Living in Mexico under Trump

It’s going to be neurotic and tense for gringo transplants. We probably have much the same reactions here as our U.S. counterparts, at least so far. The difference is that we have a partial refuge from the madness here. And most of us here are older, which may give us a different perspective.

I want to write about some particular gringo anxieties and premonitions I hear expressed right now. My own reactions as to how, before leaving, I saw life changing in the U.S. will also be part of this.

A good friend from Texas wrote this in response to my last blog:

I live in Texas, so unless you also live in a batshit crazy state, your perspective reflects an already draconian way of life in this country. This election has done nothing but concrete my determination to find my own form of freedom. . . .

I will evacuate my life of responsibilities for the direction the country/state will take. From this point on, I view myself as a foreign visitor, I must follow their authoritarian rules, but completely release myself from the culpability of what I see as a disastrous future for us all.

If you think her reaction is extreme, look at Trump’s cabinet picks, clowns like RFK, Jr. and Matt Gaetz. Some take comfort that they will never get approved. Others fear recess appointments. Still others , more phlegmatic,  observe that the circus will continue until the clown car empties.

Many of my readers are women, and most expressed anger and real outrage about male dominance, and not just in politics. The Dobbs decision on Roe echoed powerfully with gringas here—and with Mexican women too. In passing let’s note that Mexicans are as worried as anybody else about what will happen under Trump.

I can’t say that we in Mexico really saw any of this coming. But I did have premonitions of how cultural and political life was changing, and that influenced my departure in 2008. I spoke about this at the end of my book, Jive-Colored Glasses.

After a number of visits there, Mexico seemed my best option. For one thing, I found cultural and political life in the U.S. increasingly impossible. This, you may understand, was not entirely due to my being a cultural snob. By 2008 when I moved out, real commonality had all but ceased for most people, and class warfare was a term being bandied about. The liberal elites were living lives as circumscribed as those of the working class (though they didn’t realize it), and both groups were still captivated by the myth of human progress. For culture, the elites watched PBS; the working class (many of whom were not working) watched American Idol. I felt little connection to either group.

Over time I grew to feel more and more alienated from the pretentious, pushy ways and values of the liberal elites. For someone who had possessed every advantage, I still felt like a minister without portfolio in the U.S. and began to find it grating to accept the values of modern-day liberalism which I’d assimilated for years. Finally, it would be better to live in political no-man’s land in Mexico.

After 9/11, U.S. politics with Bush and Obama entered a phase of unreality which has only gotten more hallucinatory since. (Cornel West recently had a good take on Obama: “It’s like you’re looking for John Coltrane and you get Kenny G in brown skin.”) Though very active politically over many years, I finally reached the point of renouncing any more real political involvement. I wanted to get away from the whole seamy business—Republicans, Democrats, Supreme Court decisions, lobbyists, unions, the media.

Was all this an escape, or the choice of a better option? It was clearly an escape—and perhaps my fascination with jazz for all these years has been an escape too. We’re all fleeing from something.