Resident expatriates

A  hundred years ago, after World War I ended, a number of young people, including the writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, fled America to become expatriates in Europe.  They centered their lives around Paris, although they ventured into many parts of Europe.  They were called the Lost Generation.  Their movement was not political as much as a cultural and social rejection of what their home country was becoming. They felt that the values they inherited were no longer relevant and they felt alienated within their country.   So, many left.  That left many other people in the country who felt disaffected, but did not have the means or opportunity  to leave.  They were resident expatriates, who felt culturally and socially alien in their homeland.  

We have a number of resident expatriates in our current population.  They don't receive much notice.  They are people who have given up on the nation's political process and do not  participate.  I realize that, more and more, I am drifting into that category.   This is not the country I once served to defend. In many ways, it has become what we were defending against.  When the people chose Donald Trump as president, it made many people question if the USA was the kind of country they want to be a part of.  They realize that something is wrong in America that can't be corrected by an election.  It is an infirmity that is too deep and beyond the reach of any political process to make right. After years of making progress in matters of civil rights and equality, the nation has taken a severe lurch backward.  Trump is the symptom of a deeper malaise that possesses the nation.  

For people who truly want freedom, equality, and justice rather the petty advantage and corruption that seems to be the ideals that so many seek, it seems a time to pull back citizenship and see what the country wants to  be.  It seems better to escape the inane political dialogue than to be part of it.  It is not a matter of leaving the country.  Sometimes it's a matter of the country leaving us.