Thank You, Mr Trump!

This post originally appeared at BernieWorks.com the day after the 2016 general election. Now it's three months later and we are three weeks into the Trump administration. A fitting time to glance back at those first moments after the shock set in.

Credit: iStock/Skystorm

Dear Mr Trump:

We at BernieWorks.com view your ascension as an exhilarating opportunity. It's time for all decent folks — tens of millions — to crank up Bernie Sanders' progressive political revolution for real.   

It takes a grain of sand to be an irritant, causing an oyster to create a pearl. You are that irritant, Mr. Trump. Thank you for your service.

Though everyone is breathlessly talking about you, please remember: you are nothing but a grain of sand. Put another way, this is really not about you, it's about us.

Switching metaphors. . .

Vaccines generate a healthy response by revving up the body's immune system.

Perhaps a bracing dose of you, Mr Trump, with your seedy following of hatemongers and corrupt cronies, will finally stir up the body politic. Time to strongly reject the gradual attacks that both major parties have made on millions of American families over the past 40 years, crippling us like a chronic wasting disease. Enough is enough.

You could be the inoculation we have needed. Perhaps only someone as noxious as you could finally generate a healthy, overwhelming immune response.

It speaks poorly of our nation and people that we let things get this bad before mounting a massive response, like someone with a weak immune system.

But at least it's happening. We hope.

So regardless of what we think of you, Mr Trump, we can think of ourselves as a humble part of the body politic's immune system at long last kicking into high gear.

A pearl, a healthy body politic — whichever view you prefer, the opportunity is ours now.

In aikido, they say an adversary's attack is his gift to you. You have given us this precious gift, Mr Trump.

It's up to us to use it. Or lose it.