Evil is never going to go away — and there’s only one thing we can do
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Those magic words were written 62 years ago today and still echo like thunder across our charred American countryside as a madman and his morally corrupt henchmen in the Republican Party try to burn everything to the ground.
These words are as true today as they were then, and there is victory in honoring them.
Just as we were six decades ago, and six decades ago before that … we are a country capable of producing great men like King, and rudderless deviants like Trump. Visionaries like Lincoln, and stone-cold bigots like Lee …
I’m afraid this will never change, my friends, because six decades from now when Trump is long extinct, evil will once again grow out of the muck and mire, and good men and women will fight from the sturdy foundation of what is good and right to put it down.
King’s words endured, and speak to us all six decades later. Trump’s words land like slop on some pavement, and mean nothing six seconds after he’s said them.
One man possessed depth, vision, and courage, and was guided by a north star hanging high in the sky leading us to a place where all men are created equal. The other man is a coward, who has been blinded by a terminal case of hate, and has the singular ability to always go lower no matter what.
One man spoke for the good and righteous, the other for himself, and the morally weakest among us.
Today, I am not here to tell you what is wrong in this country — we’ve heard about enough of that — I am here to tell you all that is right.
You are right. I am right.
I am not going anywhere. Are you …?
The good and righteous aren’t quitters and have done nothing but fight for what is most certainly right in this country since her inception. Elected presidents not kings. Voting rights for all, women’s rights, social programs that benefit everybody, environmental protections, and countless other good deeds and ideals that are just too damn long to list here.
Countless hundreds of thousands of Americans have given their lives on foreign battlefields because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Evil men must be stopped in their tracks when they gas and incinerate people. Evil men must be stopped in their tracks when they pack up innocent people in the dark of night and send them off to perish in dirty jails …
And while the good and righteous have been knocked down through the centuries, we have always pulled ourselves back up, and together have risen to our feet — stronger for the battle.
Evil is never going away, good people. This is both terribly sad, and easier to deal with in the knowing …
When we won the rights for women in the ‘70s, evil didn’t get up and leave town. It lingered … bided its time … drooled in the darkness … readied itself to pounce on us again.
When Hitler was finally stopped in his bloody tracks, evil didn’t get up and go away — it once again waited to have its way with a moral weakling like Trump to get on with its hideous, never-ending mission.
Sure, life would be easier if everybody would just finally see the light, but there is just too much to be gained by the few by keeping the many in the dark.
Today I am telling you that the sun is slowly rising across America after setting in 2016. It is a never-ending revolution of an unsteady nation confirmed by a history the purveyors of evil would rather you didn’t read.
We should shout this out.
The good and righteous are stepping into the accelerating light. They are making their voices heard and their votes count. They are dragging our politicians into that light and making them account for their actions — good and bad.
When I read King’s words again this morning, they filled me with strength, and a righteous fury.
He would have wanted us all to stand on his shoulders and reach for the sky.
He would have wanted us all to keep fighting for all who bled, and sweat, and cried for what is right before us.
He would have wanted us all to stay strong so that the generations who will follow, will have a sturdy platform that they, too, can stand on while they fight for what is most certainly right, and reach even higher toward King’s north star.
I am telling you today that victory is in the trying, and as long as we are trying we will never be defeated.
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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.