Garrison Keillor: Think Moving Abroad Will Save You From Trump? Think Again.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/35844-think-moving-abroad-will-save-you-from-trump-think-againWhen I lived in Copenhagen long ago, I knew some Americans who had gone there years before to escape being drafted and sent to Vietnam. They did okay. Copenhagen is fairly Anglophonic, so you needn’t go to school for months to learn how to order coffee and a sandwich. They came to appreciate the egalitarianism, the fried herring, the cobblestone squares, the secularity. They learned to say rodgrod med flode. They fell in love with Danish women, which is the best way to learn Danish, since you will likely beget children, who will speak their mother’s tongue, and children are excellent teachers because they’re not aware they’re doing it, so by the time your child is 15, you’ll know the right Danish to be cool. Totally. But still there were gaps that couldn’t be filled: Danish rock-and-roll is too studied, and politics is way sedate, and in football, you can’t pick up the ball and carry it — you must push it around with your feet or bounce it off your head, which is ridiculous. One night you find yourself in a bar in Osterbro and you hear that Harmon Killebrew died and you’re the only one who could care.
Exile is no bed of roses. If you go to a foreign country to escape the Big Snapper, you will run into him wherever you go. Foreigners hear your voice, and it’s like you’re wearing a big red A around your neck — they’ll ask you about the Snapper, and how could America be so hopelessly stupid as to elect this blowhard ignoramus to lead the Free World? In Boise or Tampa or Kansas City, you’re not a spokesperson for America, you’re just a great lover, a cool dude, and a smart cookie — let de Tocqueville figure out what it means to be American, you go pursue life and liberty and have a cheeseburger — but when you go abroad, suddenly you’re hauling a knapsack full of nationality. I spent time in Europe during the George W. Bush era; I know.
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spoken aloud. The economy started tanking and Iraq was a horror and Texans studiously looked the other way and talked of the weather and fishing and their upcoming dental hygiene appointment.
If you want to escape from the Great White Turtle, you could move to New York. New Yorkers saw through this guy 20 years ago, a living, breathing cartoon of a tycoon, vulgarity on wheels, a man who was very lucky that his father was born before he was, and they have closed the book. So he takes his show on the road, and it did okay in Florida, Illinois and North Carolina, and so the intelligentsia is working ever harder, trying to figure him out. It’s like psychoanalyzing a toasted bagel. The guy paid $29 million for a 282-foot yacht, sailed on it once, got seasick, and never sailed again. He likes tall models with foreign accents. He dyes his hair. He likes to read about himself. What else do you want to know?
Of course, you could not really 'escape' from Trump by moving to New York but you might here less about him that you would in Copenhagen. 
Nice article, eridani.
But I'm not running from anything. I'm running to a better life, with family nearby with clean air and water and the peace of mind that I won't go broke paying for medical care.
It also helps that I can drive on the "wrong" side.
I'm keeping a very low profile for the duration, i.e. until one of our Dem. candidates wins out over the neo-fascist ogre in November.
At times like these, I thank the Universe for my French passport, and the fact that my accent in French can sometimes be mistaken for Alsatian or northern European.
Protective coloring. Camouflage.
much these days. Still on the mend from my broken hip.
Anyway, we Parisians are a stoic and defiant lot. Terrorism is NOTHING new here.
There have been attacks of one kind or another since the 80s here in the city. I've never modified my habits one whit in any case.
I used to think Bush was going to be the most embarrassing American politician I ever had to explain, then it was Sarah Palin, now Trump. 
I may have to go back to my strategy from the Bush years of claiming to be Canadian with all but the closest of friends.
