I’m Never Moving Back to the US, No Matter Who’s President”Living abroad reveals all the cracks in America’s façade

7 min readNov 7, 2020

Photo by Charlotte Harrison from Unsplash

Like most Americans, I am deep in the throes of election anxiety. Unlike most Americans, I don’t live in the US. But even from over here, across the Atlantic, I know that Biden has to win for the US to survive. I also know that if he does, it’s not going to fix everything. For a lot of people, it probably won’t fix much at all.

Almost exactly two years ago, just days after voting in the 2018 midterm elections, my husband and toddler and I moved from Portland, Oregon, to Berlin. We moved here for a job, like so many families do. My husband works in tech and spent months looking for a job; this is where he found one. The job promised to help with relocation. I was a freelance content writer, and we had an 18 month old. We figured if we were going to make a huge move like this, it was exactly the right moment to do it.

Did we feel a little guilty leaving the US at a time when we should have instead been fighting against the Trump administration? When we should have been putting our privilege to good use to help make actual changes any and everywhere we could? Yes, of course. Did the sheer joy of potentially escaping the dumpster fire of “Trump’s America” fully outweigh that guilt? Absolutely.

When we first got here and started learning about the social support Germany offers, we were downright giddy. Free childcare! No insurance copays! Fours weeks of paid vacation for…everyone?!?! Cheap prescriptions for adults! Free prescriptions for kids! 12 paid months of parental leave! 200 euros/month just for having a kid!

In January, back before Coronavirus had made its way to Europe, our son’s pediatrician sent us to the ER when it seemed like a bad fall might have caused a concussion. We spent the whole day, and the next day, and the day after that, marveling at the fact that we didn’t pay anything for this visit. For an ER trip and an overnight stay in the hospital. I kept thinking of the time my single mother had driven me to the ER when I was ten, and we sat in the parking lot with a cold washcloth on my head, praying that my fever would go down before she had to take me in, because she couldn’t afford the visit.

That hospital visit is when my husband and I both decided we’re staying here. We’ll do whatever we need to to get residency, because we can’t imagine ever again having to avoid medical care because we can’t afford it.

Even as a progressive from Portland, the social benefits here still seem laughable to me. Aren’t these all the things that everyone is always insisting Bernie Sanders is delusional for suggesting? Aren’t all these things supposed to be entirely impossible to implement and maintain? Won’t the fabric of society crumble if we actually do make healthcare affordable for everyone?

Now here we are in 2020, and the dumpster fire that was 2018 seems like a cozy little campfire for roasting marshmallows. We’ve watched as the German government has acted (though not as faultlessly as the US media would like to romanticize) to curb the spread of COVID-19 and the Trump administration has done nothing, except make the whole thing worse.

When the pandemic started, the main fear I wrestled with was actually the fact that I wouldn’t be able to support my son on my own if my husband lost his job. Unemployment has been a central theme of the pandemic in the US, and I’ve been reading US news the whole time, even though I’m not there physically.

The disastrous American response to COVID-19 was not the only possible response.

I shared this fear with some of my friends — one an American married to a German, one a Dane living here in Berlin — and both were surprised. They’ve lived here long enough that they don’t think twice about the social safety net underneath them. They know that if they lose their jobs, they can count on unemployment benefits, unlike in the US, and that those benefits will be enough to live on, unlike in the US. They had their own fears about Coronavirus, but unemployment wasn’t ever one of them.

As the virus surges again across the globe, German Chancelor Merkel has called for a partial lockdown here to try and curb the rising case numbers — before the ICU beds are all taken. Trump’s administration has, conversely, officially given up.

In most European countries, governments have either pledged financial support or are literally paying employees a partial salary to stay home and help stop the spread of the virus. Back in March, when I first read that the Danish government was paying people who couldn’t go to work because of lockdown restrictions, I was flabbergasted. Could they just…do…that? The answer is yes! Of course they can! And it actually makes really smart economic sense!

The disastrous American response to COVID-19 was not the only possible response.

As the pandemic continues to destroy millions of lives around the globe, it’s also shining a big, glaring spotlight on all the ways that the US simply isn’t working.

What’s benefited a fraction of the population for so long has never worked for the majority of Americans. The upper class yelling about the “American dream” and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps is, and has always been, just a way to keep poor people in their places. In this system, only those who buy into the capitalistic society that has hurt them are able to move upwards within it.

Former President Obama has mentioned the idea of the US as a “precious…experiment in democracy.” And while I may always tear up a little bit these days when I see a video of Obama speaking, I would also argue that the experiment has failed, and that it had failed long before Trump was in office, despite all of Obama’s best efforts.

Only those who buy into the capitalistic society that has hurt them are able to move upwards within it.

When millions of people are living in poverty but “economic indicators” can still be said to be good, the system has failed. When black men are murdered regularly by the people we pay to “protect” our communities, and almost an entire party of politicians are unable to say that the lives of black people matter, the system has failed. When teenagers who’ve lived through a traumatic experience of gun violence are more willing to take action against the NRA than the officials who’ve been elected to represent their constituents (the majority of whom support gun control), the system has failed. When an unqualified sociopath like Donald Trump is able to take office as the president of the country, even after losing the popular vote of a federal election, the system has failed.

It’s important to point out that while, for me, my experience in Germany has felt almost antithetical to my experience in the US, this is not a perfect country. It’s a place that’s had plenty of problems, both currently and in the past. C’mon, it’s Germany. It’s the place we point to when we want to remind everyone just how bad things can get.

2020 has been a devastating year unlike any that most of us have lived through. The next president of the United States has the potential to shatter the US even further or to start to repair it on any level.

Biden isn’t going to make everything better, because it’s the system that’s broken.

But while this election is most certainly the most important election of my life, I don’t believe that electing Joe Biden is going to fix the broken system that is the United State of America. Yes, he is a better choice than Trump. Yes, he served under Obama. Yes, I am thrilled that Kamala Harris is his running mate, even if her past choices have not always aligned with my own ideals. But Biden isn’t going to make everything better, because it’s the system that’s broken. Trump’s election, and his disastrous handling of 2020’s tragedies are just symptoms of the bigger problem.

Until Americans let go of the idea that America is the greatest country on earth and that the right candidate will solve all our problems, nothing’s going to change on a fundamental level.

So, yes, I voted for Biden. And yes, I’m going to keep my US citizenship so I can vote four years from now. But I’m also never, ever moving home.

I’m Never Moving Back to the US, No Matter Who’s President”Living abroad reveals all the cracks in America’s façade

Written by babygirl32