I've seen a few despondent comments on this site in the last few hours from expats who now feel that they can never move home because the country has shifted too far to the right.
I must admit I am experiencing somewhat the same feelings - how can I possibly move back to a country where up to a third of the populace identify themselves as "evangelical", and, more importantly, where 51% of them voted to reelect George W Bush? That is so alien to my worldview that it's a pretty big leap for me to imagine myself in amongst my countrymen again.
However, I want to keep fighting to return sanity to America, so that one day I can go back there if I so choose. Not yet, though, not yet.
How're the rest of you expats feeling right now?
As much as I agree and am inspired by your latest post ("What Next?") Luke, I've gotta say--anything I do to help in the next election won't be because I ever want to return to the U.S. America as I thought I knew it died for me today. But I still feel that if I have a vote, I have to use it on behalf of the world, to at least try to go against the tide of the ultra-religious bigoted warmongering agenda. And I'm feeling a bit of pride that the state I lived in for 26 years went blue, if only barely. I suppose things have to get worse before they can get better. In that case, we're on the right track.
Posted by: Sarah Forrester | November 03, 2004 at 06:36 PM
I agree with you, Luke. Much of my anguish over the election comes from the fact that I've been told, in no uncertain terms, that my country hates me -- because I'm gay and in a long-term relationship.
On Monday my partner and I are getting married. To each other. A marriage that will be come null and void in the now unlikely event that we ever decide to go home.
Posted by: vaara | November 03, 2004 at 07:09 PM
My mother, one of the most deeply patriotic people I know--not one of the jingo warmongers, but the old-fashioned kind of patriot--phoned me today, to tell me that she is GLAD I live in a foreign country...because, as she said, a lot of very bad things are going to have to happen to gay people in the US before public opinion and the laws change, and she is happy that it isn't going to happen to her daughter.
To have to tell her daughter than she is GLAD that I live elsewhere, when she believes that America is the best country in the world--I cannot imagine what that cost her emotionally. I am in tears just thinking about it.
I agree with both posters above. America as I knew it, as I dreamed it, died today. And I now know that I am not welcome in large swathes of my own country. Well, better to know that than not to know it, and to entertain childish fantasies of hoped-for acceptance.
I'm a plain-spoken person. If you detest me, then say so. America said to me, I DETEST YOU.
So be it.
I will do whatever I can to support a return to sanity in America. But it is not my home anymore. America has disowned me.
OK, fine. I'm a grownup. I can tolerate being disowned. But my response is to, more or less, walk away. To disconnect.
Just as I would not give much more of my time to a family which sat shiva for me, so I will not give my attention to a country which so publicly sat shiva for me.
I have spent too long as a bystander here in Britain, with most of my focus on what's going on at "home." No more.
I will become a British citizen eventually. Whether the gay partnership bill passes or not, in a minimum of two and a maximum of four years I will be British, and thus entitled to vote in UK and European elections.
It's time that I informed myself about UK and European issues, and past time that I began investigating whose party politics line up with my general views.
Even if we were a white-bread-and-mayonnaise straight couple, I would still be living here. My partner's work is in Europe, and that won't change for the foreseeable future.
So I had better--finally--face the fact that I have married into European society and culture, for better or worse, and learn to be European.
Goodbye, America. I loved you once.
Posted by: ebg | November 03, 2004 at 08:01 PM
After 20 years in the UK, during which I've been proud to retain my American citizenship and passport, I will now be applying for a British passport. I couldn't get through to the relevant Home Office line today for information, however. It wasn't because all you guys were also phoning up, was it?
Luke, your "crazy thoughts" in your latest post was also exactly what I've been thinking. I'm incapable of defending the people at home any more. A slim majority of Americans would rather focus on abortion and gay marriage, than on silly little issues like jobs, healthcare, the environment, education and a responsible foreign policy. Fuck 'em.
I feel bad about the other half of America, though. The people who value decency, tolerance, intelligence, honesty. The person I feel sorriest for is my mother, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939, and has loved her adopted country ever since and all it stood for. Her heart is breaking today to see what's become of it, and it's for her sake most of all that I hope one day things will turn around.
In the meantime, however, I'm going to finally cut the cord.
A thought occurred to me today. If Nixon could get elected in 1968, why did I ever get carried away enough by optimism to think that Kerry could win in 2004? Maybe things just have to get truly horrific before they get better.
Posted by: miriamg | November 03, 2004 at 11:20 PM
After 20 years in the UK, during which I've been proud to retain my American citizenship and passport, I will now be applying for a British passport. I couldn't get through to the relevant Home Office line today for information, however. It wasn't because all you guys were also phoning up, was it?
Luke, your "crazy thoughts" in your latest post was also exactly what I've been thinking. I'm incapable of defending the people at home any more. A slim majority of Americans would rather focus on abortion and gay marriage, than on silly little issues like jobs, healthcare, the environment, education and a responsible foreign policy. Fuck 'em.
I feel bad about the other half of America, though. The people who value decency, tolerance, intelligence, honesty. The person I feel sorriest for is my mother, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939, and has loved her adopted country ever since and all it stood for. Her heart is breaking today to see what's become of it, and it's for her sake most of all that I hope one day things will turn around.
In the meantime, however, I'm going to finally cut the cord.
A thought occurred to me today. If Nixon could get elected in 1968, why did I ever get carried away enough by optimism to think that Kerry could win in 2004? Maybe things just have to get truly horrific before they get better.
Posted by: miriamg | November 03, 2004 at 11:20 PM
double post - sorry.
Posted by: miriamg | November 03, 2004 at 11:22 PM
I've been here 18 years and took British citizenship out a long time ago. I have my American as well. Everyone should keep both. As voting in the US affects the world. If you live here you should be involved here, be a citizen get a passport. 20 years in Britain as one respondent mentioned here without being politically involved here is also irresponsible. Dual or triple citizenship is the future. BUT VOTE IN THE US for president and vote here for local issues. Americans are so insecure about breaking links. Face it. Life is better here. But stay keep your vote. Europeans would love the chance to vote in the US. THING WE MUST DO IS REGISTER IN SWING STATES NOT NY OR CAL. Must organise a way to do this.
Posted by: callen | November 04, 2004 at 10:08 PM
Dear fellow Americans,
Please don't despair, and don't forget that almost 55.5 million people voted against Bush. You don't have to give up your citizenship because that number is more than enough to make an America of our own if necesary! (The British population, for example, is 60 million). There really is more than one face of America -- is our America any less valid or real just because Bush had a few million more votes in this election? The Republicans have discovered that using anti-gay and anti-reproductive choice platforms is an effective way to gain support by stirring up fear and hatred amongst the ignorant -- shame on them, it's disgusting. But there are still many Americans who don't swallow that rubbish, and in my lifetime I've seen many changes in attitude -- social attitudes toward gay rights for example are in many areas more progressive than they were 30 years ago. I think this is really due to the courage of gay Americans in standing up for their right for acceptance and equality and to live an open life, and that these efforts have made a difference. The current Republican anti-gay marriage platform is an attempted backlash by people who feel threatened by progress. One of the attitudes from the Bush administration and right-wing Republicans I've found most objectionable is the promotion of a 'one-voice' America -- as if winning an election negates the existence of millions of other views. I've lived in Britain for 20 years because I fell in love with a British guy and because London is a good and interesting place to live -- not because America is ideologically unacceptable. Being American is part of my family history, the experiences that formed me -- Whatever else I become -- half-British perhaps -- I'll never stop being American, whether right-wingers like me and my views or lifestyle or not. We, and people like us, are also woven into the fabric of the history that formed (and continues to form) America, for good or ill. And remember, most Americans, like most people in the world, don't have a choice of nationality.
Posted by: valerie | November 05, 2004 at 01:27 PM
Luke:
I agree with the topic of your post 100%. I live in Canada for 3 years. If you ask me what is the biggest difference between the 2 countries, it's that Canadians simply do not understand an American's passion for their country. As the soul American in an office in Calgary, I've never felt lonelier. The entire election season, they all listened to me but just kind of laugh at why I have such a passion.
I left only 4 months before 9/11 and yet every time I step foot in the US to visit, I feel foreign in my own country. When I left my America, people voted on the candidtae that put forth better ideas on important issues like health care, jobs and education. But exit polls show that the number 1 reason red staters voted for Bush was "morality".
In my America, the president governs using intelligence reports and cooperation from his cabinet and staff, not "faith". The Constitution guarantees people in my America seperation of church and stae. Yet those that vote for a candidate's view on gay marriage, abortion and religion in schools violate the very concepts that my America was founded on.
And forgive this comment because I know everyine who lives in the US will tell me to stay the hell away:
I have always admired America for its patriotism. But ever since 9/11, the flag waving is absolutely out of hand. take it from me, if Canadians don't like it, think how the rest of the world feels. In my America, you're not
"with us or against us". Replacing Take Me Out to The Ball Game with God Bless America personally offends me (I am an agnostic non-religious Jew and I do not apprciate the amount of secular intervention at public events) What happened to being proud without being an empire ?
In my America, there is no "act" diguised as patriotism that allows the government to detain ANYONE because they're coming off a plane and happen to be coming from Syria, Jordan or even Iraq.
America is so polarized, I wave my wife's Canadian passport when we travel overseas for fear of being in a country that is "against us". There may as well be an America comprised of the 2 coasts, Chicago and the Northeast and another America that has time wraped back into Richie Cunningham's world, circa 1950.
In my America, when the president gets caught deceiving the nation, public outcry forces him to resign like Nixon. In the new America, so many people feel threatened by people like Bruce Springsteen, Micheal Moore and The Dixie Chics they register to vote so they can reinforce a policy of global domination while giving up their civil righst in the meantime.
Although I do want to move back, I think my America is now confined to Interstate 5 from the border at White Rock, BC to the Tiajuana border.
Posted by: rodi | November 07, 2004 at 02:53 AM