Move to Middle-Earth? not so fast
Oct. 5th, 2016 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2dJOl8Z:
thebyrchentwigges:
Gidday from New Zealand, where we’re always a day ahead and a dollar short.
It’s time.
Time for me to say that, if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States of America, moving to New Zealand is not your personal solution.
I have spoken to you before in my life, potential migrants. You were all looking at Canada first, what with Sexy!Trudeau and Tim Horton’s. Then the Notorious RGB mentioned moving to New Zealand if Trump won. And I feel you, Notorious RGB. Who doesn’t like the dream of New Zealand? Land of hobbits and sheep and Narnia and Xena and Flight of the Conchords and gay marriage! Marginally warmer than Canada!
Here’s the tl:dr version. In NZ we are in our third term of a conservative-dominated government. Being a political exile from the US sucks: I have seen what this does to people. Having Trump in office is going to screw the entire planet. Vote for Hillary Clinton.
First, the politics.
For a snapshot of NZ today, check out Statistics NZ’s Social Indicators page. We have gay marriage (no thanks to the National party), a form of national health care and national accident insurance, and abortion that’s legal enough that we aren’t paying too much attention to it.
But those things don’t make us perfect. Far from it. Today we have issues with child poverty, jobs for young people, quality of health care and housing, racism, sea level rise, and how the finances around housing impact ordinary citizens. Our parliament is currently dominated by the conservative National party and by our Prime Minister, millionaire John Key. Thank you to the Standard for compiling their cross-referenced list of John Key’s lies. I moved here during the Clark years, when liberal Labour was in charge, and I was surprised when that changed. But that’s what happens when people vote and multinational corporations are vital to your nation’s economy. Things change. Like they did in the US.
Second, exile.
I am an expat and I come from a long line of expats on both sides. I left the US in 1998 and I’ve been weird ever since. I’ve seen some shit. Most of my USA friends here moved to NZ for work, a partner, or because NZ was a dream come true for them. The ones who moved to NZ in the late 2000s because they didn’t like George W. Bush? I’m still friends with some of them, but most of them aren’t in NZ any more.
It was at the start of G.W. Bush’s second term that the U.S. political immigrants started arriving. They were mostly like me: middle-class white people. Probably because moving to NZ/AU costs a fuckton, with the doctor’s visits, application fees, plane fare, and astronomical shipping costs for personal belongings.
This round of migrants was different, somehow. A lot of them didn’t settle in. They missed friends and family. Social media didn’t fix it – it made it worse because there was a window into friends moving on. They were baffled when they had a hard time finding work. They were angry a lot – about what was happening back ‘home’, when things didn’t go their way in NZ. They felt picked on when people discussed USA politics with them. They felt guilty. They had run from something, instead of to something. They weren’t expats.
They were exiles.
And they weren’t prepared for that incredible pain.
Homesickness is bad enough if you choose it, if you move somewhere with love and excitement in you. If you feel like you can return. Move with a burned bridge behind you, and you’re an exile.
Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. – Edward Said
In my experience, people who want to leave the US for political reasons aren’t cowards and they’re not stupid. They recognize a system on the cusp of irrevocable change. They’re more resilient about the challenges of exile if there’s children involved. The thing is that leaving the US isn’t a solution to the pain of seeing the US go horribly wrong. It doesn’t make the fear go away. You will not feel safe or sane, not for the value of safe or sane that many are seeking. That sense of safety will not exist anywhere on this planet if Trump gets in. We are already freaking out down here at the possibility. Trump, with nukes? The world will be screwed.
Leaving the US doesn’t even get rid of the incredible bureaucratic inconveniences of being a US citizen, for which I need an accountant and a separate post. But I retain my US vote, and this time around, it’s worth it.
I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. If you’ve considered moving to NZ based on the election results, I hope you’ll do the same.
I’ll make up the bed in the guest room the night before the election, just in case…
thebyrchentwigges:
Gidday from New Zealand, where we’re always a day ahead and a dollar short.
It’s time.
Time for me to say that, if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States of America, moving to New Zealand is not your personal solution.
I have spoken to you before in my life, potential migrants. You were all looking at Canada first, what with Sexy!Trudeau and Tim Horton’s. Then the Notorious RGB mentioned moving to New Zealand if Trump won. And I feel you, Notorious RGB. Who doesn’t like the dream of New Zealand? Land of hobbits and sheep and Narnia and Xena and Flight of the Conchords and gay marriage! Marginally warmer than Canada!
Here’s the tl:dr version. In NZ we are in our third term of a conservative-dominated government. Being a political exile from the US sucks: I have seen what this does to people. Having Trump in office is going to screw the entire planet. Vote for Hillary Clinton.
First, the politics.
For a snapshot of NZ today, check out Statistics NZ’s Social Indicators page. We have gay marriage (no thanks to the National party), a form of national health care and national accident insurance, and abortion that’s legal enough that we aren’t paying too much attention to it.
But those things don’t make us perfect. Far from it. Today we have issues with child poverty, jobs for young people, quality of health care and housing, racism, sea level rise, and how the finances around housing impact ordinary citizens. Our parliament is currently dominated by the conservative National party and by our Prime Minister, millionaire John Key. Thank you to the Standard for compiling their cross-referenced list of John Key’s lies. I moved here during the Clark years, when liberal Labour was in charge, and I was surprised when that changed. But that’s what happens when people vote and multinational corporations are vital to your nation’s economy. Things change. Like they did in the US.
Second, exile.
I am an expat and I come from a long line of expats on both sides. I left the US in 1998 and I’ve been weird ever since. I’ve seen some shit. Most of my USA friends here moved to NZ for work, a partner, or because NZ was a dream come true for them. The ones who moved to NZ in the late 2000s because they didn’t like George W. Bush? I’m still friends with some of them, but most of them aren’t in NZ any more.
It was at the start of G.W. Bush’s second term that the U.S. political immigrants started arriving. They were mostly like me: middle-class white people. Probably because moving to NZ/AU costs a fuckton, with the doctor’s visits, application fees, plane fare, and astronomical shipping costs for personal belongings.
This round of migrants was different, somehow. A lot of them didn’t settle in. They missed friends and family. Social media didn’t fix it – it made it worse because there was a window into friends moving on. They were baffled when they had a hard time finding work. They were angry a lot – about what was happening back ‘home’, when things didn’t go their way in NZ. They felt picked on when people discussed USA politics with them. They felt guilty. They had run from something, instead of to something. They weren’t expats.
They were exiles.
And they weren’t prepared for that incredible pain.
Homesickness is bad enough if you choose it, if you move somewhere with love and excitement in you. If you feel like you can return. Move with a burned bridge behind you, and you’re an exile.
Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. – Edward Said
In my experience, people who want to leave the US for political reasons aren’t cowards and they’re not stupid. They recognize a system on the cusp of irrevocable change. They’re more resilient about the challenges of exile if there’s children involved. The thing is that leaving the US isn’t a solution to the pain of seeing the US go horribly wrong. It doesn’t make the fear go away. You will not feel safe or sane, not for the value of safe or sane that many are seeking. That sense of safety will not exist anywhere on this planet if Trump gets in. We are already freaking out down here at the possibility. Trump, with nukes? The world will be screwed.
Leaving the US doesn’t even get rid of the incredible bureaucratic inconveniences of being a US citizen, for which I need an accountant and a separate post. But I retain my US vote, and this time around, it’s worth it.
I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. If you’ve considered moving to NZ based on the election results, I hope you’ll do the same.
I’ll make up the bed in the guest room the night before the election, just in case…
