Garrison Keillor: Think Moving Abroad Will Save You From Trump? Think Again. [View all]

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35844-think-moving-abroad-will-save-you-from-trump-think-again

When I lived in Copenhagen long ago, I knew some Americans who had gone there years before to escape being drafted and sent to Vietnam. They did okay. Copenhagen is fairly Anglophonic, so you needn’t go to school for months to learn how to order coffee and a sandwich. They came to appreciate the egalitarianism, the fried herring, the cobblestone squares, the secularity. They learned to say rodgrod med flode. They fell in love with Danish women, which is the best way to learn Danish, since you will likely beget children, who will speak their mother’s tongue, and children are excellent teachers because they’re not aware they’re doing it, so by the time your child is 15, you’ll know the right Danish to be cool. Totally. But still there were gaps that couldn’t be filled: Danish rock-and-roll is too studied, and politics is way sedate, and in football, you can’t pick up the ball and carry it — you must push it around with your feet or bounce it off your head, which is ridiculous. One night you find yourself in a bar in Osterbro and you hear that Harmon Killebrew died and you’re the only one who could care.

Exile is no bed of roses. If you go to a foreign country to escape the Big Snapper, you will run into him wherever you go. Foreigners hear your voice, and it’s like you’re wearing a big red A around your neck — they’ll ask you about the Snapper, and how could America be so hopelessly stupid as to elect this blowhard ignoramus to lead the Free World? In Boise or Tampa or Kansas City, you’re not a spokesperson for America, you’re just a great lover, a cool dude, and a smart cookie — let de Tocqueville figure out what it means to be American, you go pursue life and liberty and have a cheeseburger — but when you go abroad, suddenly you’re hauling a knapsack full of nationality. I spent time in Europe during the George W. Bush era; I know.