I concur, as an expat.

Barring extreme circumstances‡, one should not moving from the country of one’s birth, but to the country of one’s choice. I emigrated from the U.S. two decades ago to Canada, because of the person who later became my wife—but I had to decide that I could live with Canada, too. Family aside, nothing in the U.S. either held me to America or was pushing me from America.

The process took almost two years, and it was almost five years before I got Canadian citizenship. As I understand it, it would take longer now.

My wife and I are considering moving to Europe or the U.K., but it would take time for this move to materialize, and we need to figure out what it is that we want (especially given our ages). Such a move is not likely to happen for two to five years at this point.

‡ There are exigent circumstances where it becomes safer to leave one country with little care for where one goes, as long as it isn’t worse. I fear with the extremists taking power legitimately and illegitimately and pushing toward their increasingly apartheid goals, there will be larger classes of people who could legitimately become refugees from America, especially if "liberal" states turn extremist—as they seem likely to do, since the divide here is (mostly old, mostly white) rural vs (mostly younger, mostly diverse) urban.

Sitting where I sit, I truly think that America is fucked, and am doing what little that I can to make sure that Canada does not follow in its footsteps, but we have our homegrown extremists whose crypto-christo-fascist messages are being treated with bemusement to respect, and even being promoted by fools like Poilievre.

Yeah, to be clear, I'm not running away from America. I'm in a similar situation where my partner wants to move to Germany (in a couple years), and I think that sounds like a swell idea.

If you stay you are giving them your work and taxes, potentially your children.

It's better to gtfo.

Some people are deriving plasure from fighting the fights even at high personal cost. But most people don't.

Your top responsibility is to yourself, to make the best of the short time you have. Fighting loosing fights doesn't seem to be that for most people.

We can't take the natural resources, benefits of geography, and nuclear weapons with us, so those we leave behind will inherit a very powerful nation. Something to think about.

You can't inherit something you have stolen.

> Your top responsibility is to yourself, to make the best of the short time you have.

Ironically this is the mindset behind keeping the coal plants online.

Every mindset can justify every action if you sufficiently want it.

I've been pondering this myself. At a certain point, in places going downhill, like Venezuela or Russia, the smart move is just to get out. Tough to decide when that moment is, though, I guess.

It's not just about chronic malignant threats like those countries; it's also about acute threats. Take as an example, if you were Ukrainian, you had about 2 months of runway during which there was ample evidence Russia was going to invade Ukraine and the country would likely be flattened. And yet, when Russia did invade Ukraine, there were throngs of people trying to escape. I'm not talking about people who are disabled or immobile, I'm talking about middle class people who simply thought they had more time and didn't want to disrupt their life for nothing. See also Afghans in Kabul, who thought either the Taliban wouldn't win or they'd have several more months to get their lives in order.

This is also a popular trope in fiction. In the recent Handmaid's Tale series, there are several episodes devoted to life immediately before the fall, and what you see is a lot of evidence stuff is going to hit a crisis point, and a lot of people insisting that it hasn't quite yet.

Obviously the threshold to act has to be fairly high -- and I'm not saying America is Kabul or Kyiv or Gilead -- but I think there's nothing wrong with listening to the part of your brain that says "wow, it feels like the shit is imminently going to hit the fan". Because if you wait until it actually does, you'll have significantly less capacity to act.

There are also options beyond leaving the country. Some places are physically safer and physically more isolated from threat than others. For example, in the event that there is a rapid institutional collapse in the United States, it seems likely that Hawai'i would be among the places most likely to endure a little while extra or to most easily facilitate leaving the country. Areas near unguarded border crossings on the northern border also have an appeal in that regard. I think the right degree of seriousness with which to take something like this is not so much "I should move to Hawai'i tomorrow in case there's a civil war" and more "If I can work remotely in Hawai'i or if a job opens up, I might gain some degree of personal safety/sovereignty by moving there."

Personal context: I am a non-American. I spent most of the 2010s living in the U.S., and I emigrated to another country in early 2021. The pull factor to emigrate was a job opportunity abroad that was great and that my wife agreed would be a fun way to spend a few years, but the push factor to emigrate was significant uncertainty about the institutional stability of the U.S. We were setting up our paperwork just as the Capitol Insurrection happened.

I think some kind of dramatic failure less likely than a gradual descent. More like Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela or something than some of the more, uh, 'exciting' examples from history.

Of course, things going badly in the US is going to have spillover effects everywhere else too, so that's something to keep in mind. I'm not sure how isolated various places would be.

We have a long way to go before we can reasonably be compared with Venezuela.

As much as these things can be objectively measured, that's certainly correct. But the trend is not a good one, and the US is considered a 'flawed democracy' rather than a full one according to this: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/02/09/a-new-lo...

I honestly couldn't live living in the US, I just couldn't exist there knowing that my tax dollars and simply my existence there helps bolster such violence in other countries, good that I don't need to with how common wfh is these days

But yeah, rough stuff

No place is perfect. Much of the fossil fuels that European countries consume was coming from Russia and is paying for the horrific things Russia is doing in Ukraine.

But narrowly, I'm talking about democracy itself, which is not doing well in the US.

The main thing would for us to be under crushing US sanctions. However, because the US needs their oil now, things may be loosening up and Venezuela may do a lot better.

> We should instead spend time uniting people in opposition. Stay where you are and fight.

That is definitely one approach, and one I'm hoping to see through. But simultaneously you have to acknowledge that there could come a point where it's time to jump ship. That point is going to be different for everyone. Recent events have pushed some past that point. That doesn't seem hard to grasp.

> It's mind-blowing that people won't engage in trying to actually do something, even something as simple as helping a campaign, or donating money...

Have you been paying attention? People in this country have been more engaged over the last few years than at any point in my lifetime, and at this point the ship is still sinking.

Every time there is a school shooting, there is outrage and no change. Proud boys terrorize another fucking library event, and there aren't even reports of a single arrest. Women's rights being slaughtered and we get to hear how we need to vote. Another hearing laying out the obvious coup attempt on Jan 6th, and no action taken but another news headline.

This is just a snippet of the last ~30 days. 1 short month. I don't argue that it's my country. My country just looks like a real shithole lately.

> but instead they're like "well I'm going to just give up and spend all this time and effort moving to some other country where I also won't uphold any civic responsibility".

This is such a weird take. Consider employment. You can join a startup, work your ass off, cross your fingers, and hope for that big payday. High risk, high reward. Alternatively, you can join a mature company, collect a comfortable paycheck and moderately help to steer the bigger ship.

Right now, the US is looking like that startup. You can work your ass off, and it may give you a great payoff in the form of opportunity. But it's looking increasingly like it's going to fail. Alternatively, you can move somewhere that has all the big stuff in order, and you get to work on the small stuff that still has effect while not worrying as much about whether you're one injury away from bankruptcy.

Who knows? Maybe if we vote harder it'll turn around. At this point, I'm inclined to believe it's cultural. We barely voted out an insurrectionist. 48% of the country voted to keep that in play. This country is full of people who are actively encouraging someone to overthrow our government. 48%.

Couldn't agree with you more. Democracy literally means "people rule." As the rulers, you occasionally have to rule. It blows my mind that so many people act really angry about states that gerrymander or take away abortion rights, but can't even name a single state legislature. The little political motivation people have gets funneled into a few super-popular national issues regardless of their political feasibility, so Congresspeople are incentivized to virtue signal rather than get legislation though.

I have no intent on living through a new North Korea, a new Russia, a new Greater German Reich, or a Gilead.

We're only a few years away from the collapse. It is a smart move to escape while you can. If I need heart pills or insulin in the future and they can't be made safe, then it won't be safe if you have any medical issues. If the water won't be safe because we couldn't regulate new chemicals invented, then it won't be safe to live here. If it isn't safe to have a pregnancy, because they've decided to sentence to death those with an ectopic pregnancy, why should you stay?

> I'd like to caution other people who are feeling despondent and thinking of leaving that this is exactly what they want.

Could you clarify who "they" is in:

> this is exactly what they want.

?

And are you being a little hyperbolic (nothing wrong with that, we all do it especially when impassioned) or do you really think the supreme court (or whoever "they" is) are trying to cause an exodus of people they disagree with?

I'm not challenging/disagreeing with you, just very interested in understanding your thinking.

I intentionally left they up to interpretation here because I think the same logic applies to anyone who is potentially being forced from their home. This could apply to California w.r.t firearms, or perhaps San Francisco and their lethargic response to a public health crises, or perhaps Ohio where I live where Christian Communists are attempting to subvert the United States and the Constitution.

I've actually always felt this way about immigration and refugees as well. I certainly understand taking people in (from wherever, to wherever), but the big problem with that is once all the good people leave an area you have nothing but the bad people. It's sort of fragile on a global scale. What's the end goal? All "good" people go to a select few countries and then the rest of the world is run by bad people?

> And are you being a little hyperbolic (nothing wrong with that, we all do it especially when impassioned) or do you really think the supreme court (or whoever "they" is) are trying to cause an exodus of people they disagree with?

I don't think there's an active campaign just yet, but I do think that state legislatures are happy when this filtering process happens because it solidifies power. So far they have not undertaken active, visible campaigns, but I believe that it's coming and will come more aggressively from Christian Communists that have taken power in state legislatures. It's not something that Democratic Party leaders will say out loud but of course they're happy when so-called Republicans leave their jurisdiction as well.

> I'm not challenging/disagreeing with you

Please do! We can't get better if we don't explore and have discussions.

Very interesting, thank you for explaining!