Exile

Is it really time to leave? It depends on how you see the election.

Kronstein-Rosen, Nora. Refugees, 1991.

Alienation from the American President is real. It’s also wholly precedented.

It’s what most of us experienced from November 2016 to January 6 2021, during which Trump caged children, told us to shoot bleach into our veins, and ordered his far-right brownshirts to stage a bloodbath on Congress and the Capitol police.

But alienation from America is another. That’s the kind of alienation that, in this country, puts individual madness close at hand. It puts leaving on the table. It’s the kind of alienation that makes you Google whether Ireland or Portugal or New Zealand might accept you. And then makes you panic about leaving the Americans—the zillions of Americans—who don’t have that chance.

The difference in deciding whether we’re alienated from the president or the people lies in the popular vote.

Republicans haven’t won the popular vote in ages. This is the first time in 20 years. There are more Democrats than Republicans (let alone MAGA Republicans), and, truly, most of us Americans are decent people. I can’t believe otherwise.

But since Trump won in a functional landslide this time, it seems most of us are not decent, and most of us voters are certainly not Democrats anymore.

For this reason, I and many others, probably you, now read the country—not merely Donald Trump—as fully and irrevocably depraved.