If you want to be more American than me, you better damn well bleed Red, White, & Blue. About a month ago I said my Uncle Tobe was wounded on Omaha Beach, and my father was in the Presidential unit of the Honor Guard for two presidents. Uncle Oscar was Captain in an artillery unit in Korea. I was born on an Army base. I can go on and on, all the way back to the 1720s when my mother’s side came to the colonies. I have done my genealogy: I can name the ship (The Cuba), the time, and place where my great-great-grandfather, a stowed-away, at the age of 12, to come here. The President of The United States of America wants you to know that I come from a family of “suckers and losers.”
But that was then… that country has been consumed by hate. The last time I went back was to visit my father. I was there about a month and that turned out to be the last time I would ever see him; he died during Covid and there was simply no way to get back in time for a funeral. (There was a two-week quarantine). Again, a long time ago, before this…
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Barron’s mother flew on a private jet and got some kind of genius visa. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. ICE will never come to Barron’s school. His skin is the wrong color.
I am not completely sure I can go back – at all. A few weeks ago, a man who was also born on an Army Base in Europe was shipped off to some country he had no connection with. He had committed a crime some years back and had issues with citizenship from then. In that way we are different; I have been a full citizen and have never committed a crime. However, that doesn’t mean shit to ICE. They have deported 80 or 90 full citizens so far. I speak ill of Orange Jesus in these pages and fully expect I would be pulled aside and confronted at an airport with my opinions. ICE has become Trump’s Brown Shirts and I am nothing. I never thought I would see my own country consumed by fascism.
So the question is, would I go back to America? Not today; not now. My hope is that Democracy wins in the mid-term elections. If the Republican Party wins there will still be a country called the United States. Yes, they will have the same flag but they would have far more in common with the Confederate States of America than the United States of America. America will not survive four years of Donald Trump. This eats at my very soul more that you know.
Would I go back to America?
My only holiday visit to the U.S.A. was in the late 1980s, when, with a young family, we went to Florida. It’s hard to describe my excitement; it was far more evident compared to my children’s relative cautiousness. The technology at Disney World left me spellbound. I loved the way our hosts delighted in our English accents, and just wanted to talk to us, and hear us speak.
I remember watching the launch of a Shuttle on the TV, then rushing out into the courtyard to see it for real in the distance. I shall never forget that moment. Even when paying my hotel bill as we checked out after our fortnight’s break, I simply couldn’t believe how cheap it had been. So, only good memories.
Would I go back? Never, ever. Not even if you paid me a million dollars.
Why would I want to queue for hours at immigration, and have to explain myself to those sub-human imbeciles that masquerade as officers, who would quite simply turn me away for having Polish parents, or have me arrested because of my anti-Trump diatribes on this blog.
Even if I got through unscathed, I would find myself in a country so divided that a civil war almost seems inevitable. Add to that the fact that America experiences a shooting massacre (more than four people dead in one incident) almost every day, and you can clearly understand why this country, under its present dictatorship, needs to be avoided like the plague.
Donald Trump’s ongoing war against immigrant communities, including his brutal ICE crackdowns are tearing families apart and targeting innocent people, all in service of a program of soft ethnic cleansing. If I were a time-traveler, I would see echoes of Europe 1938, but nobody else seems to care too much about that.
I also worry that if I were to venture into today’s America, I would likely be treated as a potential criminal. So, what would be the point of going back to the oh-so-Dis-United States of America?