Running From Trump: America Calls Its Own Bluff

Photo: freedomsphoenix.com

I had a bit in my stand up routine where I mocked all those who vowed to evacuate the United States following the presidential election. When I performed it, I said it applied to people fearing both Hilary and Trump, but in writing it, I really only had the Trump opposition in mind.

It went along the lines of, “To everyone planning on packing up and getting out for the next four years, wherever you go, I hope you realize that at some point you’re going to have to explain that you are an American political refugee.”

On paper of course, it’s a ridiculous notion. I need provide little evidence why America, despite its many, many imperfections, is one of the most privileged places to live in the world. We have: a high standard of living, public education, clean water, more food than we bother to consume, tremendously progressive social policies (in most places), and in terms of popular culture and entertainment, it’s hard to dispute that America isn’t the epicenter of everything that matters. I can go on like this for a long while.

Compared to what the millions of refugees in the Middle East, Central America and Africa are running from, we would be fools to abandon what we have, the relatively luxurious lives many of us are so fortunate to simply be born into.

The bit then proceeds into a two-way conversation between a hypothetical American refugee and a native of the land they now call home, which for the sake of realism I will label as a Canadian. It progresses along these lines.

Canadian: So you moved here ‘cause of the election, ey?

American: Yeah man, I just had to get out of the states. Shit was hitting the fan real hard. I had to dig up my roots while I still could. So happy that I did.

Canadian: I didn’t realize your Civil War had gotten that bad.

American: Civ, Civil War?

Canadian: Yeah, you know, the culmination of all the political turmoil that resulted in the collapse of your infrastructure, scarcity of food, water and other necessities, and the complete cessation of life and society as you once knew it?

American: Yeah, uh, I don’t remember any of that happening. At all.

Canadian: THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE?

And yet, despite all that, the first I did this morning, November 9th, following five hours of anxious sleep that didn’t come easy, was go online and try to learn the process for applying to graduate schools in the United Kingdom.

The whole “If x becomes President, I’m history” claim isn’t new to this year. It was quite pervasive on social media in 2012, which obviously means it was as well in 2008. I’m not sure how many folks actually went through with it. A few probably did, not enough for it to become a news story apparently, and I had always interpreted the idea as the loud bark of a toothless dog.

The song was a little different then too. It was conservatives running in fear a left wing President, specifically (and importantly), a black left wing President. It didn’t make a whole lot sense for them. As David Sedaris said in one of his essays in Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls, “Where are you going to go, right wing Europe?”

But now the situation is more plausible. The talk is coming from liberals, and I assume some moderates, wanting escape from a right wing President. And fleeing to Canada, where medicine is socialized and there is no fear of an Evangelical Christian legion assuming control, sounds like a chilly paradise.

And while our lives are incomparable to the true refugees around the world whose villages were reduced to rubble and who know they can never go back, the emotions that led them to leave are the same as ours now: anger and fear. Conceivably to a lesser extent, particularly with fear, but I swear to you both have been very real and very persistent within me and many others for the last 18 hours; and will be for a time to come.

I truly do not believe it is empty talk this time around. One of my closest friends is already working on his VISA application and researching the Canadian job market. People probably won’t migrate in droves, but I estimate the figure won’t be one to ignore. It’s also worth mentioning that as it became more certain in the news that Trump was bound to win, Canada’s webpage on its immigration process crashed from excessive traffic.

I suppose it makes sense for us Americans to leave our country in disgust at the result of a presidential election. After all, we’re less than 300 years old and, save for the Native Americans whom we nearly eradicated in merciless fashion, we’re all either immigrants or the recent descendants of immigrants.

What led our parents, grandparents or close ancestors to move to America? They didn’t like where they were living, and set out for a destination that they didn’t know much about, but had a vague idea was better. Our nation was quite literally populated on the sentiment of, ‘Screw this, I’m leaving.’

I’m willing to be that at half of the people who caused Canada’s immigration website to crash on Election Night couldn’t name all its provinces or the Prime Minister, and don’t know that Quebec is pronounced Kebec. I’ll admit that I don’t know a whole lot about England, save for what my Dad (a British born immigrant himself) has told me, and what I learned from Bill Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island. My knowledge of Brexit and its consequences are superficial at best, and I have no knowledge of how I would fare economically over there.

But what do I know about Britain? Their Prime Minister isn’t sociopathic fascist with a raging theocrat at his right hand, who are on track erase half a century of social and economic progress. Right now, that’s good enough for me.