Home Dear MAGA: Nice people don’t hate immigrants, don’t target trans teens
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Dear MAGA: Nice people don’t hate immigrants, don’t target trans teens

Chris Graham
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(© Johnny Silvercloud – Shutterstock)

MAGA has its panties in a bunch over the reality-show contestant who left a groom at the altar because she wasn’t comfortable with his politics, which to me, seriously, that’s none of anybody else’s business.

James Carville, who wants Democrats to do more Chuck Schumer-like caving, also has a burr up his backside over this, though of course, Carville famously married a high-level Republican operative, and none of my business there, but maybe politics is just a game to people like James Carville and Mary Matalin.

For a lot of the rest of us, it’s not a game – for example, for my friends from Venezuela, here under political asylum, after fleeing their homeland nearly a decade ago, fearful for their lives, and are now fearful again, because of politics.

Or the family friends whose teen is trans, and the target of all manner of nonsense from his high-school classmates, and worse, from my stepmother-in-law, who insists on using his deadname.

Because of politics, the kid’s ability to get gender-affirming healthcare is at risk, because the MAGA suits at the University of Virginia have no souls.


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But people like the bride-to-be, my friends from Venezuela, my friends with the trans teen son, we’re the bad guys here.

My other mother-in-law thinks we’re shutting ourselves off from the world because we’re not posting happy photos of dogs and flowers to Facebook anymore.

The joke’s on her – we’re not shutting ourselves off from the world, just choosing to share our joys and spend our free time with people who aren’t actively rooting for the people who are threatening our friends from Venezuela and our friends with the trans teen son, among so many others who are under threat from the MAGA regime.

That side likes to talk about getting government out of people’s business, but they have no problem sticking their noses in mine.

The problem I’ve got is when somebody tells me I’m the bad guy because I don’t want to fall for their pretense that, Well, come on, I might be a MAGA, but I’m a nice person.

Nice people, to me, don’t pray for political leaders who want to send innocents back to a country they fled because they feared for their safety.

Nice people don’t tell LGBTQ family members that they’re going to hell.

Nice people don’t drop DEI into conversation like it’s the new n-word.


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Right?

Or actually, maybe not, maybe I’ve got it all wrong there.

I’ll cop to being what the stepmother-in-law called us – hateful.

Because I hate that the new president and his unelected paper-billionaire friend are tearing down the foundation of our society with the goal of remaking America as a Taliban-like theocracy, with the basis not being any of the many existing world religions, but rather, a literal gilded, fattened calf.

And I hate that this president and paper billionaire have now made it fashionable for people to be unashamed to be openly racist, misogynistic, proudly ignorant.

I also hate that now that I know where so many people’s hearts truly are, I can’t unknow that about them.

It’s funny to me that they’re so concerned about whether some pretty liberal girl they’ll never meet ends up marrying into MAGA, or whether or not we give them access to the happy photos that we post to Facebook, or drop by for a forced family gathering – because, on that last point, we’re still posting happy photos, and we’re still happy people doing lots of happy things with other happy people.

We’re just not happy with the racist, misogynistic, proudly ignorant people who are trying to tell us and other people how to live our lives.

If that comes across as hateful to you, as me not being a nice person in your book, so be it.

I’m fine with that judgment, because I’m considering the source.

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Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, TikTok, BlueSky, or subscribe to Substack or his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].

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