In the last many months as our nation's political landscape has been torn apart by landmine after landmine, I've not had much to say about it in any public forum. But now with just over two weeks before the voters elect (by a landslide) the first woman to serve our country in the life of our 240-year-old republic, I would like to deeply thank Donald J. Trump for having done some great work over the last year. While there is so much to appreciate, I hold the opinion that the greatest accomplishment of his candidacy has been his views, his words, and—most of all—his actions toward women—his treatment of half of the world's population.
Perhaps gender issues were on fuller display because of his (other sexed) opponent, perhaps his preexisting strong feelings about women brought the matter into sharper focus. It doesn't matter though. For all the efforts Secretary Clinton and her campaign tried to make this election not about the genitalia of the two candidates, Donald J. Trump simply could not resist talking about his tiny hands and how he liked to use them to grope and grab whomever he picked out with total abandon and without shame.
Thank you, Donald J. Trump for being so utterly reprehensible that those of us who have been hurt by the tiny hands of men like you could have a way to start talking about our experiences as women in a country where we're told that we're equal, but when it comes to sexual assault we know that we're both objects and targets.
Thank you, Donald J. Trump for being so bombastic in your rhetoric about your deep respect for women that those who have been offended by the empty words of men like you could hold up examples of what respect of women should look like in a country where we're lead to believe that we can do anything, but soon realize that to get to "anything" we need to work many times harder.
Thank you, Donald J. Trump for being the true caricature of myopic stagnation that those of us who believe that freedom and the pursuit of happiness should yield more rights for the disenfranchised could come forward and use your very own words as examples of a pathetic appeal to regress to a time long since left behind, because we as a nation determined your endorsements of discrimination to unamerican.
Thank you, Donald J. Trump for running for president and (I imagine) badly losing. You have illustrated to us all what your 1950 America—with its awful locker room looks like—and put into motion what many believe will be the great progressive era of our nation.
But most of all, thank you, Donald J. Trump, for just being you. We couldn't have gotten to where we are today without you.
