Thank you for this reality check, Mona. I love Europe also, but am not in the least deceived that I could ever fit in there. And as you say, the pathology of right-wing nationalism and racist xenophobia is rearing its ugly head there just as it has here. And the threat from Russia, with its chronic envy and paranoid expansionist fantasies, is far more immediate for you, once Trump abandons NATO.
Obviously, I don’t feel at home in my own country either. As Hamlet might have said, “something is rotten in the United States of America.” So all I can do is simultaneously expand and contract my identity and loyalties. Since the US has effectively ceased to exist as anything with which I could identify, having abandoned its foundational principles by electing a lawless, toxic demagogue, I now call myself a Gaian—a citizen of our living planet (along with you and everyone else.) My allegiance to Gaia takes priority over all other allegiances. That is the my expanded identity.
My contracted identity is my allegiance to Truth itself, as expressed, among other sources, by the founding principles of my former country, rooted in the European Enlightenment and expressed in the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence:
1. That all [people] are created equal, in that
2. We all have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…
3. Secured by governments whose just power (NOT absolute power) is derived from consent of the governed.
The nation established by these principles has just ceased to exist, but my loyalty remains intact, not to the nation, but to its founding principles…