The politics of the protagonist

I am currently querying a novel, Incursion, and you can read more about the novel here. However I also want to highlight some things about the protagonist (and perhaps later, other characters), and I’m starting with his politics.

Darren’s political sensibilities are inspired from a few places, most notably Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, in his description of white moderates…

I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate […] who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom

…along with the poem Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes:

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

Although Darren agrees with many of the ideals espoused by the two men mentioned above, I’m not sure they would agree with his methods—namely, a sometimes violent interventionism. He could fairly be described as “social justice nightmare fuel,” for he wants to deliver the message that “actions such as [attempting genocide] will invite upon your head a reckoning,” and he will deliver that, too.

In fact, he feels he has no choice but to do so. As Darren says in the second chapter:

Deep is the well from where my anger flows, but to be angry and do nothing would be to indulge in the same vanity as the world, which looks on, idle, as its leaders deliver their platitudes, decrying events while leaving the people of this impoverished nation to their fate. As if their own agency had abandoned them and they could not be here to stand with their fellow human beings against inhumanity. Against genocide.

They are bound by a delusion, common in the minds of humanity, and one that binds us more than most. We seldom notice the chains for we, in our misconceptions, often do nothing that would chafe against them. We limit ourselves to being lesser lights, not growing in the way that matters most.

We believe that we are good.

The politicians and professional opinion-havers, and those caught in the narratives they have spun, have their reasons. There are always “reasons.” But what are our minds if not engines of self-justification? Our default is to excuse rather than examine ourselves, for we think ourselves good, and how could a good person do ill? With that goodness assumed, what reason would we have to pursue it? We stay in the comfortable prison of our existing beliefs, confusing stability for righteousness and, so poisoned, let hells remain upon the Earth.

No more. If I can stop such things as this, and do not, what value would there be in continuing to live?

Imagine if someone like Darren showed up today, and promised to kick down your door if you commit crimes against humanity. What would happen even if he limited this to obviously evil things like genocide and ethnic cleansing?

We’d try to kill him.