The King We Should Be Honoring

     As America solemnly celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day yesterday, there was a little news item that had hardly made a ripple but was perfectly symbolic of this unabashedly racist administration. Donald Trump couldn't cancel the holiday- that would've required an Act of Congress- so he took his petty racism and revenge out the only way he knew how.

     The Department of the Interior quietly announced it was removing free fee days at its national parks on MLK Day. As an additional fuck you to the civil rights movement, Trump also signed an executive order ending the free fee day on Juneteenth, the day when slaves were informed that slavery had ended and that they were free. Then, to put a rotten cherry on top of all that, Trump then replaced MLK's birthday with his own, June 14th.

     The fact that our "president" chose to target a holiday announcing emancipation and Dr. Martin Luther King's federal holiday shows how petty and racist he truly is and always has been. And then, to prove once again how morbidly bloated his ego is, he replaced King's birthday with his own.

     This is the same guy who, over a half a century ago, refused to rent to Black people. HUD had to get involved and force the Trumps to do so after finding out applications for Black applicants were marked with a "C" for "Colored" then weeded out and denied housing based on that.

     This is the same piece of shit who has gone after virtually every Black female member of Congress from Frederica Wilson to Maxine Waters to Jasmine Crockett to Ilhan Omar.

     Speaking as someone with two biracial sons, ergo someone who'd never had the slightest tolerance for racism, words can't describe the loathing I feel for Trump and his racism. I don't have the words and I'm a talented writer who can usually find the words I need to describe how I'm thinking and feeling. This is a "man", for want of a better word, who is single-handedly bending Dr. King's moral arc back toward injustice.

     The damnable thing is that he's succeeding and we're letting him. He's succeeded in making racism cool and fashionable again. If George Wallace ever got elected president in '68 or '72, I don't think we'd see even half the racist shit we're seeing now under Trump.

     The so-called Civil Rights Division of the DOJ under Harmeet Dhillon is now doing literally the exact opposite of what the division was originally intended to do. The names and legacies of Black contributors to American history were immediately and swiftly erased. Public schools receiving federal funding, which is all of them, face the risk of losing said funding if they have the temerity to teach children about the horrors of slavery and that the Civil War was fought over it.

     DEI immediately came under fire as soon as Trump sleazed his way back into the stolen Oval Office thanks to $290,000,000 funneled into his campaign coffers by another racist named Elon Musk. And, of course, Republicans are working overtime to keep Black voters from voting for their candidates of choice. Congressional districts are being redlined by Republican lawmakers, diluting their voting power so much the Republicans are all but assured of only their candidates winning.

     This is all at the behest of one man who'd promised us on the campaign trail in 2024 that he'd be a dictator on Day One. What many of us didn't realize was that he'd become a dictator on Day One, not that he'd be a dictator just on Day One. He's acting just like a king and now, with his move to grab Greenland, he's acting more like an emperor than a king.

     Trump plainly is not the King we should be honoring and those of us who are dialed in and seeing what's really going on are now worrying if there will be a United States to salvage when Trump finally goes away for good.