Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away.
I just found out the title of Martin Luther King’s last sermon. He didn’t deliver it because he was assassinated:
WHY AMERICA MAY GO TO HELL
😮🔥♥️
Isaac S. Villegas wonders in his essay on it, published last week, what King might have meant by that “Why.” Was it immediate, pressing reasons in the news of the moment? Or was it something of longer duration? Or even something structural?
I think that even if King intended to talk about pressing things, the longer-duration and even structural issues were WHY he himself wanted to say that America may go to Hell.
Surely the force of that “may” is “may well.” It’s entirely possible America could…turn into Hell? No, he doesn’t say that. He says “Go to Hell,” like when you die and you find out exactly who you are, and you “go” there.
But surely this must also have a flavor of “become Hell,” as in “going to Hell in a handbasket”?
And isn’t this incredible, for some, after all the “I have a dream”? But isn’t it very obvious for Black people? Villegas:
In a 1965 interview King recounted his initial hope that White ministers would lead their congregations to join the civil rights movement. “I ended up, of course, chastened and disillusioned,” he confessed. “The laxity of the white church collectively has caused me to weep tears of love.”
That King might feel obliged to say “love” rather than “rage” is a symptom of the obduracy he is describing. Tears of rage. Indeed, one way to read the title of the sermon is most definitely: “Why I am telling America it can go to Hell!”
So here I am, strolling amid the fires of Hell with my buddy William Blake. And here I am, thinking, if you’re the person who said “I have a dream,” it’s acutally nothing to do with contradicting yourself that you say “America may well go to Hell.” You’re a genius. You mean what you say.
“I have a dream” is BECAUSE of Hell. This is STRUCTURAL HELL.
They often call slavery the “original sin” of America. I think that’s too kind. Original, or structural, sin, is that sense of conscience that just is sentience, being aware of being aware (“con” from the Latin cum, meaning “with”—awareness with awareness). You carry it around like a shadow. You feel guilt about specific things because, at least if you’re a nice guy, you’re aware that you are “bad.” Or might be “bad.” You’re haunted by the fact that you may go to Hell. Being good means you realize you may go to Hell. It’s obvious really.
Only a truly evil person would think otherwise. Aka that they are the GOOD GUY, the lead character, the goodie. They have no lag, no difference, no shadow. They coincide with their image. They are one-dimensional, flat, “normotic,” “authoritarian.” They have a rigid moral code and can tell at once between good and evil, and they are the good one.
America could well be (on the way to) Hell because of its image as the good guy in general: the American dream, which in the end is a European dream. The European dream of creating an Earthly paradise. East of Eden, there’s a real one, it’s still there if you just know how to find it, says the myth. It’s like an automat there. Or Main St, USA. Fully cooked geese fly directly into your mouth: fast food indeed.
Europe tried to incarnate Paradise on Earth and therefore created Hell: a concentration camp, plantation world. This was always on the cards. America Inc. Where the president isn’t just presiding. He (definitely he) isn’t even the king. He’s your BOSS. What happens in a corporation when you do something they don’t like is, you get fired. You have to behave yourself, very strictly.
America may well go to Hell, says King, because it’s on the way already, because it’s a European dream-come-true, with number values and rows of silicon, little plantations for electrons, an algorithm for producing huge piles of wealth. A dream come true: a nightmare.
Another word for “nightmare” is Hell. In Hell, everything Means something. Something very specific, like a brand. Everything is branded. This is a bad person. This is a bad person’s finger. This is a bad person house. Words become logos. Logic becomes logistics.
No, not Greek logos, as in logic, or in the beginning was the logos…I mean logos as in the plural of LOGO.
Wait a second, why is it even called a “logo”? The Oxford English Dictionary says it’s short for (it’s a logo for!) logogram:
2.c. 1966– gen. A symbol, as found in road-signs, advertising, &c., designed to represent in simple graphic form an object, concept, or attitude.
The first usage is 1937.
1937 He wrote the first ad ever written for that new-fangled mechanical pencil called ‘Eversharp’. Designed a logo for it, too. Advertising & Selling 1 January 29
Wow.