While I understand, and would probably join them if I could, it also occurs to me that the people the world needs in this country, to enact change, are the ones who are leaving.
I can only imagine wherever they move to, the people there might feel the same way about them.
My family was only American for one generation. Even if I were the second coming of John Adams, the country would have no claim on me. America raised me to believe in free republic, in cosmopolitanism and rationality, humanity, self determination, and in the inherent legitimacy of the will of the people.
It never stopped being an empire built on slavery, slavery is enshrined into law. It only briefly stopped persecuting a top-down class war, and Smedley Butler’s resistance has been all for naught. Every good value that American culture inculcated in me has been a hypocritical sham.
So we left. I never did fit in in the US, so I might as well live out my days as a misfit elsewhere. I’m like a local cryptid now, the man from a place that never existed.
You want to throw yourself into the gears of history to save a decaying empire, maybe you feel like you have no other choice? I understand that too, and even though the prospect sickens me to no end I cannot think less of anyone who chooses it. Try not to think less of me, either.
And I always will, god help me. Renouncing citizenship from the US is like loudly breaking up with a privileged abuser, liable to draw their ire and excite further persecution. No, I just emigrated to a country with a dual taxation treaty and quietly stopped paying them taxes. It is the worst vengeance I can safely enact on the villain.
UK. Being a dual citizen by birth is a bit like having one foot in the grave, and another foot in the toilet. Still, beats dropping my kid off at a school with active shooter drills.
While I understand, and would probably join them if I could, it also occurs to me that the people the world needs in this country, to enact change, are the ones who are leaving.
I can only imagine wherever they move to, the people there might feel the same way about them.
My family was only American for one generation. Even if I were the second coming of John Adams, the country would have no claim on me. America raised me to believe in free republic, in cosmopolitanism and rationality, humanity, self determination, and in the inherent legitimacy of the will of the people.
It never stopped being an empire built on slavery, slavery is enshrined into law. It only briefly stopped persecuting a top-down class war, and Smedley Butler’s resistance has been all for naught. Every good value that American culture inculcated in me has been a hypocritical sham.
So we left. I never did fit in in the US, so I might as well live out my days as a misfit elsewhere. I’m like a local cryptid now, the man from a place that never existed.
You want to throw yourself into the gears of history to save a decaying empire, maybe you feel like you have no other choice? I understand that too, and even though the prospect sickens me to no end I cannot think less of anyone who chooses it. Try not to think less of me, either.
You can still vote by mail if you don’t renounce citizenship 🤷♂️
And I always will, god help me. Renouncing citizenship from the US is like loudly breaking up with a privileged abuser, liable to draw their ire and excite further persecution. No, I just emigrated to a country with a dual taxation treaty and quietly stopped paying them taxes. It is the worst vengeance I can safely enact on the villain.
Which country? Asking for a friend, of course.
UK. Being a dual citizen by birth is a bit like having one foot in the grave, and another foot in the toilet. Still, beats dropping my kid off at a school with active shooter drills.
You probably don’t want me there trying to enact change. It’s gonna get messy.