Open Secrets on The Third Monday of January, 2026

I was raised in a home that venerated Martin Luther King Jr. When my mother remarried in my seventh year, she married a man who as a social worker, and who had earnestly dedicated his life to making the idea of The Beloved Community Dr. King spoke and wrote about a reality. He was, at the time, a member of the Rainbow Coalition, which had been started in Chicago as part of Fred Hampton's push as Chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party, to create a multi-racial coalition that could fight the oppressive conditions its members experienced.

When I evolved from reading almost exclusively fiction novels, Dr. King's were among the first non-fiction I turned to. In part, because of how foundational his message was to my stepfather and his mission in life, and because of the way the culture at large venerated him. He was spoken of as a kind of Titan. I remember the battle to have a federal holiday established in his name. I remember the way those who fought to prevent it were spoken of, and not just in my home, but across culture more broadly.

The experience of reading his work, was the continuance of a revelation for me. I've written a number of times now about the degree The Satanic Panic as my introduction to no small number of the adults in the United States living in or, at the very least, being willing to advocate for unreality. It was an unreality of things that did not exist, but somehow had to be treated as if they did. Satanic cults infiltrating and secretly controlling United States government and culture, using daycares as a nexus for victims of sacrifice and every conceivable abuse, was clearly, even to my young eyes and mind, a fiction. A boogeyman, not at all different from any number of the horror stories I'd read or seen.

In reading Dr. King's books, I became more keenly aware of how deeply seated the fictions of race were. It would be no shock that in a home where Dr. King was venerated, the existence of racism, that it was indeed a terrible thing, weren't new ideas to me. In Dr. King's books though, I found descriptions of the actualization of racism, how this unreal thing, this fiction we call race was made into a reality, the result of nothing but belief. This belief that Blackness somehow rendered a human being less than human brought into being the systemic treatment of human beings as if they were less than human. Like the solipsistic belief one can know the "one true religion" or the one true God, the belief itself creates a self reinforcing system of beliefs, which in turn are made real through actions and institutions. Race itself has no basis in reality, yet racism, is all too real.

As I am among the younger of what's referred to as Generation X, even as there was a battle over whether this Titan of American Life, whose advocacy for freedom and equality was treated simultaneously as a kind of North Star to which we should all aspire and as if he wasn't worthy of a day to commemorate the example that was his life, the population of people generally considered the Left, were agog with multiculturalism. "We are all human and therefore the same, even in our differences." The eighties the colors of Benetton. We will all hold hands and forget about the evils of the past, to move forward in love and harmony.

Yet, this existed right alongside Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs, the Republican Party's attacks on the social safety net, in its thousand ways. I'm not going to say I clearly understood the degree to which racism was central to all of these things, but I can say that by 1990 or so, when I was turning about 13, the discussions citing the War on Drugs as a thinly veiled racist scheme made clear sense. I did have eyes, ears and a curious mind, though I might not have been consciously aware how many of those faces on tv news, in films and in magazine and newspaper photos being portrayed as criminals would be recognized as Black. I had already begun to have my questions about how a culture, so shaped by being within the United States, could somehow be so fundamentally different as to be completely lacking in the sense of values and beliefs which I was already aware were being hammered into my own person. Variation, sure, that existed even with the seventy miles between my home and New York City, or the hundred and fifty miles between my home and those of relatives in rural New York. But so fundamental a difference in foundation that Black people would somehow be "made" criminals by what those who claimed culture responsible espoused? As I'm fond of saying, "It didn't pass the sniff test." Exposure to the idea that the War on Drugs was a thinly veiled racist agenda, was only confirmation of what I was seeing and hearing already. This was in part, because there were Black people in my community. I knew Black parents. I knew Black children and their siblings. I knew their fathers, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles.

Those houses, those homes, in them wasn't a variation, a difference any more profound than the three families of my own. My mother's relatives, my father's relatives and my stepfather's relatives. These were different families, certainly. They had different customs, different norms and traditions within them, and some of those differences were extreme. At the same time, the Americanness of them all, their belief in their ability to sustain those homes, that they could improve their material conditions, that they could make some way to make a livable life, was constant. Even though within each of those families there could be vastly different beliefs about the how of all this, the belief was there. That one of their primary responsibilities was to love their children, to prepare them for the world beyond their doors, was among those primary beliefs. Within all of them was the belief that part of this responsibility was preparing their children to do a little better, to learn from the mistakes they'd made and pass on the knowledge of those lessons to their children. I could see similar variations in the homes and families of the other white kids I knew too. Yet, there was always a sameness. There were the same core struggles, no matter the family. Being an only child, one of the things that made this most clear to me was that the relationships between siblings were no different. They followed familiar patterns and in childhood, familiar ebbs and flows related to the ages of and differences in age between siblings.

The melanin content of a family's skin didn't render them outside the warmth of love or the confusion of dysfunction either. In all of my life, I could count on one hand the number of families who would have fit in the rubric of a television sitcom. I think this is why I was never much of a fan of the genre. It seemed dishonest. They didn't get across the complex nature of that thing that happens in all families, where love and fear, hope and anxiety create the foundations of the dynamics, that these were the things that one comes to know so well, they don't even understand how much they rely on them, for good or ill.

It was clear that whatever "cultural" differences may exist in the homes of Black families didn't amount to some variety of penchant for lawlessness. I'll confess, I didn't have access to as many homes of Black families as I did white, and that may have some to do with the degree to which violence in the home tilts overwhelmingly toward white families in my experience, but that is my experience. I never had any experience of suspicion of Black children whose explanation of bruises being gained in the risky business of childhood play were suspect. I know now they existed, but it was a suspicion I only ever experienced with white kids I knew.

I have to confess, I was late to coming to this realization. As a small child, I was genuinely accident prone. Broken fingers, badly sprained wrists, ankles and knees were not unusual. For a while there, I was in the emergency room with an unusual frequency. Unfortunately for my poor mother, these were regular enough, a well meaning doctor or nurse once referred my file for a CPS review. Each of my parents only ever raised a hand to me once, in those fine years of adolescence when we test our parents patience with just how much of our ability to cut them can match our sense of need to be free of the confines of their love and anxieties. As a result though, I took the explanations of friends too often bruised at face value, until a few other friends were bemused by the credulousness with which I took those claims and explained the truth. I was then it occurred to me one couldn't split their lips so often and not have teeth become casualties, without an intention involved that contradicts the meaning of the word "accident."

It did occur to me, even back then, it was curious to hear all the talk of who we were supposed to be protected from, when so little was being done protect these kids, and there was a kind of implicit effort to prevent anyone from even trying to. It was to never bring any kind of authority to bear on the person responsible, never violate the trust of the victim, subject them to the embarrassment of their situation, which is what petitioning authority for help would mean. Who we were supposed to be kept safe from seemed more important than whether we were actually kept safe at all.

Those secrets weren't safe from us, the children who spent so much time with those being inculcated into that violence, without us becoming acculturated to it too. It was around that same age of thirteen or so, I'd start to learn that the secrets were, in and of themselves, a kind of agreed upon public performance, those things we refer to as an "open secret," where everyone knows, but acts like they don't.

Maybe it's a response of the variation in information management that is autism, but open secrets have always been, for me, one of the more confusing and confounding realities of our world. I can't help but think the abundance of them is one of the central contributions to the long history of belief in conspiracy theories. It becomes easier to believe these powerful conspiracies exist, because to some degree, open secrets require we all participate in conspiracy. A conspiracy of silence and inaction, basically. They create parallel realities, don't they? They are the performance of something outside of reality. We act as if one thing is true, and while knowing very well it isn't. Why wouldn't we believe other people might be engaged in this same endeavor for motivations we gauge as more sinister than our own, since we engage in something similar so often? We rarely think of the space between the two. Maybe it's that variation in the neurology of information management that makes me feel the space between the two more consistently. Maybe it's some quirk of the thing that happens between individual experience, individual information input and universal cultural experience that makes us each individual. I don't know why it is, but its definitely true I experience the creation and requirement to participate in these parallel realities, these open secrets, differently from the majority. It's a kind and intensity of discomfort clearly not shared by the majority or we wouldn't all be so often coerced to participate in them.

I think it's why, on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2026, I'm thinking about those open secrets. One is the degree to which Dr. King's message, his legacy, his thoughts, even his actions have been so badly mistreated and misrepresented, and that is as routine as it is. It exists in that place between absurdity, irony and the routine of abject horror we are now living daily. We can't exist in that place without creating it, and it can only be exploited if it exists.

I can't help but see the connection between the length of time its taken to so thoroughly misrepresent a man who meticulously recorded his beliefs, how he saw the actions he took in service of them, the strategies he followed in those actions, as part of a larger pattern, with more consequential effects.

The bastardization of Dr. King's legacy and message itself sets up the opportunity for other things, doesn't it? It is absurd and unsurprising, in the context of history, the legacy a man whose existence was dedicated to removing the ability to treat as secret that which was openly reality, be subjected to this thing he opposed.

It has consequences though. Even if it only to give hope to malignant actors that what can be done once, can be done again.

Maybe some of you remember that in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security tasked some of its analysts with creating a report that would detail what was the most likely source of domestic terrorism. Maybe you also remember the result of that report was to identify the greatest threat to internal security in the United States was far right extremism, of which the various wings of organized white supremacist groups, including white nationalists, are part. Maybe you remember that the entirety of the US conservative movement, the Republican Party and their various media arms threw a collective tantrum, claiming this was a conspiracy being committed by the Obama administration to target conservatives. Maybe you remember that from the moment Obama announced his intention to run for president, the opposition to his candidacy had a thick flavor of racism. Maybe you also remember that in response to the entirety of the conservative movement and the Republican Party, Obama directed DHS to retract the report, and to have the then DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano apologize to the public, and specifically to veterans, because the report had cited their participation in far right groups as particularly worrying, given they are trained by the US military.

Clearly, I remember. I also remember this exact thing happening again in 2015.

This was an inflection point, of sorts, wasn't it? It was the creation of another open secret, another parallel reality.

It was, what was once called the Mainstream Conservative movement and the Republican Party, wrapping its arms around extremism. It can't be rationally argued this didn't send the message to the extremist, far right portion of the political spectrum that mainstream conservatism didn't see it as being in the house, being part of the family, "in the tent," as the political euphemism goes. It was a wholehearted defense saying, "They're with us, they are of us, we are with them." This had been the barrier between mainstream conservatism and the far right before, at least rhetorically. It was the signal that no matter how extreme their ideas, their ideologies, their rhetoric, their desire for violence against other people in the United States, the government or anything else, mainstream conservatism and the Republican Party were embracing them.

We're living with the consequences of the inability to recognize that inflection point now, aren't we? And, to be clear, I'm not going to entertain the argument that the whole of the conservative movement and Republican Party aren't far right extremists now. Whether they were before or not has some reasonable arguments, but I'm not participating in trying to act as if there's any merit to it today. As I said, I have a particular disgust and discomfort with the participation in open secrets.

In looking at the reality today, it occurs to me this open secret, this parallel reality, was aided by the Obama administration. I understand, it may seem provocative to invoke the first Black president in this, and as an accessory. Being provocative isn't the intention though. Addressing the reality is.

This isn't something exclusive to or particular to Obama. It may have some relationship to the fact that he was the first Black president, in that this achievement was only possible because of the degree he was willing to participate in so many of the open secrets of American life and politics. It is practically a pre-requisite of become president, especially for someone who is Black or of some other identity considered inferior by the far right, like being a woman. These are realities the entirety of our political apparatus participate in creating. Obama didn't participate in this creation of another open secret, another parallel reality because he was Black, by any means. He participated in it because he was a Democrat, and this has ever been the Democratic Party's approach to the anti-democratic leanings of the Republican Party. He couldn't have been the Democratic nominee without doing so, and couldn't have become president if he had been too willing to confront the various forms of discrimination Mainstream Conservatism, the Republican Party and the far right have always shared. It is, in fact, racist to locate all of the responsibility in Obama himself, and I think, an act of creating another kind of parallel reality, another delusion to suggest he bares no responsibility either.

Like those of us who participate in the kind of open secrets which are part of our more pedestrian, less powerful lives, the open secret and parallel reality it creates, have a pool of responsibility. Like the kind of open secret that domestic violence can be, it enables the violator, the abuser, in the continuance of that abuse. By extension it requires those who have less ability, status and stability to rectify what renders them in this position continue to endure it.

Leadership of the Democratic Party is still participating in this parallel reality, still acting as if the open secret will achieve what it has for them to now, a sharing of power. The far right and the Republican Party, don't seem to much care to retain the ruse. They are acting in keeping with the "open" part. They are retaining the rhetorical aspect of the "secret" part, but that's about it, and even that becomes less everyday. Kristi Noem attaching a plaque paraphrasing a Nazi SS slogan, as well as DHS Twitter account consistently pumping out openly white nationalist propaganda. Steven Miller continues to speak publicly, which apparently means a stream of racist claims separated from and contradictory to any measurable reality. The Democratic Party leadership continues to act as if it has a partner in compromise, not an opposition bent on an ethnic cleansing of the United States and a dismantling of every hallmark of democracy, until theocratic fascism is itself the open secret in the United States. There will be elections, and they'll be legal, but they won't be what any measure of an open or democratic society considers fair. There will be representation, but only if it refuses to challenge the primacy of theocratic fascism. Part of the requirement will be never publicly identifying it as theocratic fascism, which we're already seeing being put into place today. Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, and Jacob Frey, mayor of Minneapolis, are now under investigation by the Department of Justice, despite the degree they've been willing to play this game of open secrets.

I think, in all of this, Dr. King's example, the real example of his life, not the whitewashed version the American public has been fed for seventy years, asks of all of us to stop participating in this open secret. It asks we no longer do it in our own sphere of influence, including pardoning it in the people who petition us to act as our representatives, and it requires those who are unwilling to stop participating in the game of the open secret be removed, with prejudice, from being consideration of qualification.

Without this, those whose appetite for theocratic fascism is characteristically willing to brand any dissent as "domestic terrorists," as they did Renee Good within a few hours of her murder, and who have instituted an investigation into her wife, will continue to consolidate power, and to make it all the more costly for those of us who favor the rule of the governed and government by consent to rend that power from them.