The Question of Escaping a Collapsing America
Everyone These Days Asks Me the Same Thing: How Do I Get Out of Here?
Plenty of Americans might think they’re alone in wondering: Jesus…enough already…I can’t take anymore…should I get the hell out of here before it’s too late? They’re not alone. The single question I get from young people in America is: tell me how to get out! It’s a joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s a joke only in the sense that young people’s humor is made of silent despair that’s couched in the disguise of deadpan humour. It’s funny because it’s deadly serious.
There’s a thing that’s starting to happen to America — well, another one — that usually only happens to poor countries. Economists call it “human capital flight.” Normal people call it “escaping a collapsing society.” How do you escape a collapsing society? Well, you leave. Now, I state the obvious because…America’s a special case. It’s profoundly abnormal for rich, developed nations to implode the way America has.
So let me say it again. You leave. This is what generation after generation of people have done around the globe, when their societies have plunged off the cliffs of theocracy, broken apart on the rocks of authoritarianism, drowned in the dark waters of fascism. Don’t think for a moment, in other words, that you’re thinking something…
