Inflection Point

Martin Luther King Jr. was a bit of a bounder. There are numerous salacious stories of his behavior off the pulpit. So why do we celebrate this man today? Simple ... his "I have a dream" speech was an inflection point between when this country was majority racist against blacks and when we weren't. Yes I agree that racism did not and will not totally disappear from America ... just that the tide had changed against this societal poison -- prejudice against blacks. The proof being that we have since elected an African-American twice to our highest office.

This forgiveness of past bad behavior by Americans is not unique to MLK Jr. We have often looked past dalliances by other of our heroes -- JFK, LBJ, FDR, Thomas Jefferson, DDE and many, if not most, of our past leaders ... except lusting onl in his mind ... Jimmy Carter. The reason for such myopia is that the sum total of the good that these men did far outweighed their misconduct.

There, of course is one major exception. Much of America refuses to recognize any of the positive results from our current president's short tenure. Instead there is a fixation in the media about his negatives -- two scoops of ice cream, Stormy Daniels, his exaggerations, long neckties, etc. Will Trump ever be given the same latitude as many of our past less-than-perfect leaders, like the man whose birthday we celebrate today? He clearly is striving mightily to create an inflection point between the decline of America and a return to our historic greatness ... with large portions of this country undermining these efforts at every step.

History will tell ... but it will be a serious number of years hence.