Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Leaving America


I think now, often, of my grandparents who left their homelands in the 1890s to come to America, in order to make a better life. I have no actual information about precisely why they left their own homelands to come here. But come they did. In the case of my Scottish grandparents, they came here in the 1880s. We have a naturalization certificate dated 10/16/1893 for grandpa.  Their kids started arriving (being born) in the mid-1890s, with my mother arriving in February 1899. Now, Grandpa Inglis had little formal education, maybe the Scottish elementary school.  He had a tradecraft—carpentry, and so, after his arrival, he began working in the homebuilding trades. I am told that he built houses in Brooklyn. I even have a very dim memory of being in a house in a rural community, I guess in Brooklyn. But then we moved into Manhattan, likely because Daisy got a job in Manhattan.  We rarely moved because Rudy got a job somewhere.  Rudy rarely “got a job”.

I have to assume that my Grands left their own homelands because they believed they could no longer lead a full life there. Perhaps, the times were difficult, and, without any education, they were ill equipped to manage their lives. And so, they moved.  I think of that, but I really have difficulty understanding the enormity of such a move.  In the case of the Inglis’, Scotland was all they knew, doubtless going back multiple generations.  Moving to New York must have been seriously uprooting, and I also cannot really understand what their families back in Scotland must have felt at their move.

And so we arrive at America in the year 2020.  What would I do were I a 20-something, and fresh out of school, hopefully Uni?  Well, I know I would be doing something to support a replacement candidate for our current idiot-in-chief. Having survived, just barely, almost four years of Trump, I now believe the United States will not survive four more years.  It is as though he has set about to systematically destroy the very fabric of our Nation.  With every breath he opens greater crevices in American society. He seems to specialize in causing people to hate others, fear-mongering, race-baiting, general hatred of “the other”.  But he is also systematically dismantling the structures and institutions that have been erected over several centuries to safeguard the republic. He has been busy eliminating regulatory safeguards, especially ones intended to minimize climate change, but also ones intended to rein in the worst instincts of capitalism. And his judicial appointments are almost uniformly destructive of a civilized world.  And then there’s that “rest of the world” thing. He has also been systematically destroying our relationships with other nations, especially ones with whom we have been allied over many decades.

So, what will happen were he to be granted another four years?  He would, I predict only get worse and more destructive. Since he appears to have no idea what he is doing, his actions may become more sharply destructive. His narcissistic sociopathy seems to know no bounds. It is almost as though he really does not understand just how destructive he is—maybe because on top of everything else, he seems amazingly ignorant and, yes, stupid.

So, what would I be thinking were I, say 20-25? Well, I think I would be thinking of doing what my grandparents did—leaving this United States of America.  I would be at the early stages of planning my departure, should that awful event occur.  But the problem is where would I want to go? The pandemic will not yet be over, likely not until a year or so after a vaccine is actually developed.  So, wherever I might go, it would have to be a nation willing to take me, and in which I might stand a reasonable chance of finding a lifetime career path.  Not too many countries spring easily to mind. Right off, Canada seems way better than life in America. Also, I would be looking seriously at New Zealand. Unfortunately, Australia seems as bad as America.  And unless I began learning one or more foreign languages, much of Europe seems difficult, however much I might wish to move there.

So, I imagine the task of finding a replacement country would not be an easy one.  But the alternative just seems to me too awful to contemplate. Living in America during a second Trump term seems potentially catastrophic. I almost cannot imagine the prospect.

Being in my now mid-80s I have no chance to even consider moving anywhere. So, whatever happens in the upcoming election, we will have to simply hunker down, and maybe stay permanently socially isolated.  But I fear for our children, and even more for our grandchildren. They require a humane, civilized country in which to live, work, and raise their own children.  America under Trump is and would in the future no longer be such a place. Migrating is such a difficult charge. But, I believe that, under another Trump period, living here is simply unsustainable. Surely there exists some other place on this globe that is a real civilization. 

Surely.

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