Guest columnist Hailey Ayson offers a special guided missive to our president:

Mr. President,

You catch a lot of flak. Maybe it’s the way you demean democracy, or the way you shamelessly separate immigrant families, or the way you aspire for America to be your militarized dictatorship, or the way you grab pussies that don’t want to be grabbed. For me, it’s the way you capitalize random words in your sentences (tweets) that shouldn’t be capitalized, but, to each their own.

Amidst all of this, I want to take a second to give credit where credit is due. I’ll even go so far as to thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President, for exposing the cracks in America’s foundation that I, wrapped warmly in my privilege, didn’t realize existed. Thank you for compelling us to educate ourselves beyond the conveniently vague history textbooks we were provided.

Thank you for offering your name as an easy conversation starter for topics I never quite knew how to bring up with my young children. Thank you for making it easier to define the difference between good guys and bad guys; to define terms like “morality” and “humanity” and “basic human decency” to my kindergartener.

Thank you for easing the racists and the sexists and the straight-up Nazis out of the holes they’ve been hiding in. Thank you bringing forth these people, the outdated clutter of our country, so that we can do some much-needed house cleaning.

Thank you for inadvertently making way for women in politics and for children in activism.

Thank you for exponentially increasing the donations to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, in turn significantly aiding women’s health and civil justice.

Thank you for making it unmistakably clear how much work is to be done; for creating this momentum in our country, this movement upon movement upon movement.

Your presidency is sparking incredible change – not the change you had in mind, but the change our country needs. You promised you’d make America great, and you’re doing just that.

From the bottom of my liberal, feminist, science-backing, LGBTQ-supporting, #blacklivesmatter-chanting, California heart: thank you, Mr. President.

Hailey
©2018 Hailey Ayson
Hailey Ayson is a wife, a mom to three, a wedding photographer, and an occasional impassioned writer in Northern California.

@heyhails