I have to admit that I’m not feeling particularly thankful today. I wake up every morning in a world in which Donald J. Trump was just voted in as the next President of the United States. And I ask the question, can this really be.

It really is.

Now, I have things to be thankful for personally, and I really am grateful for those things. The relative good health, the extended family, the gainful employment, the many friends, etc. At the same time, I really do worry about the state of the World. Are we actually making any progress or are we in some kind of circular infinite regression loop, where every step forward is cancelled out by a concomitant step backwards?

It sure feels that way these days.

While I’m looking for small things to be thankful for, I am thankful for the fact that Donald Trump is at least backing off his campaign promise to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Why would he prosecute Hillary Clinton? He’s already humiliated her to the nth degree.

Hillary will forever be remembered as the woman who lost the election that she most surely should have won. A good portion of that was not actually her fault. It was not her fault, for example, that the media gave the Donald billions of dollars in free media coverage; it was not her fault that she has been vilified for 25 years by the vast right-wing conspiracy; it was not her fault that FBI Director James Comey initiated another faux investigation just days before the election. And then some things really were her fault, such as the “basket of deplorables” remark, or her shifting position on the TPP, or her decision to give numerous highly remunerated speeches to bankers in the years leading up to her Presidential run, one that she certainly knew that she was going to make. But the point is this, Donald Trump has no need to prosecute Hillary because he’s already humiliated her in ways that probably hurt her more than even imprisonment would. And, lest we forget, Hillary has not actually committed any crimes. Unlike the Donald.

I’m also thankful that the Donald is reconsidering some of his positions on climate change, and is backing away from the idea that torturing suspects would be a good idea. He’s also backing away from the wall with Mexico, and may find that trying to round up millions of “illegal” aliens who’ve committed petty crimes is a lot harder than closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, something that President Obama was unable to achieve.

Of course, these are exactly the promises that caused various zealots across the United States to vote for the Donald in the first place, so my gratitude that he is reconsidering some of these position is tempered massively by the fact that he made these promises in the first place. And it caused people to vote for him.

But the thing I am most grateful for this morning is that there are millions of people across the United States who are rising up in opposition to the Trump phenomenon. I’m grateful that something has finally, finally galvanized the left. I’m sorry that it had to be the Captain of the Clown Car, and I worry deeply about the damage that he can do to this country and the world at large for the time that he’s in charge. But at least something is galvanizing those of us who are on the left, and I’m thankful for that.