I started the day with disgust for President's Day with Trump in office. After a day of #notmypresident protests, some idiotic comments from Trump supporters, and the usual (daily) wave of awful updates about Trump's activities, I have a different perspective.

I support the protesters, but the name pf the protests is wrong. Trump is our President. We liberals need to stop sounding like Trump. Sounding like we think we have the right to deny a duly elected President his office without Constitutional process to remove him from office, that sound like Trump. We can be embarrassed by him. We can be disgusted by him. And we must resist him, but he is The President. Let’s leave denying The Constitution, law, checks and balances, freedom, the press, and due process to Trump and his band of miscreants. It will be their undoing on the end.

Besides, we are all a little to blame for Trump. Some of us bought into his snake oil salesman act. Some of us failed to take him seriously when we should have. Some of us waited far too long to start being political. Some of us were more worried with political correctness than actual issues and problems. Some of us accepted milquetoast liberal candidates when we should not. Some of us didn’t even vote. Most of us have let gerrymandering hand more and more state legislatures to the right. The list goes on and on. Intelligent and moderate conservatives have allowed their party to be taken over, first by zealots, and now by people who are working with neo-Nazis and possibly in collusion with Russia. Liberals have failed to define themselves as an alternative that is appealing to middle-of-the road voters, despite being the better option for them.

So, on the end of this President’s Day, I am thinking fondly of every President that did not subvert our most basic American systems and values. Most people will dislike either Obama or Bush. Both stretched executive power in their ways, and both abused The Constitution to some degree; but both used our laws and instructions to accomplish their goals. Both men fought with the media, but neither man lied so consistently as Trump. They didn’t call the journalists fact-checking their own lies “liars”. No President has ever said the media is the enemy of the American people before. Both men honored court decisions when they went against them.

This President’s Day, I am grateful for most Presidents, just for mostly supporting America’s interests and intuitions, and for not being an egomaniacal narcissist more interested in discussing who cheered for him than issues and policies. I will think of Trump, not on President’s Day, but on:

• October 10: World Mental Health Day
• January 27: Holocaust Remembrance Day