America, Will We Choose MLK Jr.'s Dream or Trump's MAGA Nightmare?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream.His dream was an expansively diverse America where every human being was afforded dignity, where the color of one’s skin was not a crime or a penalty, where each person could live unfettered by the prejudices and phobias of their neighbors.His dream was a peaceful nation marked by compassion; a “network of mutuality” whose people appealed to their better angels and vanquished their lesser demons, knowing how tethered together their destinies were.Martin Luther King died violently for this dream, only seeing glimpses of it materializing in his midst. Donald Trump and his coconspirators and supporters have a dream, too.Their dream is a nation of hatred and discord and suffering.It is a closed, walled-off gated community of white supremacy; an America stripped of diversity, syphoned of beauty, and available to only the smallest minority.It is a cruel and loveless land, beleaguered by violence, cradled in conflict, and perpetually at war with itself.And we are perilously close to their nightmare racist vision becoming our waking reality. We have months, weeks, perhaps only days to pull ourselves from the precipice of inhumanity.The America that Dr King dreamed of is still a place off in the distance.It is still only an aspiration; a great hope yet unrealized, a glorious reality not yet stepped into.It is a beautiful dream still relegated to the yet to come, still only the stuff of slumber.And while these things remain true, we who believe in the dream can’t rest.We cannot celebrate his life adequately without reminding this nation of (as he said), “the fierce urgency of now.”This now, is more fiercely urgent than it’s ever been.It is a fine thing to contend that you celebrate the man; to post memes and share quotes and invoke his name, but know that these things are easy.There is no real cost to them and no investment of yourself in them.They are the cheapest and safest form of activism.Dr King’s dream was costly.It was a pearl of the greatest price.It was worth his life to him.Is it worth our lives to us?We cannot celebrate Martin Luther King’s Jr’s life without fully grieving this America.We can’t do it without lamenting Kristi Noem, JD Vance, and Stephen Miller.We can’t do it while abiding the national scourge of ICE and its lawless terrorism against people of color.We can’t do it while tolerating voter suppression and voter ID laws and gerrymandering.We can’t do it without confronting our racist uncles and xenophobic neighbors; our prejudiced pastors, bigoted bosses, and supremacist Presidents, and the blind spots of these things within ourselves that enable and unknowingly partner with them all.We can’t do it without seeing the privilege we are both blessed and afflicted with; without fighting to craft something redemptive out of it, without leveraging it in the cause of the Dream, without fashioning it into a shield against the dream-killers.And we can’t celebrate Martin Luther King Jr’s life, honor his memory, mourn his passing, or continue his work, without actively and loudly resisting Donald Trump and his Administration.We can’t do it without pushing back at the supremacy on display in the MAGA movement,or tolerating legislation targeting refugees,or excusing his remarks about dark-skinned immigrants.We can’t do it while normalizing the way he dehumanizes Muslims.We can’t do it while letting him vilify people of color.We can’t do it while he takes us backward to the days before Dr King and his dream were born.We who share Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream need to steward that dream in such a way that it brings us conflict, discomfort, and injury, because his dream requires such things from the privileged.It requires a cost greater than the seconds it takes to compose a social media post.In these moments of great consequence, we who gather as people of faith, morality, and conscience must decide which vision of this nation we’re going to work for, fight for, and leverage our lives for.On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 57 years after his assassination, we need to choose the America we will leave to those who follow us.Who will we be?What will we stand for?Which dream will we choose?Dr King’s dream and his life are so worth celebrating.They are worth remembering.They are worth pausing to honor.But more than that, they are worth living and fighting and dying for.May we who share his dream steward it well until it is no longer a dream at all, but the glorious reality of our national daylight.May we see the dawn arrive in our time.The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe