MLK Day

It's Martin Luther King's Holiday and a great time to ruminate about the great and courageous things he did in the US.  It's also a good time to consider discrimination, which unfortunately still rears its ugly head.  My only gripe and it's a minor one is that, like so many other national holidays, it comes on a Monday instead of on MLK's real birthday.  I understand the three-day weekends.  But it's almost like we belittle the days and their meanings.  "Presidents' Day?"  Long weekend.  "Columbus Day?"  Long weekend.  "Labor Day?"  "Memorial Day?"  Long weekends.  We still do Independence Day and Veterans' Day right, though.

Lumping Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday into an almost meaningless "Presidents' Day" has always seemed misguided to me.  Throwing them into Mondays for a three-day weekend compounds that.  So, do James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren Harding deserve the same honors (or any honors at all?) as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington?  (Note I refrained from adding more current Presidents to Buchanan, Johnson, and Harding, but I wanted to, at least three of them.)  And the three-day weekend makes such days of honor more palatable, easier to sell, because of the long weekends?

I was thinking the other day that I'll almost bet the Establishment Republicans are going to do it again.  That is, they are going to present voters, not with the best of candidates for President, but the least worst.  And, as I wrote my Republican Congressman (who seems like he's doing a good job despite the Establishment-types in DC) the other day, if this is what happens, the Democrats will win the White House.  The Establishment Republicans are very much out of touch with reality, the reality of the base of their party.  People are tired of "holding their noses" and voting for "the least worst."  I have no doubts this led to Obama and all the bad things he's done to and for this country, but I don't blame voters.  I blame Republican leadership, the arrogant elitists among them.  Similar to the Democrats, but in their own ways, the Establishment Republicans continue to demonstrate they think they know what's best for Americans than Americans do themselves.  People are reacting.  That is the attraction of Donald Trump.  And, if the Establishment continues to refuse to recognize the will of the base of the party, it will lose the election--again.  Voters will vote for the Democrat or a minor party candidate or, more likely, just stay home and not vote out of continued frustration and anger.