Get Out If You Can

Make No Compromise with the Nazi Republicans

Monument to the Revolution, Plaza de la República, Mexico City

I have read a few recent articles published in mainstream US newspapers, written by expatriates cautioning Americans against going into exile in response to the atrocious US presidency. It’s worth exploring the other side: at what point would it be better to abandon the failed US state, to distance oneself from the constant stream of bullshit occupying the airwaves, to take a leave from the unending flood of anger necessarily experienced by anyone with common sense looking at the news: the nonstop human rights violations, the systematic destruction of liberal institutions, the efforts to undermine forms of governance providing any insulation against total control of our lives by market-fundamentalist extremists and the ruling party that I call, with precise accuracy, the Nazi Republicans. Their tendency to embrace the Hitler salute only confirms the overwhelming evidence offered by their words and actions. They told us who they are. Under no circumstances should this behavior be excused and rationalized.

Let’s put aside the peroration of evil deeds by the criminals in power and just call it like it is. On the face of it, we all know they are grifters whose only interest is theft of public resources and manipulation of policy for their own enrichment. And we know that the judicial system that should have long ago imprisoned them for various forms of fraud and misconduct is ill-equipped to produce the justice we long for. The billionaires have proven they can buy the justice system.

Our voices no longer matter, drowned out by bullshit, bought out by outrageous fictions invented to hide evidence that is plain for everyone to see. Yet we see it: we see the willingness of the so-called “Jewish state” to commit any form of human rights violation to exercise its colonial control over land it claims a God-given ownership of dating from 3,000 years ago, somehow entitling them to dispossess people’s home and bulldoze communities with a heritage equally longstanding. We see billionaires willing to commit every kind of calumny and disgrace to defame those who protest as “anti-Semitic,” including a majority of Jewish people.

Our speech has been stolen and violated by the willful ignorance of a justice system that chose to equate political campaign spending with free speech, turning wealth into an overwhelming silencer of the will of the majority of the people, most of whom can barely pay their rent and mortgages, and who effectively no longer have political representation in the US. The strongest possible way I can speak is by total rejection and non-participation in the garbage political system of the US.

This is why I have left the US, for now, and the life that I loved in my hometown of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a little corner of the world a couple of blocks from a decent public tennis court, where I was happy to live near a homeless shelter, public housing, my friend’s vintage store, and a really deep and meaningful community of people I felt connected to over the course of decades, eking out my existence as an independent writer on architecture and the city.

I came to Mexico City four weeks ago, initially as a trial, renting a room through Airbnb in San Miguel Chapultepec and renting out my room in East Williamsburg. (Then it turned out that one of Airbnb’s co-founders was also a Nazi collaborator. No part of our lives is free from rent-seeking oligarchs.) I had been studying Spanish fairly intensively for two years, about an hour-and-a-half every day, in the eventuality that I would feel compelled to leave the US after the last disastrous four years of Nazi Republican rule.

And I had become increasingly conscious that I was living at the footsteps of Latin America with barely any ability to experience the incredible richness and diversity of cultures within a few hours of air travel away. I sought out the most cosmopolitan city in Latin America, where I could live a similar lifestyle that I love, a cultural hub with a lively contemporary art scene, great food, people I can play tennis with every day, and the beginning of a community who I share values with, can discuss ideas with, can join for gallery walks and musical performances, dinners, and maybe, eventually, can have enough of a community to invite to my semi-annual solstice parties. All signs pointed to Mexico City. It’s all the more reaffirming that some of the earliest outrages of the Nazi Republicans and their biggest strategic failures have been against the Mexican government and people. I’m absolutely delighted to make common cause with the Mexican people against the Nazi Republican state.

I am well aware that this is not a choice available to most Americans. (I am tempted to say United States-ians, since America is a continent, and all of its people, North, South, and Central Americas, are Americans. Citizens of the US are estadounidense.) I am single, I work for myself, and I can do so anywhere in the world, as long as my editors continue to give me assignments and publishers books to write and edit. Failing that, I know how to build, paint, and fix things. My greatest heroes were expatriates who disassociated themselves from the violent states into which they were born, sometimes at great personal expense, and produced some of the most important, enduring work in modern arts and letters.

I cannot say how long I will be gone. For now, I have extended my trip until June. The news from the US does not give me much hope that it would be safe to return any time soon. I am happy to see the increase in protests and the small bits of truth-telling that periodically sneak through the profit-seeking corporations that own every form and channel of media through which our voices can be heard. I am glad that liberal nonprofits have been organizing to contest the regime’s illegal actions in court well before I imagined it was possible for such a disgusting government to be reelected.

Meanwhile, the rent here is easily half or a third of what it costs to live in the US—reminiscent of the style of living we used to enjoy on the East Side of Lansing in the early nineties, or in the illegal rooms built behind a theater on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late nineties. Around that time, the Clinton administration, compromising with the neo-conservative market-fundamentalist ideology that would become the dominant ideology of our time, essentially ended the production of new units of public housing, putting a stranglehold on the public sector’s ability to provide for the basic needs of citizens. Rents increased at twice the rate of inflation since that time.

Club Deportivo Mixcoac

Meanwhile, life in Mexico City has been shaping up to be happy and fulfilling. I have found some tennis clinics to join drills with a good group of players on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 200 pesos an hour, roughly ten dollars, one-third to one-tenth of the cost in Florida and New York. I found a handful of good players through a Facebook tennis group, the TennisCall app, a Highland Park Whatsapp group, and a French friend whose partner is here working on an anthropology dissertation. I am figuring out how to book courts not far from me: the Velódromo Olimpico, next to the station where bike races happened during the 1968 Summer Olympics; the Cancha de Tenis El Arbol, where a single court is built into a courtyard near Tacuba; and Deportivo Plan Sexenal, a public sports complex. Tennis Life, a court on the edge of the city in Fuentes de Tepepan, organizes competitive matches with other clubs around town.

Laguna cultural center in a former textile factory

During Mexico City’s art week, I met an art adviser from the US who lives in the gorgeous Luis Barragán-designed Edificio Para Artistas near Avenida de la Reforma, who has been showing me around the city’s incredible art spaces, their lushly planted courtyards converted from outmoded industrial warehouses and manufacturing facilities. Friends have been tipping me off to experimental concerts happening in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces almost every weekend. I’m speaking Spanish by default, and it’s functional enough to get around and meet some cool méxicanos in San Miguel Chapultapec and clubs around town. I got a bunch of assignments and some book work. Next week I’m moving to a furnished studio on the Avenue of Insurgents where the rent is $435 a month. It’s the start of a life outside of the garbage politics of the United States. I don’t know where I’ll be four months from now. But at least for now, I am free.