The True 45th President
We’ve been told a historical lie. We have all been told that Joe Biden is the 46th President of the United States. He is not; he is the 45th President of the United States.
Sometime, somewhere, someone made the decision to identify Grover Cleveland as both the 22nd and 24th President of the United States in order to distinguish his nonconsecutive terms. Let us correct this arbitrary clericalism and reset the presidential list. Art historians use the term damnatio memoriae to describe the removal of personas non grattae from history. If ever there was such a need in American History, it is now.
Not since John Breckinridge’s loss in 1861 has the losing presidential candidate of a significant political party advocated the violent overturning of American elections.
Breckinridge was later indicted for treason and, on November 6, 1861, declared a traitor by the United States Senate in a resolution stating, “Whereas John C. Breckinridge, a member of this body from the State of Kentucky, has joined the enemies of his country and is now in arms against the government he had sworn to support: Therefore — Resolved, That said John C. Breckinridge, the traitor, be, and he hereby is, expelled from the Senate.”
Would that our U.S. Senate had the same fortitude in 2021. Regardless of Congressional and Vice Presidential inaction, the list of American Presidents can be corrected through collective intentionality.
Indeed, it is fitting that Joseph R. Biden, Jr. takes his place in history as the 45th President of the United States after his friend, Barack H. Obama, Jr., the 44th President of the United States of America.
History can speak, even if Congress cannot.
