One day. That’s all I’m asking. It doesn’t feel like a lot to ask after all.

I just need one day where the President of the United States isn’t a global embarrassment, making decisions clearly motivated by avarice and ignorance that are not in the best interest of the citizens of this country.

Just one day.

That’s all I ask.

Is it too much to ask to not wake up to a world trying to decipher his latest unintelligible tweet? Or perhaps one single day where the president doesn’t see a need to tweet like a prepubescent child about all the insignificant things that annoy him in a given day? Or even a single day where I don’t hear the words “fake news” in response to news that he just doesn’t like?

The other day I woke up to “covfefe“, which Press Secretary Spicer has tried to convince us has actual meaning to the president and those closest to him. I woke up to the news that the president pulled our country out of the Paris Climate Change Agreement, a decision that could only have some financial benefit for him and one that will surely damage the environment around the globe. I woke up to pictures of all the countries trolling our president over his foolish and downright disrespectful behavior overseas. To the many quotes of him praising murderous dictators, and yet behaving shamefully toward this country’s allies.

If I could just say one thing to the rest of the world, I can’t decide between “I am so sorry. This man doesn’t represent us all, and we are deeply ashamed of him.” or “Don’t blame me; I voted for her.”

While many conservative Trump supporters accuse liberals of stirring up animosity with our “fake news,” I’d like to take a moment to address this. Most of us would be quite happy to scroll through our news feed or turn on the television and not hear about how a white supremacist, who has been emboldened under the current administration, has murdered children or veterans or anyone who stands up to their hate rhetoric.

We’d love for the news to be about general day-to-day events and not our embarrassment of a president proclaiming his admiration for a dictator who promotes rape. Or making arms deals with a country known for its terrorists. We’d like a day of news that doesn’t include an assault on the rights of women—day where our basic right to healthcare and birth control and autonomy over our own bodies isn’t under attack.

That’s right; we don’t relish the news coming out of our nation’s capitol on a daily basis. We’re not enjoying the need for our activism. There’s no joy in posting about yet another human rights violation or yet another hate group growing more bold under what it sees as a friendly administration to its vitriol.

We, the liberals, are not generating these stories ourselves. But we are witnessing them and choosing not to turn a blind eye to actions and policies that could actually hurt people through damage to the environment (impacting the quality of the air we breathe and the water we drink) or through policies that discriminate against people of color, or based on gender.

Most of us would just love a single day where we could simply post photos of our children or pets or talk about the latest movie we watched. We’d like to discuss a good book or even something as innocuous as the weather. We’re deeply tired of being normal people who were forced under this administration to take to activism. To become loud, nasty women in an effort to impact positive change for all of us—even the citizens of this country who spew hate at us and who genuinely think that liberalism is worse for the country than the potential of treason or foreign interference in our government.

Liberal Redneck Trae Crowder put it best when he said, “They hate us more than they love our country.”

But the truth is, we’re not manufacturing this news. We don’t even want it. We’re not brainwashed by the liberal media. We are, in fact, doing what all patriotic Americans should do: We’re staying aware of the news as it comes to us. We’re questioning our leaders and holding them accountable for the decisions they make that affect us all—and not just the ones that affect us personally. We’re calling our representatives and taking stands and participating in civil discourse not because we hate our country and the president but because we love our country, and our president’s shameful behavior is deeply disturbing to us.

We understand that the global perception of our leader is actually important, and his behavior reflects on us all. We want his supporters to hold him to the same standards that they have past presidents and to call him out when he does something inappropriate—like maybe collude with Russia or compromise intelligence agents by disclosing confidential information.

We love our country, and we don’t want to see it compromised by a foreign power or incompetent leadership. But every day our senses are assaulted by yet another story that shows us that the G.O.P. in particular doesn’t care about anything but amassing political power and points scored at the expense of this nation’s citizens.

As a former Republican, I’m deeply saddened that so few of the party leaders will take a stand for us if it means standing up to their party’s consensus. And every day there’s a story from the tiny fingers of Trump himself, tweeting away at every imagined slight and every imagined “win” in a world that, for him, is made up of only winners and losers.

And in this country, every time we look the other way we all lose.

The truth is that America was great, or at least was making strides toward greatness. We were becoming more environmentally aware. We were trying to be more inclusive of others. We were viewed around the globe as an important world leader. And all of that is crumbling. We didn’t elect a president who is making America great again. And if we love our country and care about where it’s going, we have to keep being nasty and loud even when all we want is one single day where we don’t have to.

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Author: Crystal Jackson
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Editor: Danielle Beutell