Exit this Roman shell

[imomus]

For those of you thinking of leaving America today -- and there are many, I'm sure -- I'd say just do it. Walk away. Leaving Britain is the best thing I ever did. I lived for years there feeling like a political and cultural exile, trying to fight back with satire and a thousand subtle forms of stubbornness and resistance. But being an 'internal exile' is not good for the soul. My struggle with attitudes which seemed toxic to me started making me as hard, cynical and corrupt as the people and the attitudes I was fighting.

Soon I realised that British people were not going to change. At least not in my short lifetime. My contribution was never going to be accepted in that country. It was much easier to get up and go. You can change the world around you by simply getting on a plane and going to the place where they think like you, even if they don't speak the same language you speak. So I went to live in France. In Germany. In Japan. I became a world citizen.

I started to think in terms of cities, and even districts of cities, rather than nations. I made my own cut and paste environment, a place where I felt comfortable and valued. I selected its elements from the internet and the parts of the cities I loved and went to live in. I count the moment I left my incorrigible homeland as the moment my adult life really began. I am now a much happier and better adjusted person.

So just leave. America doesn't deserve you. Walk away. America doesn't need your talent, your creativity and your intelligence. Or rather, it needs them desperately, but it will never acknowledge that. It's too stupid to understand that. If it calls for you, it will call for you for the wrong reasons. It will call you up as a soldier. It will call for you as canon-fodder in some spurious and unnecessary war that serves the interests of 1% of its population and an even smaller percentage of the world's population. Even if it lets you live in relative peace as a mere civilian, it will force you to live in ways that destroy the world's weather systems and its environment. It will use your tax to fund pre-emptive wars of aggressive imperialism against impoverished nations with energy resources.

Leave while you still can. Leave as a civilian, not a soldier. Leave and lead the life you were born to lead. Your absence will hurt America economically, but it deserves that. And it doesn't deserve you.

Get a passport, get a visa. Work a job, save some money. Come to Europe, come to Japan. Life is more civilised here. Come as you are, come to work, come to play, come to stay. Make love to foreigners, not Americans. Make non-American babies. Make your children world citizens, as you make yourself one.

Then you know in your brain
Leave the capitol!
Exit this roman shell!
Then you know you must leave the capitol

Leave the capitol!
Exit this roman shell!

It will not drag me down
I will leave this ten times town
I will leave this fucking dump
One room, one room

(The Fall, 'Leave The Capitol')

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

dear momus,

thanks so much for this post. its so encouraging, and echoes the exact sentiment that i have come to develop in the last year or two. there is so much creative energy, so many genuine, inventive, and intellectual people in america. seriously SO many. if i hadn't started to find some of them by my late teenage years, i could have been dead by now.

but that nation is not ours. it will be far more effective to let the US implode in its own grossly bloated romance with bigness, self-importance, and so-called 'moral-values' by deserting it, than by trying to change shit. im sure it won't come in our lifetimes, but someday there will be a world without nations. as it is, the citizens of every other country deserve to elect the american president more than we do. bush, kerry? what difference does it make for those living within our borders? either way we'll go on living in ultra comfort, guzzling gasoline as the price rises to ten dollars a gallon and beyond.

for my part i am going to act like said nation-free world is already here now. and i would encourage anyone with similar feelings to just up and get the fuck out. there are a lot of us, and if we all leave, all the artists, writers, intellectuals, scientists, and just good people in general, america will suffocate, and the condition of the world as a whole will get a whole lot better. so please, if you ever had the first thought about it, do it. if we all leave now, we'll even be able to see a strong imact in our lifetimes.

-shane

a californian writing from tokyo