slot park Running Away From Trump’s America Is Complicated. I Should Know.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s sweeping victory, liberals are once again making the same anguished declaration whenever a Republican wins the presidency, at least in recent decades: It’s time to flee the country.
But as someone who left the United States because of its culture and governance not once, but twice, I have some advice: Don’t let the politics of fear displace you. It’s much more important to find your compatriots and to create a life worth living, no matter where that is.
There is a much-repeated cliché about people following the vagabond life. You are either running away from something or running toward something. But as all good vagabonds know, a destination is more than a point on a map. Those who profess they want to flee a Trump presidency, who see ruin on the horizon, would benefit from imagining what it is they want instead of reacting to what they fear.
The first time I left the United States with no return ticket, I was not yet an adult. I was disgusted by U.S. involvement in arming the contras, the rebels fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government; the increased power of the conservative agenda, including hostility to unions; and the burgeoning polarization of the culture wars.
I quickly fell in with others who also had no desire to return to their homes. Some had been traveling for a decade. We were fruit pickers, buskers, panhandlers and hotel workers. Some fell into homelessness; others got lucky with house-sits or bartending jobs.
We saw worlds outside our home countries, fell in love, found places we’d dreamed of and did what it took to stay there. For me that place was Athens. This was before the internet and the smartphone. If you wanted to get lost, you could.
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