Forget Ukraine, Biden’s Real Crime Is Whitewashing Dr. King’s Assassination

Recently, during a town-hall-style campaign meeting, former Vice President Joe Biden decided to take an unusual detour by asking two hypothetical questions. After discussing his political heroes, Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he asked: “Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee,” and “What would have happened in America.” Awkward as this seems, he went on to describe what raised his political awareness and propelled him into a political career, adding he was often accused of being gay because of his support for women’s rights in the 1970s.

Despite what right-wing conspirators like Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani say, Biden’s real crime isn’t about Ukraine but whitewashing Dr. King’s Assassination. (As Jim Risen who broke the original story wrote in “The Intercept,” Biden was on an anti-corruption campaign in Ukraine where Hunter, his son, sat on the board of Burisma. Since Burisma was under investigation for money-laundering, some thought the message Biden was sending showed just how hypocritical Americans were. Biden’s son later resigned. The prosecutor who Republicans say was fired thanks to Biden was corrupt. He tried to block the investigation and was dismissed by parliament.)

Biden’s Whitewashing of Dr. King
Not surprisingly, Biden’s message about Dr. King failed to mention how he and others have whitewashed one of the greatest political martyrs in history. Not only did he cast himself in a role based on a nonwhite person but embellished his own fame and political record. Biden still hasn’t explained his inappropriate touching of women, his censorship and treatment of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, or the Hyde Amendment which bars federal funding for most abortions. Dr. King, who spent his whole life trying to put an end to war, would moreover be appalled at Biden’s support for an arrogant nation and its wars which have murdered many.

Biden also whitewashed the crime and coverup of Dr. King’s assassination. To be sure, it started the same day he was killed. The Pentagon hastily denied reports of riots and stabbings by U.S. armed forces in Vietnam and censored reports of black men pondering the absurdity of killing yellow men for white men who hated them as much as they did Ho Chi Minh. Something else censored was the government’s involvement. J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hated Dr. King as much as his state assassins. Maybe even more so as he and the FBI tried to assassinate Dr. King’s character from the grave.

Whitewashing America and White House
Those foolish enough to think they’re somehow different from Biden are kidding themselves. Most have allowed the government culturally misappropriates other struggles over the meaning and messages of civil rights martyrs. As those same minority groups attempt to assert that the tragedy illustrates principles of worth and remembering, or the need for a sense of national repentance and transformation, they find themselves opposed by a more dominant group wishing to whitewash it. In Dr. King’s case, the tyranny of white supremacy and nationalism obliterated his message. For whoever controls the past and present, also controls the future.

Even Biden’s Obama-Dr. King comparison was an attempt at whitewashing. Obama was never a political or economic liability like Dr. was, especially since he marched to the beat of Wall Street and didn’t threaten to shut the Military-Industrial Complex. Overseas, Dr. King would have found Obama’s drone warfare which killed countless civilians an abomination. The same goes for his military campaigns in Syria, Libya and Yemen. Since he kept American Exceptionalism intact and never challenged white nationalism or income inequality, the far right and centrists learned to live with an African-American in the White House. This, despite the Affordable Healthcare Act.

A Nonwhite Revolution
Biden’s “What if?” moment was already answered with Dr. King’s assassination. Indeed, and since America is sick unto death-as Dr. King said often, only political martyrdom will be able to create a true revolution of values that will cause Americans to question the fairness and justice of many of its past and present policies. It includes compassion, which is more than flinging a coin to a beggar or providing federal aid, most of it going to corporations. Nor is it haphazard and superficial. “It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restricting.” That, “A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”

This call for a revolution of values will also require a shift from whitewashing, from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. It will ensure that machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are no longer considered more important than people. The same applies to the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, all of which are incapable of being conquered without political martyrdom.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.