PECKERWOOD'S WEEKLY LUNOCRACY POST! For the Week of 1/19/2026!

Every January, America takes a moment to dust off Martin Luther King Jr., aggressively smooth his razor-sharp edges, only to put him back on the shelf by dinner. We do this and congratulate ourselves for it. 

We quote the dream speech because it’s soothing and comforting. However, we skip over the demands as if they never existed; we do this partly because they don’t fit the narrative we prefer. Mostly, though, it is that fairness is still being sold to the public as being too costly.  We remember the great orator and his tone, but the substance is criminally discarded.

Martin Luther King Jr. is presented today as a passive, gentle unifier, a moral mascot for civility, a man who asked us to be kind and then carry on with business as usual. That sterile version of King is safe. He fits neatly into corporate emails, school assemblies, and social media platitudes. He asks for nothing. He is no threat to the status quo. This version allows people to avoid confronting themselves or accepting undeniable truths. 

Martin Luther King Jr. by Boris Chaliapin, 1957

The real Martin Luther King Jr. was not safe; he was a threat. 

He spoke passionately about economic exploitation and the reality of America’s wealth inequality. He called poverty a particular form of violence. He condemned America’s blind devotion to war with the same clarity he condemned racism. He understood that civil rights without economic justice is empty theater. Nothing more than shallow symbolic progress masking structural and systemic cruelty.

By the end of his life, King wasn’t beloved; he was deeply unpopular. Polling showed that most white Americans disapproved of him. He was labeled dangerous, radical, reckless, and divisive. The press grew colder and harsher. Allies purposely drifted. Power behaved the way power always does when confronted: it ignored his message and waited him out. 

That part is rarely mentioned and never makes the holiday.

Martin Luther King Jr. never said he thought Malcolm X "has done himself and our people a great         disservice." The two civil rights leaders with opposing views on nonviolence met only once,
March of 1964. They were intentionally pitted against each other so that their influence would 
never be consolidated. 

We like to pretend now that King was universally admired, that moral clarity is always recognized as it happens in real time, that real progress arrives politely. History has repeatedly shown us that it never does. King was not assassinated because he made people feel inspired. He was assassinated because he courageously refused to stop naming the unjust systems that benefited from inequality.

We honor him today precisely because he is no longer a disruptor or agitator. He no longer has a voice; he is neutered and benign. The threat has been neutralized. 

If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive now, the same people who circulate his quotes wouldn’t hesitate to call him impractical. They would loudly accuse him of sowing division, of demanding too much, of not understanding “how the world really works.” They would tell him to stand down. They would use the same tepid excuses and dog whistles they always do when minorities rise to ask for equal treatment or to unmask disparity. They would manufacture backlash and ignite culture wars. 

Martin Luther King Jr. never asked to be remembered. He asked for redistribution. for accountability, and a country willing to choose justice over comfort and truth over self-congratulation.

Today, we celebrate him by sanitizing what he stood for and by stripping his message and pleas of consequence and urgency. We call that respect, but it isn’t. It’s anesthesia.

We didn’t just annihilate the dream. Instead, we meticulously removed the powerful parts, and once it was bastardized, we embalmed it.

photos:Getty, Steve Shapiro, National Portrait Gallery