The legacy of Martin Luther King Jr and the reality of climate change are both victims of western culture's remarkable capacity to accommodate and neutralise that which is most critical of it. Early in the civil rights movement, Bayard Rustin said to King, "I have a feeling that the Lord had laid his hand upon you. And that is a dangerous, dangerous thing." Similarly, the FBI once described Martin King as the "most dangerous man in America" - and yet, when we hear about this man, we are often presented with a figure that seems more like a cheerleader for the status quo rather than a prophetic challenge to it. Somehow, it seems we have made this dangerous figure very safe. For instance, in a speech at the Pentagon commemorating King's legacy, the Defense Department's general counsel Jeh C. Johnson remarked, "I believe that if Dr King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack." But to claim that Dr…
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