Chickens Home to Roost?
I just finished the book "An Act of State", detailing William F. Pepper's claim that the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a government-arranged assassination, rather than the act of a single racist. Beyond that, Pepper suggests President Lyndon Johnson had a mistress (and mother of his only son) who worked in Jack Ruby's Vegas club - suggesting the possibility of a link to the assassination of President Kennedy. Specifically, President Johnson is quoted by the alleged mistress (Madeleine Brown) as saying, at a party reportedly also attended by then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and future President Richard Nixon the night before the Kennedy assassination "After tomorrow, those [deleted] Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat, that's a promise."
It was also interesting to read Pepper's description of the U.S. Army having a secret unit on hand as a backup plan in his claimed assassination plot against Dr. King.
Later in the book, the author goes off on a rant about the evils of the post-9/11 administration, in terms that are very familiar to me from working at a University, but inadvertently makes an important point many (including Pepper) appear to have missed, namely that election of a Democrat as President may actually make such matters worse, rather than better. Specifically, the New York Times, which has been such an eager watchdog against Republican misdeeds in recent years, is described in the book as helping the government hide the truth of what really happened to Dr. King. And though I lived through all those events myself, this is the first I've ever heard about President Johnson having a mistress, let alone one with a possible connection to the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald.
I feel sure the author and I would disagree about a great many subjects, but I was particularly impressed by his understanding of what Dr. King was attempting to do for poor people in 1968 - which Pepper considers the reason for Dr. King's death.
Here is his analysis of Dr. King's thought (see pages 163-168):
"The Copernican revolution, which postulated the thesis that the earth was only one of the planets revolving around the sun and that the sun itself was one of countless living stars in the universe led to a confrontation with the prevailing perception that divine revelation, not science, was the most valid source of knowledge about life and how it should be lived. The intellectual and moral authority of the church was weakened and gradually eclipsed by the elevation of materialism. Matter emerged as primary with physical measurement and only things suitable for scientific study deemed capable of providing explanations to issues, problems, or events. Scientific inquiry and reason were the fonts of all knowledge.
...the increasingly mainstream secular society embraced the physical world as the primary reality and materialism as the dominant value. These values ultimately led to economic growth, and the indulgence of our physical appetites became the primary purpose of human activity. This was the antithesis of traditional eastern thought and perception - and of the early Christian church...
Martin knew, as did Gandhi, that people who experience an abundance of love in their lives rarely seek comfort and meaning in compulsive, personal acquisitions. For those deprived of love, no amount of material acquisition, consumption, and indulgence can ever be enough. A world starved of love, in which human caring and the spiritual dimension are de-emphasized, will eventually become one of material scarcity, massive inequality, overly stressed environmental systems and developing social disintegration.
Any place we know?"
After reading this chapter, I finally began to understand the anti-globalization movement. I don't agree with it, but do at least now understand its concerns.
But what really got my attention was Pepper's 2003 prediction of the current market meltdown: "It is interesting to note that the growth of margin debt - debt incurred by stock investors - had risen on February 29, 2000 to the level it was on October 1, 1929..."
Pepper foresaw a silver lining in such a cloud: "Should an economic disaster similar to that of 1929 engulf this nation and the wold, there may emerge an opportunity to rebuild this great Republic with a vastly different set of values and priorities...
Should the unthinkable occur it would certainly be a challenge. Whether we as a people would be up to meeting it without the likes of Martin Luther King in the vanguard is another question, but I have always been amazed at the resilience of human beings of whatever race, culture, station or stripe."
Finally, Pepper reminded me of Dr. King's challenge for such a time as this: "Through our scientific genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood; now, through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense, we must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools."
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