President Barack Obama was first inaugurated in January 2009 on a Tuesday — the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day was observed.
There was an obvious connection to draw between the holiday celebrating the legendary civil rights leader, and the inauguration of the first black president — a symbol of how far the country had come.
Donald Trump’s second inauguration will fall exactly on Martin Luther King Jr. Day — and that, too, has a profound meaning.
Namely: Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris, who would have been the first black female president, is a sign that the United States has truly overcome both race and gender, to the point where it is no longer important to choose a president based on historic “firsts,” but rather based on who would be best for the country. To borrow from King’s famous dictum: the electorate chose Trump based not on the color of his skin, but the content of his character.
Yes, his character — his consistent pattern, throughout his life, of choosing his friends and business associates based on factors other than their superficial attributes. Trump strikes his post-modern “woke” opponents as racist, but not because he actually thinks in terms of race. Rather, his thoroughly modern approach to race upholds old-fashioned ideals of color-blindness and equality for which King stood, but which were overtaken by radicalism and “equity.”
The electorate that came to the polls in November chose Trump over Harris — and liberty over socialism, equality over equity, fairness over “wokeness.”
In that sense, the American people ratified the original vision of Dr. King, which — like every true civil rights movement in our history — sought to restore and fulfill our ideals, not to overthrow them.
It is Trump’s return to office Monday, as much as Obama’s first election, that marks our transcendence of race.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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