Blame Abe and George

Abraham Lincoln's Birthday showed up on my calendar for last Friday but it has had less meaning for decades, since Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act and we rolled it into the birthday celebrating the Father of Our Country, George Washington (normally 22 February) and then decided to honor everyone who's ever been President to include Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, and the guy who was the subject of a very recent Senate impeachment trial whose name I refuse to type. (Yeah, I'm that petty; my blog, my rules.)

That George spent more than half of his farewell address warning his countrymen about the dangers of political partisanship, I find, in light of where we are today, astounding. That Honest Abe used his Second Inaugural Address to offer "(w)ith malice toward none, with charity for all..." at a moment in our history where we most fervently hated one another (with a ferocity that would cost him his very life a little more than thirteen months later) causes me to wonder why we, you and me and all the lunatic loudmouths and bombastic blowhards on either side of the political fence, can't pipe down long enough to work together to get this cart we're all in out of the ditch we've maneuvered it into. 

To put it into perspective: when Washington and Lincoln were presidents, people disagreed to the point they fired weapons at one another--and you've seen 'em, it took work to shoot at somebody. None of this cap bustin' stuff; serious mayhem was on the agenda. All this pouting and posturing we are up to on Sunday morning talk shows and in the Halls of Congress makes my brain hurt, and when we get all through sorting out who's to blame for all the wrongs and shortcomings, real and/or imagined, maybe we can devote a scintilla of that energy to fixing things. We certainly have a target-rich environment to choose from, don't we? 

Washington, James Monroe, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Stephen Douglas, Lincoln, and hundreds and thousands of others if not millions and tens of millions were so busy building this nation and defending it from attacks from within and without they didn't have the luxury of ideology. 

Today shouldn't be an opportunity or excuse to shop, advertising to the contrary-it's a moment to look at the lives of those who have been President of the United States and whose efforts and sacrifices we honor today (in my case, with one exception).

And even though we don't get a day on the calendar for ourselves, this is when we use their day as a fulcrum to move each of us, and all of us, closer together in order to form a more perfect union. And to stop being so bitchy about it with one another while we're at it.
-bill kenny