Happy MLK Day!

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Did you know the investigation into Malcolm X's assassination has to be re-opened now
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/nyre ... rated.html

I always figured JFK, Robert K, Mlacolm X and MLK were all hits involving Manchurian candidates

Like Lee Harvey and Jack Ruby? Paywall stopped me but I'll look it up. IIRC, there was something fishy at the time. I was glued to the news as a kid.

Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were almost certainly programmed.

The family of MLK also think he was the victim of a deep state hit
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/28/us/d ... ocent.html

I've always thought that there were far too many moving pieces with either of the Kennedy assassinations for a conspiracy to have been able to set them up, particularly knowing that RFK would cut through that particular kitchen at that particular time, or with JFK, the randomness of Jack Ruby's movement leading up to his shooting of Oswald. IIRC, Ruby was getting a money order across the street from the police station when he saw the commotion of Oswald being brought out and acted on the spur of the moment, and he was there for the money order on behalf of one of his lounge act girls who asked him to get it for her, with her story checking out to several degrees. That, and Oswald previously took a shot at a right wing general turned John Birch society member, with ballistics only tying him to that attempt after the assassination, which doesn't fit into any conspiracy. There's also the matter of Russian disinformation spread in the wake of the assassination, with the KGB fearing they would be blamed for the killing, and so diverting suspicion by bankrolling some of the earliest theories casting blame on the CIA and the US government, something that only came out with the publishing of the Mitrokhin archives in the 90s.

As to King, why would the Johnson administration want him dead, and why then? I can't remember if Johnson had already decided not to seek reelection at that point or not, but I'm sure he didn't want the riots and unrest that followed to happen on his watch, if anything that likely helped Nixon win later in the year. Malcolm X was almost certainly killed by the NoI on the orders of Elijah Muhammad, but I think it's fair to say all the other martyred civil rights leaders were killed by exactly who you'd expect, angry racists.

I think a lot of people struggle with how random a lot of high profile killings are, the guy who shot George Wallace in 1972 originally planned to shoot Nixon, but security was too tight, and he had to settle for Wallace. Now, there is a bit of a conspiracy theory about the aftermath of that one, as the claim has been floating around for years that Nixon sent E Howard Hunt to plant McGovern campaign literature in the hotel room the would be assassin had been staying at but the FBI got there first, but that's never been proven one way or the other.

There seemed to be a lot of crazy assassins from John Lennon's shooter to the nutjob who Ronald Reagan.

Why MLK? Could the government have been worried he'd be the first black president? I honestly don't know

Malcolm X's shooters have been exonerated so isn't that mystery back to square one? honestly if Elijah Muhammed was responsible I bet the FBI would have liked to have dragged the black muslims through the mud

I watched one of his videos that day. I just hope the woke crowd will one day realize what he did for black people in America and around the world.

"It turns out that what Conservatives... most appreciate about figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Frederick Douglass is that they're dead, and cannot defend themselves when their words and ideas are misappropriated."

For me, it was just another day.  There were no celebrations or demonstrations on my way to or from work, either.

That's not a uniquely conservative vice, the liberals like to forget what both men said about arming yourself, and the progressives seem to have forgotten what King said about the poor and working classes.

I thought they knew a 6-year-old living in Kenya was going to be the first black president.

Jokes aside, I imagine Barak Snr as a boy in a thatched hut in Kenya sitting on a dirt floor telling his friends his son will be the most powerful man on the planet getting some interesting looks.

My daughter got MLK day off, so we went downtown Spokane to the comic book shop, and a couple sort of counter-cultural-in-a-fun-way shops (Boo Radley's and Giant Nerd Books), then went out to eat. Fun day.

It sounds like she will have a positive outlook toward MLK day for the future. I wish all parents celebrated MLK day like this with their kid/s.

Something we've done every year, save for the time downtown Spokane had been closed down because some racist piece of human excrement had tried to set off a bomb during the MLK day parade.

I recall some time back you mentioned Spokane has some of the most progressive and some of worst elements of US society living as neighbours.

While there are some pretty terrible people here, you'll find that anywhere. The bomber himself actually had come from one of the tiny towns in eastern Washington, which tends to be Trump country.
As for liberal vs conservative, I think the Spokane area tends to be more purple.