On departing the U.S. (simulcast at contentgoeshere.com)

[substitute]

Since a lot of my Internet-linked friends and acquaintances are either liberals, libertarians, or leftists I have heard a lot lately about leaving the U.S. because of disgust with or fear of the current government and their policies.

Let's talk sense about this.

1. You can't just "move to Canada" or Sweden or France or the U.K. or anywhere, really. Unless you're independently wealthy and/or retired it just doesn't work that way. You have to go through an immigration process and it's long and painful. It can easily take years for even an experienced professional with a job offer to get through the thicket of bureaucracy that any well-run country erects for immigrants.
   
   
2. You can't run from Imperial America. Canada is an especially laughable choice here; when we sneeze, they get a cold. The long arm of U.S. power extends to every place in the world, certainly to every place you could stand living. Go up there and watch things get worse here if you want. At some point an apologetic Mountie will arrive to explain that you're being deported back because of a joint security agreement.
   
   
3. Foreign countries, surprisingly, are different. The peculiar luxuries, freedoms, and opportunities of our country will not be present there. Things cost a lot more, the weather is different, and the justice system may shock you. If you're not already an experienced traveler who enjoys surprises and strangeness, it's entirely possible you'll hate everywhere but home.
   
   
4. Cowardice is not rewarded, either in respect or in results. Stay and fight for what you believe. Whether you are a libertarian who despises Ashcroft's new police state, a liberal who rejects warmongering and theocracy, or a core leftist despairing at corporate America, there is work to be done here. Defeatism is a self-fulfilling apocalypse.
   

In sum, don't leave unless you have another good reason to do so and a plan for achieving it. The wealth and privilege and freedoms you have as your birthright carry with them the obligation to serve your country in its time of need. Be a citizen first for a change. If you leave here, your new home will demand no less of you.

Comments

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

OTOH, if you stay in America, your taxes, creativity and economic activity go to feed the BushCo machine. And if you stay to change things, you'll still be outnumbered by the stupids who have more children.

Not to mention the very real possibility that, soon enough, Bush's America may decide that it needs you after all... as cannon fodder.

sure

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I just don't see the virtue in abandoning my countrymen to that fate and making it worse.

I can also give my money and creative activity to the opposition.

Re: sure

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

You don't have to abandon anyone; when you're abroad, you can still vote in the US, keep abreast of the issues, and can still donate money to campaigns. (In fact, if the US$ declines further, your donations from abroad will be worth more.)

Re: sure

[substitute.livejournal.com]

Still have to pay taxes back home. My only win there would be better food, assuming I went to Italy or France.

Re: sure

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Let me get this straight: if you're a US citizen abroad, even if all your income comes from the country you are in, you have to pay two sets of income tax (local and US) on it, just because you're a US citizen?

That doesn't happen to any other nationality; I'm an Australian citizen in the UK, and won't have to pay Australian taxes on my UK income.

Re: sure

[substitute.livejournal.com]

apparently not, according to what Elaine is saying.

I still personally feel it's my duty to stay. This is the most powerful country in the world, and leaving the worst in charge of it and walking away seems both suicidal and immoral.

Walking away

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Is it absolutely immoral, or does it depend on the circumstances? In some conditions, if one's country was too far gone, would fleeing for abroad become morally justifiable?

I imagine that a lot of Jews in 1930s Germany made similar arguments against abandoning their cosmopolitan, vibrant homeland to Hitler and his thugs, and paid grieviously for it. I'm not saying that America is at this stage, though if things get too bad to stay on, will you know sufficiently well in advance to get out while you still can?

Re: Walking away

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I don't know yet. It's not 1933 yet, though. I don't see the President's private army roughing up opposition politicians, much less building concentration camps.

And if we must ring the Godwin gong (it was inevitable), all those people who keep talking about moving to Canada should remember how happy and relieved people were to get out of Germany into a nice safe Czech or Polish town. Whew! He'll never find us here! DING DONG PANZERS.

Really, though, I think it's an insult to the terrible suffering of those times to compare the current election's result to 1930s Germany.

Re: Walking away

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Firstly, Godwin's law doesn't mean "thou shalt not refer to the Third Reich as a metaphor". And comparing the polarised, intolerant, anti-liberal, post-Patriot Act mood in Bush's America to Germany around the rise of Hitler is not the same as comparing it to the Holocaust.

Secondly, those Jews who fled to America, or Argentina or Britain or South Africa, lived. (Those who fled to Poland or Czechoslovakia early on would have had a chance of moving to higher ground from there, which was more than those who stayed behind did.)

Though to keep the metaphor valid, it's not just the Jews we should be talking about here, but liberal-minded Germans; the numerous artists and architects and playwrights and intellectuals and homosexuals and freethinkers and cosmopolitanists, or in short the liberals, to whom Hitler's new, monoculturally primitivist Germany said "you do not belong here". (Which, incidentally, is why America got such an influx of talented film directors and such around that time.) The Bush team has not singled out any group for extermination (though they do like to whale on the gays a bit), though it has sent an unambiguous message to America's liberals: "you do not belong in our America". And it looks like, in today's polarised America, this message has majority support.

Re: Walking away

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I think we should probably stop this thread, since it's getting dangerously close to a fight between people who agree on almost everything, which is dumb.

I still maintain that it's not too late, that things change, and that there is a lot of hope for a better America. And I will still stay. I think it's important to do so and that things have not gotten anywhere near 1933, with the possible exception of GLBT folks whom I would not blame at all for leaving.

You've made a lot of damned good points but at this point I think I'll have to agree to disagree.

Re: Walking away

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Best of luck, and keep fighting the good fight.

Re: sure

[(Anonymous)]

What do you mean when you say that America is "the most powerful country in the world"? I'm sorry if this question is tedious. But what standards for "power" do you use when asserting that America is the most powerful?

America has the strongest military, but what does this mean? If there are potentially several countries that could destroy the whole world, America is definitely one of them. However, is America more powerful because it can hypothetically destroy the same area several more times than its next-most powerful competitor, or with more sophisticated weapons than this competitor?

Do you use diplomatic power as a metric? Diplomacy is unquestionably a powerful tool in the modern world climate. However America fails consistently to create and maintain healthy diplomatic relationships with even countries that have been our allies traditionally.

There are other countries with lower unemployment rates, longer life expectancies, and shorter work weeks. What does it mean to say that America is more powerful than they are?

I'm sorry. I'm not sure how I stumbled over this entry, and if I'm not welcome, I'll leave. But the statement that America is the "most powerful in the world" seems to be taken for granted by a large amount of people. What reasons do you have personally for invoking this statement?

Re: sure

[substitute.livejournal.com]

When I said "most powerful" I was referring to the military and economic reach of the United States, and particularly to my country's capacity for causing harm worldwide.

You seem to have interpreted it as a generic superlative meaning "best", which isn't what was intended at all.

In context, the point is that I feel responsible for my country's actions and obligated to participate in politics for the good of the entire world because of our often disastrous strength.

Re: sure

[stimps.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the rules between Commonwealth countries, but I am pretty sure they differ from others. There are lots of crazy exceptions for people who permanently reside in one Commonwealth country and work in another. I don't think you can compare it to trying to move to a non-Commonwealth country.

Re: sure

[(Anonymous)]

we pay about the same taxes here as we did in the US...difference being that people here get healthcare and education....but not militia going around the world spending several billion per month. You don't have to pay taxes back to the US....save maybe social security...depends on the country. Taxes are not a good enough reason not to escape Conrad.

Re: sure

[substitute.livejournal.com]

I was making a different point actually; my reply was to the problem of enriching the evil empire with my labors, not to the question of avoiding taxes in order to keep my money.

Re: sure

[pbd.livejournal.com]

This is interesting, I did not know about this rule. I thought you would have to pay US taxes regardless of where you lived.

http://www.irs.gov/publications/p54/ch04.html

"If you meet certain requirements, you may qualify for the foreign earned income and foreign housing exclusions and the foreign housing deduction.

If you are a U.S. citizen or a resident alien of the United States and you live abroad, you are taxed on your worldwide income. However, you may qualify to exclude from income up to $80,000 of your foreign earnings. In addition, you can exclude or deduct certain foreign housing amounts. See Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and Foreign Housing Exclusion and Deduction, later."

Re: sure

[(Anonymous)]

Coming from someone who saw the fundy republic coming and who has, in fact, marginally survived moving to another county...Do it, do it now if you can. The first thing to fall will be Roe v. Wade and everything after that will just be icing on the cake. Barring a civil war, liberals will have no home in the US, over the next four years and possibly ever. Get a grip and get the fuck out. I know I won't be flying home anytime soon as Osama got just what he wanted. Bail. While you still can. Shit ain't that hard to get outside the US and you won't really miss it...save maybe for cheese-its and corn dogs. There is no honor in sticking with a losing team.

Re: sure

[substitute.livejournal.com]

We've had this conversation before. I think we just need to agree to disagree. Besides, you had other reasons; you married someone from there!

There is honor in sticking with a losing team that might still win. It isn't 1933 yet and it probably will not be.

I survived Reagan; we'll survive this.

Re: sure

[(Anonymous)]

True...but Reagan wasn't a religious born again freak and I wouldn't have moved here without knowing that America is/was fucked. Going down with the ship is a romantic notion...the rest of us know that jumping ship is a good way to survive. Once he gets 2 surpremes, it's all over. Look at the rest of the elections. It's too late......

Reagan not a born-again freak?

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

I believe Reagan was a born-again Christian Fundamentalist. For one, he did have his street renumbered because his house had the number 666.

Re: Reagan not a born-again freak?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

He was and he wasn't. He promised those nuts everything but basically ripped them off. All he really wanted to do was get his friends rich while waging war on the left. The moral conservatives got very little out of him.

Bush is far scarier; he appears to be a true believer and makes decisions based on religious intuition. He's what Reagan pretended to be, I think.

Re: sure

[xtreme-pr0k.livejournal.com]

All you need is the third term. Once the almighty W gets to run for a third term, we're fux0red. And once he wins, I don't think there'll be much more than a couple years before the cleansing.

Re: sure

[fimmtiu.livejournal.com]

Might still win how? Jesus Christ, I was scared enough by the thought that the present Supreme Court is considered "moderate". Rehnquist* is about to kick off, and the odds of one of the others dying in the next 4 years are pretty good. If they get the next presidential election as well, they'll certainly get to pick another seat or two. The thought of what they'll be able to accomplish with the entire government, the plutocracy, and the media in the hands of far-right fundamentalist conservatives makes me piss myself in fear. Oh, right, and the companies that manufacture voting machines.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of "fighting" I'd be able to do in the States, had I stayed. There's no tangible enemy to fight. The enemies are greed and ignorance, and those are time-honoured traditions in human behaviour that haven't changed at all in the past 5,000 years. I mean, look at Iraq. It's been over a year now, and it's been conclusively proven that Iraq didn't actually have any weapons of mass destruction. Even El Presidente eventually admitted that publicly. Yet here's a poll from last week which found that half of all Americans still believe that Iraq was building nukes and supporting al-Qaeda. There's no demonstration or public debate that can change these people's minds, because they stopped thinking a long time ago and are just sucking their opinions from Fox News' foul teat. The fruits of the Republicans' gutting of the public education system are a generation of apathetic drones, and it's not like that's getting any better. What kind of "fight" can any given person put up that will force people who are comfortable with not thinking to think?

I'm not a hero. I'm tired to the core of waking up every morning and cursing mankind when I read the news. The sheer frustration of watching people mindlessly fall in line behind this shit despite everyone else's efforts is making me a more bitter and hateful person every day. I just can't keep it up and keep my will to live at the same time. So yes, I'm being a coward and a defeatist. But it beats battering my head against the wall of human stupidity until the social and political pendulum eventually swings back left, or jumping off a bridge. At this rate I doubt, however, that we'll see things swing back in our lifetimes.

(* Another fellow Milwaukeeite, incidentally. I didn't know that.)