Should I Stay Or Should I Go? Am I Ready To Live Like A Refugee?

Bob Dylan once told me (well, not personally) that I should “know my song well before I start singing.” But this is ridiculous.

It’s been over two years since Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong told a packed London Stadium that he was renouncing his American citizenship. Whether he meant that literally or figuratively, I don’t know, but I think it’s safe to say he was unhappy with the good old USA.

My friend Peter Montgomery didn’t like this attitude, posting on his Facebook page that it was “the height of privilege” to talk about leaving when “blacks and gays and women and those who believe in freedom need to fight for the future of our country.” It’s hard to argue with a sentiment like that, but of course I did.

Sometimes, I said, it makes sense to fight. Other times, it’s best to run away (whether or not you intend to fight another day). The determining factor should be nothing more complicated than this: do you have a realistic chance of winning. Peter seemed to think we did. I was not so sure.

Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, there’s an element of magical thinking when it comes to “American democracy.” In theory, it’s always possible to seek a more perfect union through our voting rights, our freedom of speech, and, when necessary, our right to protest. But what happens if in practice that’s no longer true?

What had set Billie off was the same thing that left me thoroughly disillusioned: a handful of unelected right-wing religious fanatics on the Supreme Court, in no way representing the will of the people, had stripped American women of their hard-won reproductive rights.

And there wasn’t a damn thing anybody could do about it. You could march around Washington in a pink hat and chant clever slogans, but it’s meaningless noise to the people on the Supreme Court. They don’t care. They don’t have to. They have dictatorial power. Short of a massive and highly unlikely shift in the balance of power in Congress, there is no way to remove or restrain these American ayatollahs. Several of them gained their positions by dubious and possibly criminal means, but they retain the power to overrule any law, any program, no matter how strongly it’s supported by the people.

That’s why, I said to Peter, I could see why someone would choose to leave the country rather than stay to fight what looked like a doomed battle. In fact, I was thinking about leaving myself.

I told him I’d take a few days to gather my thoughts and reply to him in greater detail. Two-plus years later… Well, much has changed, both for worse and – surprisingly – better.

Writing about it would, I thought, help me make my own decision. Thanks to my mother having had the consideration and foresight to be born in Ontario, I am Canadian as well as American, so, unlike a lot of people, I had options.

Staying and fighting didn’t have the visceral appeal it did in the 1960s, when I was convinced that the United States was on the verge of revolution, civil war, or total societal collapse. At the time, that prospect seemed terribly exciting. Maybe it still would today, if I were 20 years old and high on drugs much of the time. Physical fitness is not the only reason the army recruits teenagers and 20-somethings to fight its wars: they’re also among the few crazy enough to think it might be fun. I generally avoid saying “I’m too old for (insert strenuous and/or dangerous activity),” but in the case of wars and revolutions, I’ll make an exception.

But what if, as I suspect Peter believed, “fighting” just meant knocking on doors, contributing to candidates, getting out the vote, etc.? I could get behind that if I thought it might work, but what about the thoroughly unrepresentative and gerrymandered electoral system, not to mention, as I already have, that darned Supreme Court?

I feel a bit cowardly in admitting it, but I’m not sure I have the energy to drag myself out into the streets again. A strongly worded letter to the editor or your favorite social media site, sure, but to paraphrase Phil Ochs, it’s unlikely I’ll be doing any marching in the foreseeable future.

The problem with taking so long to finish an opinion piece – or to decide what one’s opinion is – is that circumstances can change in the meantime. There seems to be some sign of that happening, with what was looking like an inevitable and perhaps permanent return to power for Donald Trump suddenly looking like not such a sure thing after all. But Trump, while a glaringly obvious indicator of what’s wrong with the USA, is far from being its only problem.

In a genuine democracy he never would have been more than a marginally popular crackpot, having lost both elections by millions of votes, but in our very strange version of “democracy-lite” he was able to become president once, and came perilously close to seizing power a second time.

Trump never had nor is he likely ever to have the support of more than a minority of Americans, but under our system that’s all he needs (Hitler got a similar percentage of the German vote before deciding further elections were unnecessary). But minority or not, there are still millions of people who believe unswervingly in his nonsense, and the prospect of living among them is more than slightly unsettling.

Trump and his followers may be the most obvious symptom of a dysfunctional body politic, but they’re far from the only one. In addition to religious extremists who’d like to see America become a theocracy, we’ve got the hard left identitarians with their phantasmagorical take on reality and implacable insistence that there is no difference between Trump and whatever candidate the Democrats put up (millions of women who lost their reproductive rights might like to have a word). I grew up in a labor union-supporting, antiwar, borderline socialist family, but even my father, who was more left-wing than me, would be tearing out his hair at the gibberish they’re spouting these days.

It’s the absolutism that scares me the most. Tens of millions of Americans are historically, politically, economically, and literally illiterate, yet the less they know, the more certain they are of themselves (or of what they most recently read on the internet). Green Day’s rock opera American Idiot was not just a metaphor.

Having said that, I’ll probably have made enough Americans mad at me that getting out of the country makes sense from a self-preservation point of view. Joking aside, everyone from Alexis de Tocqueville to Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew has observed that democracy only works with a large, educated, civic-minded middle class. This is something the US distinctly lacks, though at one time we were at least working on it.

Countries, like people, have ups and downs. Though the USA is going through a particularly rough patch right now, I’m cautiously optimistic – though by no means certain – that it will pull through. But I guess I’m not willing to wait and see, so as of now I’m a full-time Canadian who only wishes the best for his former country. I will watch with great interest what happens next, just not from too close up.

I’m (hopefully) under no delusions. Canada is nowhere near far enough from the US to be unaffected by what happens there, and in any event, it suffers from some of the same problems as the US. If my cautious optimism pays off and the US successfully reverses course from its flirtation with disaster, I might feel a little foolish, but at the same time, I’ve always felt at home in Canada, and my stress levels have dropped dramatically since heading north.

I do feel a bit shamefaced about facetiously referring to myself as a “refugee.” My struggle, such as it is, is a minor inconvenience compared to what actual refugees go through. I’m already a citizen, already speak the language (both languages, actually), and above all, I retain the option to change my mind and go back. Millions of actual refugees can only dream of a situation like that.

So I’ve been very lucky (once again, thanks, Mom!), and I have to weigh that against any sadness I might feel about leaving the USA behind. If you want to call me a coward for running away, knock yourself out; trust me, I wouldn’t be much use in your revolution (or your fascist tyranny) anyway. Regardless of how you feel about it, I would offer a suggestion: if you have any family connections to another country, look into the possibility of getting a second (or third) passport. It’s often quite easy, and even if it’s not that easy, it will be a lot harder if not impossible if everything goes pear-shaped. Many people dithered too long about getting out of Europe during the runup to World War II, and paid for that indecision with their lives.

Too dark? I hope so. I hope we all live happily ever after, and that every country, especially both of mine, works out its problems in a just and humane way. For most of my life the USA was very good to me, despite my best efforts to screw things up. I was able to get an excellent education, to pursue a career in music and writing, and never – I almost feel a little guilty about this – even had to work that terribly hard. I’ve spent time in all 50 states, revelled in the splendour as well as the squalor, and though I write these words from the other side of the border, I will always be grateful for what you gave me, America. God speed and fare thee well.