It’s like a fever has broken. We just got back from two weeks in the United States, my first long visit since we immigrated to the Netherlands in 2016. That was the year Donald Trump was first elected president. This visit came on the eve of a pivotal election as Democrats sweep both houses of Congress.
We saw first-hand that Trumpism finally is fading. I went back to the Red State of Kentucky expecting MAGA hats and a sea of Republican candidates’ campaign signs. I didn’t see any of that. My wife/co-CEO Cheryl and I called our friends Mark and Kellie in Florida, the MAGAist state other than Texas. They reported no big Republican rallies and no MAGA boats flying Trump flags. For all practical purposes, Trump is a spent force.
All this said, nothing is going to change in America. In fact, it could get worse.
America will remain a ruggedly individualistic frontier, with none of the consumer rights, childcare and job protections of Europe. That’s bad news for Europe, which is perpetually on vacation. On our trip to Kentucky, I marveled at an American consumer economy that’s vast and advanced compared to Europe. America will always win because you really don’t want to lose. Losing means you lose everything. There’s no alternative to constantly working. But what is the cost of “winning?”
We chose to live in Europe, specifically the Netherlands, for three quality-of-life reasons:
• Affordable healthcare
• Affordable college educations for our daughters
• Affordable mass transportation
America has none of those things. That hasn’t changed. It will likely never change.
The pendulum swings
When Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, I was sure American would have an unparalleled period of prosperity and compassion, and it did for eight years. Obama passed the Affordable Care Act, which we thought was a first step to socialized medicine that every other Group of Seven country has. It was not. The economy boomed under Obama, so you’d think Americans would want to sustain that affluence. They did not.
Instead, the reaction to a black man as president is how we got Trump. The aging white majority and business elites embracing an unstable megalomaniac in hopes of keeping their political hegemony and assuring there’s little in the way of regulation or a social safety net for a permanent underclass of cheap labor. It still pains me to think the country I love elected someone like Donald Trump, who’s never been anything other than a cheap con man.
I know I sound like a socialist. I’m not. I’m a capitalist. But I have embraced the social democratic market economy model of Europe with its high taxes and vast social services.
You know, it works.
The damage done
Winston Churchill described Russia as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” and this is no less true of the United States. For a bunch of people yelling “freedom!” all the time, Americans have little control over their lives.
In a country founded on the principles of equality and rule of law, Trump installed – with little opposition from impotent Democrats – an impenetrable elite who can do whatever they damn well please. Elon Musk sends his DOGE minions to disassemble America’s social safety net, not to mention the foundation of progress … institutions such as the National Institutes of Health responsible for research and science. Musk controls Starlink and the space program. Sam Altman uses artificial intelligence to steal copyrighted materials while simultaneously destroying the media.
Trump sent in thugs to hunt down illegal immigrants and more than a few American citizens got caught in the net. The administration sent innocent people to indescribably inhumane prisons in countries they’d never heard of, much less lived in. At the same time, Trump cut ties with European allies that have supported the U.S. since 1945, through wars and upheavals, He backed Putin over Ukraine.
The next two years will be about reversing MAGA, dismantling the authoritarian framework, the corruption – and let’s just say it – retribution. There will be endless investigations and trials and maybe January 6-level violence if MAGA is cornered. I personally can’t wait to see Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Todd Blanche go to prison. Purging the poison will not be pleasant, but it’s necessary.
Bottom line
I ask myself now after going back whether if I knew then what I know now, would we still have left the U.S. ten years ago? The answer is yes – for some inexplicable reason, I’m a hillbilly with European values and esthetics. Home is not where I was born, but here where I thrive and my family lives in peace.
For 40 years, people including me have misunderstood Bruce Springsteens’s “Born in the USA.” It’s not celebration. It’s a dirge. The old Terry Boyd was an annoying chauvinist who couldn’t stop lecturing people in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan about “how America does things the right way.” And I drove through the south of France with “Born in the USA” cranked up on the car radio.
I never bothered to actually listen to the words:
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burnin’ down the road
Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go
I consider myself the most fortunate of people because indeed … my family has somewhere to go.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
