You Raised Me To Be A Good Person. Now, You Support Donald Trump.
To My Loved Ones,
I'm writing to let you know that I'm aware of what you think of me, either because you've told me during combustible room-clearing conversations, over terse cold war text exchanges, or in second-hand words passed through the people who now serve as the sole messengers between us.
You believe I've changed.
You think I've become radicalized by the Left, that I'm a woke bleeding-heart Liberal, that I'm an anti-Jesus, anti-American baby-killing heretic, determined to destroy the fabric of this nation with socialism, homosexuality, and wide-open borders.
You think I've abandoned my faith and my family, and you're disappointed with me, and I have to tell you that you're partially responsible.
You say that I've changed, and I guess I have: I've become the person you taught me to become when I was growing up.
I've become a person who is deeply offended by inequity,
a person who looks out for the underdog,
a person who finds the beauty in the diversity around me,
a person who wants other people to have what I have,
a person aware of how fortunate I am to live here,
a person trying to love my neighbor as myself,
a person who detests liars and predators and con men.
And the person that I've become, in large part because of the wisdom and compassion you poured into me as a child, can't fathom as an adult how you've voted for Donald Trump three times, and how you still support him now.
It would have been unthinkable to that younger version of me that you would have embraced this man: his cruelty, his depravity, his petty, vengeful, unloving heart.
That's not the way you raised me, and so whatever issues you have with me now, you need to understand:
You made me this way.
I'm really proud of the person I am today, and I'm grateful for the time you spent with me; the lessons you taught me about seeing all people as inherently valuable,
about being a person of your word,
about telling the truth even when it's costly,
about admitting your mistakes,
about apologizing,
about valuing people over money,
about how we treat people, being what defines us.
I was paying attention.
I was listening.
I believed you.
I did what you told me to do and I became who you told me to become—and so now I care about the world and I despise evil and I live open-hearted and open-handed.
And that's why I've found myself standing here wondering how you've become someone I no longer recognize, how you've embraced the embodiment of the ugliness you warned me to avoid, how you stopped taking your own advice somewhere along the way.
You say that you only support the party or the policies and not the man—but I remember you telling me that we are known by the company we keep, that the ends doesn't justify the means, and that we can't gain the world (or a Supreme Court seat) and lose our souls. You wouldn't have tolerated those flimsy excuses for aligning with someone horrible, and I won't tolerate them from you now.
As a child, I looked up to you, and that part of me will continue to love you dearly and be grateful for you.
But as an adult, I see you face to face and I grieve the loss of the person I imagined you were when you were teaching me how to be a good person.
By continuing to support this man, you have gone against everything you told me was important growing up: decency, honesty, fairness, maturity, and empathy.
Either you were lying then, or you're wrong now.
Which one is it?
The child I was and the adult I've become both want to know.
John, this one got me. And you hit it out of the park.
Not because it’s extreme.
Not because it’s hostile.
But because it’s honest in a way most of us have been too heartbroken—or too afraid—to say out loud.
I’ve lived through this. I am living through it.
And I know others are, too.
This quiet, devastating realization that the people who raised us to know right from wrong… no longer seem to recognize the difference.
I read this letter and nodded all the way through. Because yes—like the writer, I was taught to speak truth, to stand with the vulnerable, to loathe liars, and to reject cruelty masquerading as strength. And like the writer, I absorbed those values not from books or professors or activists, but from my own family.
And now I’m looking into the faces of some of those same people—people I love—and I see them defending a man who contradicts everything they once held sacred.
Not just tolerating him.
Not holding their noses.
Defending him. Idolizing him. Voting for him again.
I have tried to reconcile it.
I have tried to make peace with the idea that they “just see things differently.”
But the moral chasm grows wider with every lie they excuse, every cruelty they dismiss, every flicker of decency they silence in order to hold the line politically.
And so yes, I felt this letter like a blow to the chest—because it doesn’t come from hate.
It comes from grief.
It grieves the loss of trust.
The loss of moral continuity.
The loss of that precious belief we once had—that our family’s lessons were true, and would hold across time.
I’ve wrestled with this long enough to know that what we’re experiencing isn’t just a political rift. It’s a spiritual one.
A rupture in shared meaning.
A betrayal not just of party lines, but of the very character they helped shape in us—and now resent.
And I say this not to shame anyone. God knows we’re all flawed.
But what this piece does—what I can’t thank the author enough for—is tell the truth plainly:
We are not the ones who changed.
We became the people we were taught to become.
And now we are being asked to apologize for it. To contort ourselves into silence or complicity for the sake of “keeping the peace.”
But there is no peace without principle.
There is only a silence that poisons everything.
So yes, I stand with the writer of this piece.
In conviction. In heartbreak.
In the clarity that love—real love—is honest even when it hurts.
And I grieve alongside him.
Because it’s a hell of a thing to realize that the people who first lit your moral fire may now be asking you to extinguish it.
I won’t.
And if you’re reading this, wrestling with the same ache—you shouldn’t either.
Not because you’re angry.
But because you remember who taught you better.
And you believed them.
Beautifully put, and as clear-eyed as it comes.
I have never understood the distinction some people try to make between "the man" and "his policies." Some MAGAs will say, "Well, I'm not crazy about Trump's style, but I like his policies." What??? His policies are hate-filled, racist, greedy, vengeful --- and that's him. What's the difference? Come on, people, it's not like there's somehow a vile man promoting "good" policies. They are one and the same, all vile.