I was already planning to expat soon, but this all makes me want to try to hurry that timeline. Sorry to those of you that are stuck in this hellscape.
So instead of being cynical and celebrating people who are abandoning ship, which I totally understand, we should instead spend time uniting people in opposition. Stay where you are and fight. It's your country. It's mind-blowing that people won't engage in trying to actually do something, even something as simple as helping a campaign, or donating money, but instead they're like "well I'm going to just give up and spend all this time and effort moving to some other country where I also won't uphold any civic responsibility". Madness.
But yeah, rough stuff
But narrowly, I'm talking about democracy itself, which is not doing well in the US.
This is also a popular trope in fiction. In the recent Handmaid's Tale series, there are several episodes devoted to life immediately before the fall, and what you see is a lot of evidence stuff is going to hit a crisis point, and a lot of people insisting that it hasn't quite yet.
Obviously the threshold to act has to be fairly high -- and I'm not saying America is Kabul or Kyiv or Gilead -- but I think there's nothing wrong with listening to the part of your brain that says "wow, it feels like the shit is imminently going to hit the fan". Because if you wait until it actually does, you'll have significantly less capacity to act.
There are also options beyond leaving the country. Some places are physically safer and physically more isolated from threat than others. For example, in the event that there is a rapid institutional collapse in the United States, it seems likely that Hawai'i would be among the places most likely to endure a little while extra or to most easily facilitate leaving the country. Areas near unguarded border crossings on the northern border also have an appeal in that regard. I think the right degree of seriousness with which to take something like this is not so much "I should move to Hawai'i tomorrow in case there's a civil war" and more "If I can work remotely in Hawai'i or if a job opens up, I might gain some degree of personal safety/sovereignty by moving there."
Personal context: I am a non-American. I spent most of the 2010s living in the U.S., and I emigrated to another country in early 2021. The pull factor to emigrate was a job opportunity abroad that was great and that my wife agreed would be a fun way to spend a few years, but the push factor to emigrate was significant uncertainty about the institutional stability of the U.S. We were setting up our paperwork just as the Capitol Insurrection happened.
Of course, things going badly in the US is going to have spillover effects everywhere else too, so that's something to keep in mind. I'm not sure how isolated various places would be.
Barring extreme circumstances‡, one should not moving from the country of one’s birth, but to the country of one’s choice. I emigrated from the U.S. two decades ago to Canada, because of the person who later became my wife—but I had to decide that I could live with Canada, too. Family aside, nothing in the U.S. either held me to America or was pushing me from America.
The process took almost two years, and it was almost five years before I got Canadian citizenship. As I understand it, it would take longer now.
My wife and I are considering moving to Europe or the U.K., but it would take time for this move to materialize, and we need to figure out what it is that we want (especially given our ages). Such a move is not likely to happen for two to five years at this point.
‡ There are exigent circumstances where it becomes safer to leave one country with little care for where one goes, as long as it isn’t worse. I fear with the extremists taking power legitimately and illegitimately and pushing toward their increasingly apartheid goals, there will be larger classes of people who could legitimately become refugees from America, especially if "liberal" states turn extremist—as they seem likely to do, since the divide here is (mostly old, mostly white) rural vs (mostly younger, mostly diverse) urban.
Sitting where I sit, I truly think that America is fucked, and am doing what little that I can to make sure that Canada does not follow in its footsteps, but we have our homegrown extremists whose crypto-christo-fascist messages are being treated with bemusement to respect, and even being promoted by fools like Poilievre.
It's better to gtfo.
Some people are deriving plasure from fighting the fights even at high personal cost. But most people don't.
Your top responsibility is to yourself, to make the best of the short time you have. Fighting loosing fights doesn't seem to be that for most people.
Ironically this is the mindset behind keeping the coal plants online.
Could you clarify who "they" is in:
> this is exactly what they want.
?
And are you being a little hyperbolic (nothing wrong with that, we all do it especially when impassioned) or do you really think the supreme court (or whoever "they" is) are trying to cause an exodus of people they disagree with?
I'm not challenging/disagreeing with you, just very interested in understanding your thinking.
I've actually always felt this way about immigration and refugees as well. I certainly understand taking people in (from wherever, to wherever), but the big problem with that is once all the good people leave an area you have nothing but the bad people. It's sort of fragile on a global scale. What's the end goal? All "good" people go to a select few countries and then the rest of the world is run by bad people?
> And are you being a little hyperbolic (nothing wrong with that, we all do it especially when impassioned) or do you really think the supreme court (or whoever "they" is) are trying to cause an exodus of people they disagree with?
I don't think there's an active campaign just yet, but I do think that state legislatures are happy when this filtering process happens because it solidifies power. So far they have not undertaken active, visible campaigns, but I believe that it's coming and will come more aggressively from Christian Communists that have taken power in state legislatures. It's not something that Democratic Party leaders will say out loud but of course they're happy when so-called Republicans leave their jurisdiction as well.
> I'm not challenging/disagreeing with you
Please do! We can't get better if we don't explore and have discussions.
That is definitely one approach, and one I'm hoping to see through. But simultaneously you have to acknowledge that there could come a point where it's time to jump ship. That point is going to be different for everyone. Recent events have pushed some past that point. That doesn't seem hard to grasp.
> It's mind-blowing that people won't engage in trying to actually do something, even something as simple as helping a campaign, or donating money...
Have you been paying attention? People in this country have been more engaged over the last few years than at any point in my lifetime, and at this point the ship is still sinking.
Every time there is a school shooting, there is outrage and no change. Proud boys terrorize another fucking library event, and there aren't even reports of a single arrest. Women's rights being slaughtered and we get to hear how we need to vote. Another hearing laying out the obvious coup attempt on Jan 6th, and no action taken but another news headline.
This is just a snippet of the last ~30 days. 1 short month. I don't argue that it's my country. My country just looks like a real shithole lately.
> but instead they're like "well I'm going to just give up and spend all this time and effort moving to some other country where I also won't uphold any civic responsibility".
This is such a weird take. Consider employment. You can join a startup, work your ass off, cross your fingers, and hope for that big payday. High risk, high reward. Alternatively, you can join a mature company, collect a comfortable paycheck and moderately help to steer the bigger ship.
Right now, the US is looking like that startup. You can work your ass off, and it may give you a great payoff in the form of opportunity. But it's looking increasingly like it's going to fail. Alternatively, you can move somewhere that has all the big stuff in order, and you get to work on the small stuff that still has effect while not worrying as much about whether you're one injury away from bankruptcy.
Who knows? Maybe if we vote harder it'll turn around. At this point, I'm inclined to believe it's cultural. We barely voted out an insurrectionist. 48% of the country voted to keep that in play. This country is full of people who are actively encouraging someone to overthrow our government. 48%.
We're only a few years away from the collapse. It is a smart move to escape while you can. If I need heart pills or insulin in the future and they can't be made safe, then it won't be safe if you have any medical issues. If the water won't be safe because we couldn't regulate new chemicals invented, then it won't be safe to live here. If it isn't safe to have a pregnancy, because they've decided to sentence to death those with an ectopic pregnancy, why should you stay?
This seems well worth working hard for.
My personal approach is to be very hard on family members and friends who if democrats talk about republicans as evil incarnate and if they are republicans then talk about democrats as woke idiots who are ruining the country.
I try to point out how stupid both sides are and they are fighting the wrong battles against the wrong enemy.
Another reason to stay in the USA: currently the world is splitting into two economies led by:
1) BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) - they will probably have about 60% of the world's population aligned with them.
2) USA/Europe/Canada/Australia/etc. - they will probably have about 40% of the world's population aligned with them.
Except for the USA and Russia who have the resources (food, energy, defensibility), I think that most all of the other countries can not exist without external trade. If the shit really hits the fan for the world, being in the USA might be a very good thing, even if we don't solve the political bigotry of democrats and republicans hating each other.
1. Moving is hard. Even harder for people that have little means. Living in the state you're comfortable isn't going to work for a lot of people.
2. Currently, it doesn't feel like "the state you're comfortable in" will be that way for long in this country.
3. Moving to a country you're comfortable in is the same principle, so why not do that if you're already comfortable moving?
But to play this card,
Also, don't forget that a lot of blue states (if that's where someone wants to live) have been really bad at providing enough housing, so are pretty difficult for someone to move to if they don't have a lot of money.
That's a pipe dream. The division is urban-vs-rural, not state-vs-state. What is now a red state will inexorably become blue as people flock to it. Rinse and repeat.
America has been through divisive times in the past. We'll survive. I think what's notable now is that it's been so damn peaceful for most of our lives that this looks like unprecedented tribalism.
It looks much less so if you turn off the news. I have a good life here, and I'm unconvinced it would be a net improvement to move to Europe. I enjoy visiting there, but it's not like they don't have their own problems.