If I have one thing to thank you for — not just you, JVL, but Sarah and Tim and Bill and Andrew and Ben and Mona and Jim and Sam and Will and Sonny and Jill and Jonathan and Lauren and Will and Adrian and I’m sure I’m forgetting other staffers — and contributors like Gen. Hertling and Cam Kasky and George Conway and I know I’m forgetting even more — it’s that you present yourselves *as people*.

This is important, in the same way that the most important quality to look for in a political executive is not their policy positions or their charisma or their experience but how well you think they’d deal with new and unknown situations you can’t imagine when you’re voting for them. Because you guys not only tell me what you know and think, you tell me *how you got there* and, even more importantly, how you’re *getting there* (or not).

You help me in *how to think about stuff*. At a time where there are people whose literal job it is to make it as hard as possible for Americans to process and think about what’s going on. (And many more whose job *should* be the opposite, but who have decided to jump into this massive project of cynical confusion with gusto.)

Letting it all hang out, admitting when you’re wrong, saying things like “I know I’m wrong, but I don’t know why because it seems right, tell me, Sarah, please?” is brave. It isn’t polished. But I think it *is you*, JVL, and is each of you (watch Tim’s short earlier today about the horrific revelations about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s treatment in CECOT to see another example).

We learn not just from being told but through seeing examples. You’re examples. Not perfect examples, not finished examples, but examples of decency and quality and integrity and caring. And of the increasingly rare (and increasingly uncomfortable and, sadly, increasingly dangerous) example of journalists *achieving acts of journalism* — every day.

Thank you.