Obama vs MLK

Posted on March 22, 2011

I don’t normally let myself get sucked in by things like Yahoo answers but a friend posted a poll about the IWW and the wage system and from there I got sucked in on a question someone had posted about what Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought of Obama. Here’s my answer

Martin Luther King on the war in Vietnam:

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Anyone who has even a passing understanding of Dr. King’s life and work would know that he was a tireless campaigner for human rights, for equality, for meaningful freedom – both political and economic – for people of all colors. He was against War, classism and the morally inexcusable divide between rich and poor that has torn this nation in two, and against politicians who claimed to be for peace but when push came to shove chose bombs.

Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speach to defend wars of aggression as a foreign policy tool. He passed massive tax cuts for the rich that are bankrupting our country and forcing massive cutbacks in social spending. His Health care “reform” was no reform at all – Insurance companies still get to charge outrageous prices for care and poor people will still be denied care. The only difference is that now Poor people will have to fill out paperwork to avoid being FINED by the government for being unable to afford health care. Talk about morally bankrupt! Obama has continued Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and launched military actions in Pakistan and now Libya without even bothering to pretend to get authorization from congress. He has continued the practice of extraordinary rendition which tacitly endorses Torture and his administration is RIGHT NOW torturing Bradley Manning for having the courage to speak up and expose evidence of our governments war crimes.

If Dr. King were alive today he’d be in Jail next to Bradley Manning. And Obama would be having him tortured and threatened with the Death Penalty.

Obama is, in every important respect, the antithesis of Dr. King. The two have virtually nothing in common except for their skin color. And we all know what Dr. King thought about judging people by the color of their skin.