the needs of the American majority.