[Slightly revised 5 PM Seattle time]
In this report on Dr. King's last thoughts (which are always entirely missing from mainstream media's hagiography) regarding the economic injustices in the US and his proposed solutions, it is clear why the political operatives of the ruling capitalist class had to "disappear" him. Such thinking was, and still is, very dangerous to the interests of that class.
The author contrasts this African American's perspective with that of another "Black" American, President Obama, who having been raised mostly by his white banker grandmother and educated in elite schools, has very different concerns:
Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" clearly states his overall mission to "save capitalism from itself". True to his word, Obama's continuing agendas have typically 'bailed out' a wealthy minority to the profound dispossession of everyone else, both domestically and abroad.Long after the insightful observations of Dr. King, this progressive author, along with many others, is clearly beginning to grasp the necessity of other social-economic arrangements in the US.
...capitalism is an inherently lop-sided, top-heavy, bare-knuckles system that kicks the living piss out of most of us for the extreme benefit of an exclusively entitled few. There's nothing new about that. To soften the blows and to make the battle a little more humane, Americans have arrived at a number of public safety measures like Social Security, unemployment benefits, Medicare and Medicaid. But as we've seen recently, these are precisely the measures that come under attack whenever the U.S. government decides to 'take off the gloves' and "save capitalism from itself".It is always interesting to me to see the enduring legacy of racism in the US. This is so evident with the way most people--and not only White Americans--in the country identify Barack Obama, who is of mixed race parentage, as Black or Afro-American. They see only his darker skin and other superficial racial characteristics to the exclusion of everything else.