I’ve written a decent bit over the years about the possibility of becoming an expatriate. A couple of years back I had a fascination with The Netherlands based on my learning about a treaty few people know about which allows for easy settlement there by self-employed Americans and here by the Dutch. In the past I’ve also written about the possibility of moving to Portugal or other countries with digital nomad visas and I’ve often talked about how I’d move to the UK in a heartbeat if I could ever figure out a way to obtain permanent residence.
All of that has been mere chatter on my part, usually joking in nature. If anything it’s been more about me getting my mind around the possibilities presented by my work-from-anywhere job. I’ve not taken any steps to leave the United States beyond some basic Googling and occasional daydreaming. A newsletter subscriber of mine moved to Portugal some time ago and gave me some really good detailed information on it — which I saved! — but it’s not like I have a plan, let alone a timeline. The idea has been almost tongue-in-cheek on my part, really. Idle musings.
I’ve kept all of that pretty idle for a couple of reasons, some practical some more cosmic.
As far as the practicalities go, my parents, who are not getting any younger and may need to rely on me more as time goes on, still live here. As do my kids. Yeah, they’re in college now and have explicitly told me that they’d LOVE for me to move overseas so they could have a free international crash pad, but it’s hard to get my mind around fucking off across an ocean when they’re still of an age where they come home for holidays and need help moving into starter apartments. If I worked for a company that offered me a promotion to move to London I’d totally do it and everyone would be cool with it because that’s how life goes, but moving that far away from older parents and young adult kids by choice seems different and is harder to get my mind around.
As far as the cosmic stuff: man, there is nothing more self-indulgent than a comfortable and privileged American vowing to leave the country because he doesn’t like where it’s heading. It’s the stuff vapid celebrities say just before elections. It’s one of the few things conservatives like to mock that I agree to be pretty mock-worthy. I loved you in “Red October” and “30 Rock,” Alec Baldwin, but I never took you seriously when you claimed you were going to move to Canada if Mitt Romney got elected. It’s performative nonsense for the most part.
And yet I sit here right now completely discouraged about the state of America and wishing I was someplace else. Actually thinking that it could one day soon be dangerous not to be someplace else. I am utterly pessimistic about fixing the massive problems we face, most of which are completely self-inflicted and most of which shockingly few people seem to care about. I’ve been politically engaged — often hyper-engaged — since I was like 12 years old but I’ve never felt like this. Even when Trump was first elected my feeling was “uh oh, this is gonna be a bad four years” but I assumed we’d fix it and that his time on the scene would be an aberration.
Except it’s not an aberration. Trump’s 2017-2021 term increasingly seems like a quaint prologue to a new, horrible normal that seems far more likely to befall us today than it did even a couple of weeks ago.
Donald Trump is a convicted felon and an adjudged rapist who has literally — and proudly! — vowed to weaponize the Justice Department to go after his critics and enemies. He has vowed to use shock troops to round up minorities and place them in concentration camps. He has promised to stretch the powers of the presidency in ways not seen in our lifetime. Thanks to the courts, he can now be confident that no one will be able to challenge his doing so, so he and the dead-eyed fascists who will fill his administration will pursue that agenda without fear and without restraint. Again: this is not conjecture. He has openly promised this to both the media and into open mics in front of whatever crowd has appeared before him, countless times. And on Monday the Supreme Court told him no one could stop him.
These aren’t the mere ravings of a silly would-be demagogue. The other day the leader in the most influential conservative think tank — the man who oversaw the writing of the actual roadmap setting Trump’s plan out for all to see — said, in response to the presidential immunity decision, “we are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” If you don’t take that as a threat of literal violence and the bleak transformation of American society, you’re whistling past the graveyard.
The scariest thing about this: the promises of the man currently leading the polls to usher in fully-blown fascism have gotten about 15% of the prevailing political coverage of late, if that. A corrupt, renegade Supreme Court has just sanctioned monarchy, the would-be next president and all of the most influential conservative minds are calling for revolution, suggesting bloodshed if anyone dare oppose them, and writing it down in a how-to manual just in case anyone thinks they’re bluffing. Yet, all America’s media can talk about is President Biden’s bad debate performance and whether or not he should be replaced on the ticket. And it seems that the chunk of Americans who will decide this election via our decidedly undemocratic system of electing presidents don’t really give a shit.
I look back to those past vows from vapid celebrities about leaving the country if an election doesn’t go their way and laugh, because those vows came when the fear was the election of some aging Republican senator who, while making political promises they and I found to be undesirable, were within recognizable norms of 20th/early 21st century American politics. Certainly nothing close to what now looms. The prospect of John McCain taking office was not a pleasant one for me in 2008, but it didn’t make me fear the unleashing of shock troops, the building of mass detention camps, the purging of allegedly disloyal civil servants, the ascendance of a president who claims dictatorial powers, let alone the future of the Republic.
Yet here we are. And here I am. A person who, while always aware of our system’s weak points, has never really doubted our system’s ultimate durability before now. A person who, for his entire life, has had an answer to anyone’s political questions or concerns which at least theoretically pointed us to a better path with at least something approaching confidence that the worst paths will be avoided. A person who fully believes that if Trump is elected in November that future elections will be irrelevant because America will be transformed into an authoritarian state before the next one can be held.
What does one do in that situation? The best solution is to leave, right? At least if one is able?
Earlier I identified a couple of things which have kept me from taking such a thing seriously, but as time goes on they seem less and less compelling. Now the biggest thing stopping me is the knowledge that hardly anyone else can leave, even if they want to. Particularly the people who, unlike white, CIS, heterosexual middle-aged and middle-class people like myself, will be truly and directly in the crosshairs of New America if Trump regains power. I’m looking at the current trajectory of America and It feels like the only choices I have are subjection by a fascist state or abdication of my responsibilities to its most vulnerable people. Of living my last 3-4 decades in a dystopia or abandoning the land and those I care about.
I’ve never truly looked for the exits before, but I can’t seem to stop myself from doing that now. Because I’ve never been this depressed or discouraged about my country. Especially on the goddamn Fourth of July.
