A New Insult: That Sounds Like Something ……. Would Have Said

By Nicholas Stix

That sounds like something Martin Luther King Jr. would have said.

I was inspired by a comment at an AOL blog, about the lynching of a rape suspect in India, by a reader named Neshamah.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to condemn it.

I responded,

Blah, blah, blah. I hope you feel better, but your platitude did nothing for me. It sounded like something Martin Luther King Jr. might have said, and that was not a compliment.

The sanctimonious poster was, as far as I could tell, condemning all lynchings. I’m more choosy; if the lynchee was guilty, and the traditional punishment for the crime in that jurisdiction is death, then his being lynched is justice, and anyone condemning it is a supporter of injustice.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an evil man who cloaked his evil in a quintessentially black style of rhetorical and faux moral bombast. Since his death, that affectation has become a popular rhetorical style of others wishing to pass off evil as saintly morality.

As for the lynching in India, the posting was worthless. It gave almost no information about the rape in question, made mutually contradictory statements,* and the accompanying video was irrelevant to the story. (*“In recent years, India has seen an outpouring of anger against sexual violence that is pervasive across the country.” It’s hard for me to believe that there could simultaneously be pervasive rage against rape, and pervasive rape in the same country.)

The post was the political flavor of AOL moron fodder, and as such was worse than no posting at all.