President's Day

President's Day: I am in a quandry about how to approach this auspicious day in which we provide a day for the generic over the particular. I too wonder if it will sometime in our progressive trajectory morph into Human's day, or People's day, or even "Existence Day" which is about as inclusive as the calendar can get. But that is in the future. Right now we have "President's Day" and this is my dilemma. When I pass someone and wish them a wonderful Woodrow Wilson day, or hail someone with a Benjamin Harrison good morning, or happen upon someone I think would like a hardy welcome in the name of Rutherford B. Hayes they look at me with a blank ahistorical stare. It is as if I said something that can't be comprehended on the short notice of a greeting. I even notice sometimes the return gaze is not even neutral but might even be a little hostile. For example, I was recently in my East Coast comrade's conclave where I wished a pair of neighbors a most happy Richard Millhouse Nixon day and they grunted in an uncharacteristically unfriendly manner and moved by me and the NO PLACE FOR HATE sign on their lawn without (it seemed) any wish to begin a cordial convivium. But maybe it had nothing to do with my selection of a president. Perhaps it was just that they were thinking of the foreboding Corona virus which might even usurp Climate Change as a crisis to be considered. Be that as it may I think I really can understand the day: I can understand why so many people got tired of such Dead White European Warmongers as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln hogging the spotlight and it is quite diversity-fair to give others a chance. This gives after all the generic "president", and even the mildly particular presidents as Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, or James K. Polk a bit of the limelight. I truly don't mind if this is the case. Or that the Deplorables even adopt the present president as their reason for celebration even though Nanci's House of Representatives have shown beyond an Adam Shiff shadow of a doubt that such a president had committed the most conspiratorial crimes and collusions that there were available to commit. But I suppose I must in the end come down on the side of the particular over the generic for perhaps, just perhaps the young (and even we who are older) might just need heroes after all. Perhaps the particular does have it over the generic. For I wonder if the generic-inclusive can really inspire the way a particular like Washington and a Lincoln could? I have to also wonder why such a move on the calendar came about? I wonder when the same thinking will eventually remove the Christ out of December twenty-fifth and make it less offensive and more readily inclusive as Religious Founder's Day. I suppose we will find that should such a day arise on the calendar we might find it just a smidgen less merry without the mass, and about as stirring for the soul as President's Day.