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

[honeychurch.livejournal.com]

I live in a liberal state (New Jersey), twenty minutes outside *the* liberal-magnet city (New York), and an hour from another fairly liberal city (Philadelphia, trapped as it is in a swing state). The cities in this country who are threatened by terrorism in its real forms - New York, Washington DC - went overwhelmingly for Kerry, clearly not feeling safe. However, liberal-magnet cities are not the voice of the US - our voices are smothered, and we are dimissed as over-intellectual and unrealistic (I'm a graduate student working on my Ph.D. in English, so I'm generally dismissed by most of the American public). It doesn't matter how liberal your region is when the rest of the country dismisses you.

It's all well and good for people to say we should stay and fight, that four years isn't that long, that we should make our voices heard - but I heard that four years ago. I have been more politically active in the last four years than ever before in my life. I was among the million-plus men and women on the National Mall in April, demanding our rights to abortion, emergency contraception, reproductive services in general - and yet a man who has done more than any president to curb those rights is back in office. Bans on gay marriage passed in all eleven states where they were on the ballot - bans that also refuse recognition of civil unions and imperil the partner benefits of many gay and straight couples (so, now must you not only be heterosexual, but you may not live in sin). I'm lucky enough to live in none of those states, as well as living in a state with plenty of access to abortion and contraception; but I have trouble thinking of those in this country who do not have that access. As long as I am here, I can't bear it.

Of course, in that light, running away to another country is cowardly - but I am tired, and I am bitter. I have been shown that my voice does not matter, and I have been dismissed as a flaky intellectual with no moral values. I want there to be a mass exodus of we flaky, godless intellectuals, and that the country becomes completely fucked as a result. Or, even if it isn't, I just don't want to be a part of this circus anymore. Representative democracy is a lie - this country doesn't represent my voice at all.

I'm looking towards Canada - not only because it's the idealized Mecca of the American liberal, but because my chances of getting a job there are slightly better than in other countries (thanks to the MLA); of course, if everyone in my field leaves, that will make things more difficult....

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I agree.

But I love NYC. Love it. It is home.

But I can't stand the fact that we will take the brunt of any future attacks - and at a certain point my love for NYC is overwhelmed by my dislike of my country's politics. I feel like my ex-pat Israeli friends - they love Israel but they simply can't live there with a good conscience.

I can leave when I want. I hate to leave NYC. Momus, you know what this city is like. It's great.

But maybe it's time.