Later that year, as it became evident that Trump was likely to ‘win’ the Whitehouse (like it’s a turkey raffle), I

Dear America,
Almost five years ago, as the reality show you called the 2016 Presidential Primaries was kicking off, I wrote you a letter. I took a tone, granted — one I know that some parts of your body politic (especially progressives, who questioned my right to question their right not to question) didn’t appreciate. My intention in writing to you was to let you know that, as critical as I was, as a taxpayer, and an Australian resident of San Francisco (at the time), I was on your side. I believed in you. I was down to help.
Later that year, as it became evident that Trump was likely to ‘win’ the Whitehouse (like it’s a turkey raffle), I took a call with a friend who asked me if “we would be ok to just up and move to Australia.”

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My answer was along the lines of: “This is not the time to walk away, we need to be ready to race into the burning building.” I had never been one to back down from a fight, and thought, from my position of hubris and privilege, that making a dent in the most influential economic, social, military and media markets was what was necessary to ensure a thriving humanity.
And after another three years in the trenches, battling conservatives and progressives (and my own hard won neuroses) alike, after experiencing the steady erosion of critical thinking and the collapse of public discourse, I decided I’d had enough.
So I packed what little I owned and boarded a flight to Barcelona, via Colombia, on my way to France.
I left your once-fabled shores because I no longer felt safe. And if I, as a straight, white, middle-aged guy didn’t feel safe with you, how do you think the rest of your citizens, who don’t look like me, felt? How do you think they feel now, as their communities are ravaged by the pandemic, their livelihoods are under threat as a result of spiking unemployment, their homes are under threat due to their inability to make mortgage and rent payments?How do you think it feels to watch you spend billions on ‘border protection’, and economic stimulus for massive corporations, while people at home are living on the knifes edge of a perfect storm of truly existential threats? While your elected officials play craps with healthcare, welfare and social justice, and gather to debate whether or not the lawful exercise of a citizens right to vote should be capriciously over-turned despite the total absence of anything even remotely approaching evidence of voter fraud or corruption?
How do you think a clear headed person of color must feel when they look at the remarkably different way you handled security at the Capitol between a (relatively) peaceful BLM protest, where the National Guard were suited, booted and standing at the ready with automatic weapons, to yesterday’s events, where Capitol police were ineffective at best, and the National Guard was absolutely nowhere to be found?
Is this the best you can do? Seriously?
Since I last wrote to you, I’ ve been busy, but I’ve also been relatively quiet — silently watching, wondering if you might (finally) get your shit together. But after watching every insult, every injury you have permitted to be wrought upon your citizens, and the blowtorch you’ve taken to international institutions that exist for citizens everywhere, witnessing your callous disregard for the wellbeing of your people through the COVID pandemic, and the crowning achievement of a mob of (almost exclusively) angry white men storming the capital, I can only conclude that the answer to my rueful rumination is a resounding ‘no’.
So here we are again.