Tell that to Sarah Palin and her little secessionist gang.
I make just over 30K a year as a temp in a call center, my wife does contract work making about 300-800 a month. I have three kids and live in a major city (Dallas), so we pretty much live paycheck to paycheck. I don’t really have any skills that would be useful enough in a foreign country to make them want to permit me to move there, and the expenses of relocating would require me to scrimp and save for years. I think I’ll just stay here.
When the going gets tough…the lefties leave. Ineffectual crybabies…each and everyone of you.
I guess the positive is that your side loses anothe vote and the US as a whole gains a few IQ points with your absence.
There are literally hundreds of companies in your area looking for roughnecks, gladhands, and truck drivers starting at over 40K with full benies. No skills except a strong back, a little intelligence, and a desire to show up in the am drug/alcohol free.
The idea of leaving just makes no sense to me. I could see if I had kids and someone was trying to kill them or some such and I was leaving to protect them, or if there wasn’t enough work to feed them, but otherwise you’d never get me to run. I mean this place could go so crazy that Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot all rise from the dead to say. “Hey guys…I think you might be overdoing it just a bit,” and I still wouldn’t leave because I’ll be damned if someones going to run me out of my country.
Also I really doubt America’s going to go quickly in any direction. There are just to many of us with to much of an independent streak for that to have any chance. It seems to me that this is just a further offshoot of both sides characterizing their opponents as evil and/or crazy.
I sincerely hope that anyone contemplating this will follow through. We’ll be better off without you and your marbles.
I love, love, love my country, down to the last drooling idiot that I’d love to kick in the head.
My country sometimes reminds me of an alcoholic mother – she loves me back and wants to take care of me, after a fashion, but she’s in denial, in a self-destructive cycle. Sometimes she just shoots her mouth off and says the sickest things. We can’t hide the bottles – she just finds more. We can’t tell her she’s hurting herself because she thinks she’s fine and can’t be convinced otherwise. Sometimes she catches a glimpse of what she is and what she could be, and it alternately shames her and makes her work a little harder toward self-improvement, but her own worst qualities always trip her up.
But I love her down to her wacky socks with the technicolor cats and I’ll change her diapers when she gets old. I see the beauty and the strength in her, the stubborn defiance often so misplaced, the almost thoughtless kindness toward people in need, the desire to soothe hurts and stop fights.
There’s another very nice mother up the road. She looks an awful lot like mine, though the house rules are a little different and I’m not sure if I’m okay with them. Everyone’s a little cleaner, a little more polite, but even so…
I’ve visited Toronto on a number of occasions. The first time was to visit some friends – I’d have gone to visit them wherever they lived, but I fell in love with their city the day I set foot in it. I’ve been across the United States and I’ve never loved another city so much except for the one I live in. I go back to Toronto yearly, partly to visit those friends, partly just to ride the subway and walk along Queen Street and to watch the amazing Christmas fireworks shows. If I couldn’t live in Austin, I might well live in Toronto… except there really is a cultural disconnect for me. As liberal as I am for a Texan, I’d be considered something of a conservative in Canada. That’s not bad in itself, but “normal” there would take some real getting used to.
My problem is this: as much grass-roots movements as I can take part in, as much time and energy as I can spend on the Obama campaign, I still don’t feel like I can make a real difference in today’s politics without becoming a politician, and I’m still using my soul.
ETA: And, of course, I really really don’t want to leave my home. It’s my damn home.
ETAA:
I think I get your meaning, but do you seriously believe the country would be better off without the people who dissent? I know you don’t, but if I’m in a fireworks warehouse with a linebacker playing with matches, I’m not all that sanguine with trying to convince him to quit it.
I didn’t have to read any further than this. Exactly. What you didn’t already know that America has large numbers of religious conservatives? The country is fairly split between those who believe in the Bible as literal truth and believe the the Creation story and those who do not. We are a polarized nation. Whether McCain wins or loses that fact remains. Flip a coin, excite the turn-out, come up with a wedge issue, whatever, the difference between those two camps is going to depend on a small percent every time. What Obama has tried to accomplish is not beat that religious side into submission but to get the sides to agree on some common goals of interest. McCain vs Obama had every chance of being a historic race as both had past history of being religiously tolerant. That was what was upsetting the fundies - moderate and tolerant views? Bleh. But McCain learned. The secret to GOP success is polarizing farther. The fundie side usually cares about it more. Palin gets the religious fundie side out more and so far has done it without upsetting the moderates as many others would have. I hope it’s just because they don’t really know her yet, but we will see. But win or lose, you cannot escape that large segments of this country believe this is a Christian country blessed to do God’s work against the world’s heathens. Run from it if you want but beware what you run into.
Deja vu all over again.
Remember how all the Hollywood libs were going to haul ass if GWB got elected? Not a one of them did. Maybe you could talk Alec Baldwin into carrying a couple of your suitcases for you.
Speaking for myself, this election will be a decider. I really could not believe it when Bush won his second term - that after all that had happened, fully half of the US was misguided enough to let him back in…
This time, with a good, inspiring democratic candidate, with another four years of just… blatant… blatant criminality on the part of the republicans, with Iraq and Gitmo and 8 years of hell… After all that, if more than half of the American people can vote for more of the same…
Well, I can’t leave because I’m not American to begin with, but once upon a time I wanted to be… I wanted to emigrate to the USA because it was the finest country on the planet. The US were the good guys, and now they torture people. If McCain wins I sincerely doubt I’ll set foot in the States ever again, it’d be like taking a holiday in communist Russia - why take the chance?
I think that’s why Obama has been given this messianic aura people have been complaining about so - I’m just as invested in him as any voting American because he looks like he has the chance and the motivation to clean up the crap the US has mired itself in, clean it up and make it something enviable again.
The idea that millions of people would vote against that… for what? Their pocketbooks? Because he’s too young? Too smooth? Too black?
Leaving the country is an odd form of dissent. I guess you could call it the ultimate form of dissent, but there are many more effective ways to change things. At any rate, anyone who thinks there is going to be some stark difference between an Obama vs a McCain presidency, and who thinks the latter is somehow unlivable, just doesn’t have his head screwed on right, IMHO. So, yes, I think the country would be better off without those dissenters-- the ones who take their marbles and run away when they don’t get what they want.
Good. The State Department and the rest of us are better for his absence. Hope he makes it permanent. Can’t imagine him being much of an asset to the Service in the end.
No. Not leaving. I was here before Lipstick Pit Bull (literally), and she’s not gonna run me off with her RR dogma. Hmmm…dogma = pit bull? Fuck the pubbies! I sincerely hope that enough free-thinking people will effectively euthanize the Pit Bull’s dogma.
I find this post unnecessarily insulting. Why would “the State department and the rest of us be better for his absence”? For one thing he is spending abroad money he could be spending in America. For another he is retired so it makes no difference to the State Department, It seems to me your only intention was to insult and you really have no rational reason to support your insult.
Moving out of country to avoid a politician holding a four year term of office seems like the effort would not be worth the payout. Speaking as someone who has moved to another country it is usually a difficult and expensive process.
Moving to avoid a country’s ideologies you do not tolerate well seems more justifiable. Leaving the US because there are too many evangelicals (and Christians in general) is something my wife and myself consider regularly. Every time someone at work goes off about how we all need to live Christian like themselves I wonder if this is an ideal place to raise my children. Likewise, I would have a hard time living in Iran for similar reasons.
Blind Man In a Cave, I agree with your post and I believe it is silly to blame Bush or Hitler or Khomeini or whoever when they are only a product of the people who supported them. I do not blame Bush as much as I blame America as a whole, as a people. I understand many individuals are against Bush and his policies but Americans, as a people, as a whole, are responsible for this mess, not Bush.
What the fuck do you know about either my dad or the State Department? My dad spent 25 years in the State Department and had nothing but an outstanding career. Before that he spent 20 years in the Air Force, including a stint in SE Asia during Vietnam. That’s amost a half century of service to the US. What have you ever done for your country? What the hell makes you think you’re qualfied to have an opinion on his decision? Bush has made life pretty rough on US diplomats, you know.
By the way. The State Department wanted my dad to reup. He was a pretty valuable guy in in South America by the time he was done. He turned them down, so you’re wrong about the Department being better off without him.
Neither of us speaks Georgian, but we taught English, worked doing copy-editing for two different English language papers and did voice-overs for a TV ad. Three kids makes it harder for sure - you need to worry about schooling. We have no kids, but were able to find work within a week of arriving in the country… the country is disorganized and corrupt enough that things like work permits are not really thought about. We had long term “business” visas and were free to do most anything.
Hey, Dio don’t let a sailor go trawling on you!
Like any other sailor who trawls he’s just casting out a wide net - in this case of dispersion on anyone who doesn’t love this country and all of its actions unconditionally enough. All sorts of things get caught in those trawling nets and they often cause amazing harm to any diversity in their paths.
Doesn’t the board have a “Don’t be a jerk” policy?