Trump Is a Moment. Your Life Is Not.
Why reacting to political horror isn’t the same as building a future abroad
The United States of America is an unmitigated disaster right now. The place can be bad enough when things are going relatively well. Now, it has officially crossed a line that transcends pathetic.
I don’t need to tell you why. You know. From ICE to Greenland, no sane person should be able to support what they see. The days of blaming lack of education, lack of experience, or decades of Fox News propaganda are over.
Maybe Democratic control after the mid-terms—if they even happen—will be enough. But—right now—that feels like an all-too-easy and comfortable hook to hang your hat on. A true, wholesale Republican revolt or—better yet—the military refusing to follow orders from their commander-in-chief might be the only answer.
Due—in part—to the political climate, I have no plans to go back to the United States anytime soon. I used to consider that an extreme statement. But we’re well past nothing would surprise me territory. As Americans at home and abroad, you have no choice but to not trust your own government.
I’ve criticized my country since I started writing 20 years ago and never did I feel as uneasy as I do when I criticize it now.
That said—
I didn’t leave the United States for purely political reasons, which has me thinking a lot lately about the people doing just that. A recent Politico Europe story says Valencia is now the number one destination—ahead of Madrid and Barcelona—for Americans fleeing the Trump administration. Some people asked to remain anonymous or refused to participate for fear of retribution.
What has the country where I was born become?
As I think about these political refugees—that’s what they consider themselves—I have competing thoughts:
They’re privileged and diluting the experience of true asylum seekers around the world.
They have reason to be scared. Like I said, I feel it inside me as I write critically.
What happens when they get here? When they discover that they can’t quite connect with Spaniards—with Europeans—on Trump and politics the way they do with fellow Americans? Because, as I wrote last week, people here don’t wear your politics on their sleeve. So will these people bubble up with fellow Americans, which isn’t good for Spain or conducive to having a much broader experience of living life in a foreign country.
The Politico story was well-done—there’s a link to it at the end of today’s post—but it’s just another surface-level presentation of the obvious. Of what we already know or could easily and accurately assume.
I want to know what happens next.
I want to understand the feelings people suppress or only experience after arrival when they’re forced to make choices:
Do I bubble up in search of comfort?
Do I externalize and complain when I feel discomfort?
Or do I honestly examine how I feel when my competence and sense of belonging and being understood isn’t automatic like it was back “home?”
This is the less glamorous stuff.
It doesn’t make for quite as clickable a headline as—In Valencia, fleeing Trump: The stories of disillusioned and fearful U.S. families seeking refuge from MAGA in Spain.
But it’s the stuff that actually ends up mattering. Because moving abroad isn’t only about escaping these—no mincing words here—disgusting people.
So, even with things more than unstable, institutions being trashed, trust non-existent, and people being abused and gaslit—
Political collapse ≠ personal collapse
Cultural rot ≠ temperament mismatch
Rage ≠ readiness for change
