It Could Happen Here - Should You Flee the United States?

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Robert, James, and Gare discuss the question of fleeing the country, various demographics under threat, and the politics of escape.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like that could have been my daughter. Like you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.

Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope, about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because he has cancer. Should I stay? Okay Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime Podcast history. Well John, that's because it's dump of week and this user writes,

last week we had an attempted break-in. I asked my husband, who was supposed to be at his mom's, to come over and change the locks but his mom told me he wasn't with her. And it took me less than an hour to find the first two women he was cheating on me with. Did she leave him? Well, to find out how this story ends,

follow the OK Storytime Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition

was going to backfire so badly, it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about how it's happened here and it continues to happen here. Sorry about that, but we're not changing the name of the podcast, you know, because we're not. Anyway, I got James Stout with me. I got Garrison Davis with me.

Woot woot. Huzzah. So, the past few weeks, myself as well as probably everyone else on this call, has been getting a lot of questions from listeners via the various social media apps that we damage ourselves by logging into on a much more than needed frequent basis. But one question that's been kind of on a lot of people's minds and something that we've been discussing as like a group is the idea of should you flee the country? Is the party over? Do we need to use the time we have now to get out. The Trump administration is cracking down on a whole bunch of groups of already marginalized

people, people with fewer resources, immigrants, people who are here for asylum, trans people, queer people in general. It's getting pretty scary out there and the thought crosses your mind, maybe there's somewhere else that's better. And this has always been a tough question for us to kind of think about because we don't want to like inspire panic. That's not the purpose of what we do here. You should try to spread calm when times are bad if you can.

But the situation politically in the country and in many parts of the world right now is extremely fraught and it does feel closer towards like the bad nightmare scenario than kind of I've ever thought it has before. So it's a really tough question. Yeah. And I think what we're going to be doing this episode is just kind of talking about this question

and our thoughts around, you know, various responses to this line of thought. And I guess Robert kind of has a baseline, like kind of quasi answer that I think we can use as a jumping off point. You know, if you're someone who is being targeted, you know, or in a community of people who are being targeted, you know, you're a naturalized citizen, you're here on a green card, you're trans, you're any kind, any of the many different

groups of people that are being targeted right now, and you have the opportunity to leave and you think that that's the right thing for you, then you should do it. You shouldn't feel bad about it. If you've got a job that is in demand in other countries and you know the process and can start the process to get residency somewhere else and work somewhere else and make your life work that way, then I don't think you should feel bad about doing that if that's what you decide is the right thing for you.

That said, it's not, it's just simply not going to be a realistic possibility for most people. What is more realistic for a lot of people is, for example, moving from states where the risk is higher to states where maybe the risk is lower. Hard to say how long the risk will be lower, you know? But I, you know, I certainly that's more achievable for a lot of people than getting set up in a foreign country. As James will talk about, if your hope is just, I'm going to try to go somewhere else like Europe or whatever, as an asylum seeker, as again, James will go into

more detail on life ain't easy for asylum seekers and that's not really, again, it may not be nearly as much of an option as you think that it is right now. I, you know, had to go through kind of my own process after the election of like, well, am I going to like, you know, get my finances in order and move to another country and basically try to like, pay my way into getting a visa somewhere, like in Spain, which is an option for, for someone like me. And I came to the conclusion that like, nah, you know, if

the worst case thing happens, I'd rather like die here or, or whatever. It's just not worth it, you know, to try to get out. So I'm committing to trying to like, hold the line here with everybody basically that I love in the world. Cause like, what else are you going to do? You know? Yeah. Like I will just say that, you know, I probably have met more asylum seekers

than most people, you know, and it is one of the more miserable fates available to a human, it will, if large numbers of people start leaving the U S only get worse. If you're someone who's a U S citizen, you have probably not experienced much in the way of like strict immigration enforcement. If you have traveled around experienced much in the way of strict immigration enforcement if you have travelled around the world. You have one of the more high-value passports in the world, you can go almost anywhere with a visa or in many cases without a visa. Seeking asylum is an extremely different process. If you think you're just going to get on a flight and leave and stay somewhere, understand that many countries will probably begin to require

reciprocal visas with the United States soon if we continue our current sort of pathway with a more isolationist immigration policy and they'll have to get that visa and then, you know, if you overstay, you will be subject to enforcement. The sense of permanence that you enjoy here might never be something you enjoy again. Uh, and that's just if you're able to fly somewhere and then, so you try and overstay a visa or you try and apply for asylum, I have people I've met in every facet of my life, like I know guys who I met as a bike racer who have applied for

asylum, guys I met on a bike race who are staying on that barge in the UK. It is a miserable fate. And I think that I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying that you need to understand that it is highly unpleasant and it strips you of all dignity and in some places it strips people of like their lives, right? People die migrating. It's also like incredibly expensive to do the things that migrants do because everyone is trying to make a buck off them. Right. I was just talking on another podcast about how the journey that people took up

through the Gdarian gap, who tried to come to the United States, it would have cost them way less just to fly, but they couldn't because they couldn't get the visas, right? That doesn't mean like if you, you mean like if you have a historical right to citizenship through various, you know, certain people have rights to Spanish citizenship or German citizenship or... Irish. Irish is one that many people have access to. Yeah.

Yeah, why not, why not, you know, if you have the financial resources, why not try and see where that will go? Why not begin pursuing that? Totally. Yeah, sure. I think becoming a dual citizen, if you have the capability to, is a fantastic idea that I will like never dissuade someone from. No, I would go so far as to say, even if you plan to stay here, if you have the ability to get dual citizenship, you should be pursuing that right now. Absolutely. Like, is it something that you should do? It's often not hideously expensive, and it's something that might be, yeah, you have options,

and options are good. Yeah, I am very hesitant to like, openly call for like, now is the time to leave the country. I do not feel comfortable saying that for a number of reasons. Like some of them are more political, as in like, I don't really subscribe to a politics of escape. Even the idea of like fleeing states, I feel a little bit iffy about. Now, there's certainly, you know, a lot of cases where families are trying to move, you know, outside states that have more restricted access to trans health care for minors towards more friendly states, which I totally understand.

But I have greatly enjoyed getting to know a whole bunch of trans people in the South and a whole bunch of trans people here are not willing to leave their home. This is their home and it always will be and they're going to stay and fight for it even as things get harder you know, harder. And I don't think you should write these people off. I don't think you should write these places off. These places are still a terrain of battle and they're going to be places where trans people can still live and still live fulfilling lives in many cases.

And that is worth acknowledging, that's worth putting effort into. To the point that like after the election, I was already considering maybe, you know, trying to travel around the country some more. And after this last election, my line of thought was way more on the side of, I would actually like to spend as much time in Georgia as possible. I would actually want to stay in the South for as much as I can, because this is like not a place that I think people should be walking away from. And in some ways that does come from like a slightly privileged point of view for multiple reasons. As someone who's white and holds a Canadian passport as well as an American passport,

that is you know something that I like to have as a back pocket option, but that's something I'm not like considering like at all. Like I do not want to move to Canada. All my friends are here. My life is here. There are certain scenarios where things get much, much, much worse, even though things are already getting quite bad, but there are certain scenarios where, yes, that passport will come in handy. And that's why I do encourage, no matter what, you should see if you have any options to

become a citizen in more than one country. It is a great thing to be. It's good to not be just tied down to one place. But the process of trying to, you know, immigrate somewhere where you do not have a citizenship is already quite challenging. And we will probably discuss some more of this later, because I think there's also a sort of like onion of threat of people when you're when you're thinking about this question like which people will Will be or are currently being targeted the most and how that kind of affects the options in terms of like relocation To places view it as like safer havens and I would like to jumpstart that onion of protection discussion after these messages

that onion of protection discussion after these messages. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. And I was like, what? Like it was him? I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles

and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice. They put out something on social media. So I'd get calls in the middle of the night all the time. It's like, how do you think you're gonna get away with something like this?

Like you killed somebody. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney, and my dear friend Joe Locke from Heartstopper and Agatha All Along is my very first guest on my brand new podcast, The Dylan Hour. It's musical, mayhem, and it is going to be so much fun. I like a man. You like a man. What do I like, Joe? You like a man too. We often- There's quite a similar-

There's some cross-pollination happening in here. Not like- No! Have we? No. No. Not yet. Never say never. I cannot wait for all you girls, gays, and theys to join me on this extremely special

pink confection of a podcast. There is so much darkness in this world, and what I think we could all you girls, gays and theys to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast. There is so much darkness in this world and what I think we could all use more of is a little joy. Listen to the Dillon Hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Love ya! In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.

Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography.

This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levitown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Prohibition.

It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s. When we're five years into Prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working. In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula Six. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor, and all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately

to stop the corruption behind it. They were like superhero crusaders turning the page on a system that didn't work, wasn't fair, and was corrupt. So how did prohibitions war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts. We're back and we're talking about onions, which you need to wear around your neck to protect you from evil spirits.

Garrison, that's what you were getting at, right? Yes. Let's wrap this one up. That's done. Move on to the next topic. Wear five different onions to drive away the various secret police forces trying to hunt down individuals? Yes.

Speaking of, I guess, like the big thing I'm thinking about right now, or one of some big things is there's different levels of scrutiny being placed on individuals currently in the United States. One, you have like people who are completely undocumented, right? You have people who are, who are currently here on like valid asylum claims who are about to, right? You have people who are currently here on like valid asylum claims, who are about to get those rights like stripped away. I'm trying to think of like the list of refugees

that were allowed under Biden that are now like imminently gonna get their stuff stripped away from the Trump administration. I know Venezuelan- Yeah, Venezuelan and Cuban. I know Venezuelan immigrants are one, Haitian immigrants are another. Afghan.

But groups that have been able to come here the past few years that are going to be now seen as like quote unquote illegal by the White House and immigration customs enforcement. You then have student visa holders, which are already like currently under threat getting visas taken away. You have people on work visas. You have green card holders visas, you have green card holders, you even have naturalized citizens. And among just regular citizens, unnatural as I guess, people that were born here, you have other factors that could lead to potential

hardship based on political affiliation, or based on gender and sexuality. And that's kind of like the bracket breakdown I'm working off of. So as much as it's like dangerous to be like, you know, like a trans anarchist, right, in the United States, I think that is fairly different than a Haitian immigrant who's about to get like literally hunted down by ICE, right? And these people have wildly different realities, wildly different options for how they're going to like handle this question and handle like the of preemptively choosing to relocate somewhere else. James, do you have any thoughts on this onion, I guess? Yeah, I think you described it well. I think a lot of folks are for the first time finding themselves in that onion at all.

And certainly with respect to like immigration enforcement or potentially being forced to leave this country. And I think it would be good maybe to look at folks who have been there for a long time and look at how they've done, right? Because there have been people whose existence was precarious in this country for decades, right? Maybe we go back to 1994 in Operation Gatekeeper, maybe we

go back further, whatever, I don't care. Maybe we go back to the operation whose name is also a slur in the 1930s, and I'm not going to say. I mean, indigenous people here, like, for all of American history, have been people that exist in a wildly different reality than like most US citizens, right? Yeah, well, yes, this country is predicated on the genocide of indigenous people. Well, and even in the ways that they're, they like continue to live here. It's like a different world from- Yeah, like that genocide is ongoing. Like it's not a, it's not a thing that stopped.

It's not a historical thing. It's the thing that exists as long as this country exists. I would look to those people, right? Like you said, Garrison, indigenous communities, indigenous people continue to exist in this country despite the best efforts of this country to eradicate them. Undocumented communities, right? Migrant communities of mixed status have continued to exist for a very long time. And like the way that they have got through this is together. And that's the way that we have got through this is together. And that's the way that we will get through this too. When there have been threats to migrant communities, migrant communities have shown up for each other, right? They're doing that right now.

You see groups like Union del Barrio in San Diego, right? Like going around announcing when there are ice, the presence of ice offices in the neighborhood. The way that they have gone through it is through other people in positions of precarity showing up for one another and taking care of one another. And if that is a new position for you, if finding yourself like further along the intersectional matrix of oppression is new for you, then like it's scary. I do understand that that precarity is petrifying, but understand that communities and people have been here for a long time and look at how they've got through it. I mean, queer communities too, to a degree have been persecuted in this country for a very

long time and has developed ways of not just like existing, but also like continuing to center joy and experience joy and not just like live in fear. Because I think if you live in fear, like you've kind of given up to a degree, or you've let them win to agree, I should say, like, I do understand that being new to this is petrifying for people. And like, I don't want to just say like, oh, you shouldn't be scared or, you know, you should look at how migrant communities have taken care of one another. But like, now is the time to begin establishing solidarity as well. So like those communities, which have been precarious for some time, they're not closed spaces, right?

Like you can be in solidarity with them and you can learn from them. And I think that now is the time to do that. Like now is the time to build stronger links. If you're really worried about things being really bad in this country. And you have good reason to be, right? Like, oh yeah, shit's fucked up and bullshit. Yeah, it's really fucking bad. It's all really bad.

Yeah. Like, you know, we're sending people to labor camps. If you're scared panicking, thinking I got to get out of here, I get you. No, I mean, I think the thing that you should be doing, regardless of who you are, is you should be giving yourself options. You should be increasing the amount of options that you have. And like that is something that is never a bad idea. That is something that you can never do too early.

It's something that you should have already been doing, frankly. Like I've been advocating for people to get passports, including an American passport, because that does make it easier to leave the country. You should be getting that and it's going to be harder, especially if you're trans now to get a passport that matches what you look like, right? But this is still something I think is worth doing because it gives you an option and you should be increasing the amount of options you have. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's never a bad thing.

And like, that community structure is an option too, right? People showing up for you and you showing up for them. That is one of your options. Don't forget that. And like, that will also bring you joy and you will feel safer. When you like, we're supposed to live in communities and like, I, you know, I've seen a lot of people in very difficult circumstances. And one of the Kurdish guys once said to me in the desert, he was like, whatever we do,

we do together. And I thought that was very profound because they were at that time like dancing around a fire in the midst of what was like an open air concentration camp, you know? But if you can find community and you can find a way to continue to experience joy, then I promise that things won't be as bad as they seem right now. Yep. Within the Kurdish freedom movement, there's a phrase that is commonly used, a slogan you could say, I guess, in Kurdish you would say,

means resistance is life. And we should remember that for whole groups of people, many of whom we've featured here, if they had all just left, they would no longer exist in the way that they exist now. Kurdish people have been oppressed by various states for centuries, right? Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian, and Syrian. They've been subject to genocidal violence and they've still remained there, right? And they've continued to fight against that state oppression and they've created something

beautiful today as a result that we can see in Rojava. The same is true of the Karen and Karenian people we've spoken to in Myanmar, right? They decided to remain rather than to leave. And in doing so, they created a culture that was based on resistance, and that resisted the ability of the state to exercise a monopoly on violence and to determine their outcomes. And I think we should look to those examples as we consider, like, what does it mean if the state becomes more hostile here? Now, something that, like, I think Robert said in our work group chat, which thankfully has not been turned into an Atlantic article.

I did invite Pete Hegseth. So we'll see if he hops in, you know. He's rejected us multiple times. That'll be good. Yeah. We've been trying to add the Atlantic editor in chief for years. No, he is not welcome. He's absolutely not welcome.

Fuck that guy. We just need him to manufacture consent for bombing another country in the Middle East on our podcast. It's so funny, because it is like the dream of every journalist that you just get added to the entire government's war planning chat and he just uses it to dunk on the Trump admin? Like not to get more info on like anything happening. And then he like homers back into the hedge. Yeah.

It's fucking hysterical. Yeah. They could have had four years, or maybe not maybe only a one-off chat. Like Homer's back into the hedge. It's fucking hysterical. They could have had four years, or maybe not maybe only one off chat. They would have accidentally invited a different journalist. It was gonna happen eventually. But something Robert said in our chat, is that like, if you already had like plans

or the ability to move to a different country of your choosing then yeah why not right like if you already were thinking about moving to Germany which is very funny to say now right but if you already had plans and you had the ability to do that then then sure that's something that you should that that you should like consider if you do not already have pre-existing plans and means maybe it's not something to put all of your effort into doing right now. Because that is such a massive undertaking in general, and not everyone has that option,

and there's going to be people stuck here. And part of my thinking on this is, is that I'm in a relatively privileged position. I would rather use the sort of benefits and stability that I have to help other people that are gonna be living in this country. So I'm gonna stay here to do that. And that's part of kind of my thought process on a personal level.

Do I, you know, one day maybe want to live off the continent? Yeah, but that's like for personal reasons, not for political reasons. That's because I think Glasgow looks pretty. And if you also think Glasgow is pretty, and you want to move there, then that's fine. But I guess like the politics of escape, I do find a little bit troubling in some ways. And I guess I would like to talk about that a little bit more after this ad break. ["Sweet Home Alone"] Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.

And I was like, what? Like, it was him? I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice.

They put out something on social media, so I'd get calls in the middle of the night all the time. It's like, how do you think you're going to get away with something like this? Like you killed somebody. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy.

Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Is this a good time? It's me, Dylan Mulvaney, and my dear friend Joe Lock from Heartstopper and Agatha All Along is my very first guest on my brand new podcast, The Dylan Hour. It's musical, mayhem, and it is going to be so much fun. I like a man. You like a man. What do I like, Joe? You like a man too.

We often- We have quite a similar- There's some cross-pollination happening in here. Not like- No! Have we? No. No. Not yet. Never say never.

I cannot wait for all you girls, gays, and theys to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast. There is so much darkness in this world and what I think we could all you girls, gays and theys to join me on this extremely special pink confection of a podcast. There is so much darkness in this world and what I think we could all use more of is a little joy. Listen to the Dillon Hour on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Love ya! In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in

an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York.

But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide.

I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levitown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levertown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Prohibition.

It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s. When we're five years into Prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working. In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula 6. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition

is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor and all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it. They were like superhero crusaders turning the page on a system that didn't work, wasn't fair, and was corrupt. So how did prohibitions war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to Snafu on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or

wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. James made a horrible face when I complimented Scotland. What was up with that? It was when you said Glasgow. Oh, okay. It's just brutal. Oh, so Glasgow, not a city that's traditionally like aesthetically prized I guess Okay, well, that's it's your maybe okay, and Edinburgh is where if I was gonna go to Scotland. I'd probably aim

I'm not gonna live in the Harry Potter town. Are you kidding? Oh, it's Okay, yeah, okay. That is rude garrison. Don't take that away from Edinburgh. don't give her that. All the coffee shops are like fucking wizard-themed now, absolutely not. You haven't been to Edinburgh, don't tell me that shit. I've seen your travel pictures, Robert. They were mostly hard liquor-themed. Okay, that's fair. Yeah, you can, Edinburgh is a nice city. Glasgow's a nice city.

You can enjoy it, but Stop by Carlisle on your way down where my family are from. My favorite Glasgow fact is that there's a beverage called Buckfast that is 20% alcohol mineral wine made by monks that has as much coffee as a Red Bull. And in Glasgow, Scotland, for a significant period of time, roughly 1% of all violent crimes were committed with the bottle. Yeah, Bucky is, it's a whole subculture. Buck fast gets you fucked fast. That's right, folks. So a term I've used for like the past few years to like discuss this,

to discuss this question of like, can you like outrun American fascism is the politics of escape. And for a while, I really was vocally opposed to this sort of politics because it felt like the entire world was going through a global far right power grab. And no matter where you run, you can't really get away from it. And now kind of curiously, you know, some of that some of this is still happening, right? You can look at the AFD in Germany. But but some of what's happened with this Trump administration has almost weakened a

degree of like this global far right power grab. Like for a long time, it looked like the Conservative Party of Canada was about to just completely take control over the whole over the whole country due to like pent up frustration over Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party. And now, due to the actions of the Trump administration, the Liberals have retaken a significant portion of like popular support and are probably going to do a big sweep in the general election that's going to happen, I'm guessing next month with the new prime minister, like about to call one, which makes sense because he should call one at the peak of support for the Liberal Party after the Conservatives have taken like

a 12 to 17 point dip depending which pool you use. So for a while I was like, it doesn't even really make sense to flee to Canada because Canada is right on the coattails of America. Canadian politics are kind of historically about like 10 years delayed from American politics. And now the new Trump administration has kind of thrown a curveball in this. British politics are always really hard for me to diagnose because all of their parties there are pretty wacky in my mind.

Oh yeah. What the Tories have been doing has been extremely worrying. The NHS trans stuff is pretty bad. Now that the labor party is in, it's hard for me to figure out kind of where the country is going because this labor party

is a pretty conservative labor party. But this idea of like being able to outrun American fascism is still something I find like unconvincing, I guess. Like you can't fully run away from all of these problems. And there may be certain people that that it's still like makes sense to start making these moves to start planning for that option. Right. right? I am pro options. Even if this idea of like total escape, I still find troubling.

Yeah. And anyone else have any thoughts on this? Yeah, I mean, like as goes to US goes to the world, right? And I know that is changing, but like maybe, I think if it gets to the point where large numbers of people are fleeing the US, we might see some of that same anti-migrant rhetoric that we've seen in the US, in even relatively liberal Canada, the United Kingdom, other Anglophone countries, right? Like, it's already very hard to immigrate to Australia.

It's not the easiest to immigrate to Canada, frankly. Yeah, I'm not as familiar with the Canadian one. Especially as like an American, unless you have like a job that you need to do in Canada, and you're the only one who can do that job, or you get a Canadian girlfriend. That makes it slightly easier, but still not like completely easier, frankly. Yeah, that is a, I guess that's the alternative. Yeah, I think a lot of people who listen to this listen to this because they have a fairly radical politics,

or left politics. Or you're a journalist or you're a federal worker. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're looking to steal our stories? Fuck off, if I may say so. But yeah, we've all grown up on the stories of people who stood up for what they believed in, right? And Margaret makes a whole podcast about it and Robert does on Christmases.

Yep. And like, there's a reason why they did that. Like, you know, they, I know that the idea of running away and being safe could be tempting, but like, if this country gets as bad as it needs to be for people to run away in large numbers, then like the world gets markedly less safe. Oh yeah. You're going to be running for the rest of your life. Just look at how much food the U S produces, how much medicine, 70% of all of

the blood used in every single country's medical system around the world is exported from the United States. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. And like, particularly for, for like US citizens, right? Looking looking differently. The people who are going to be able to pull it off are people with pretty, pretty extraordinary

means in in most cases. I'm not I'm not saying all cases, but like if you have the capacity to move from the United States to Germany, you're probably not living on the poverty line, right? Like this is this is this because this takes a considerable financial investment. So instead, part of what my opposition to this is that you're essentially abandoning a whole bunch of like, the like like most at risk people. Yeah. A part of this even extends out to like moving from state to state. I'm obviously in support of free movement.

I've traveled around. I'm going to continue to travel around. I want to see as much as the country in the world as I can. Yeah. But like another facet of this politics of escape is that something I hear very consistently from my my friends in Atlanta and this is something I can attest to personally, the most amount of vocal transphobia from people on the street that they have faced

has not been in Atlanta where they live, it's been when they're visiting people in Seattle or Portland. You actually get a lot more weird anti-queer harassment in Seattle, which is just like on like the street level. It's bizarre. Like cities all have different kind of like modes of operation. People have different like informal like manners in terms of how how you like behave on the street. And it's it is this is something I've definitely actually I've

definitely experienced. There's there's a lot more like open openness towards like certain types of anti trans harassment in like these like liberal safe havens, like quote unquote. I've been called slurs on the street way more in Portland, Oregon than I have in Atlanta, Georgia. And this is another like interesting aspect, which I'm not saying Atlanta is a quote unquote safer city than Seattle if you're trans. I'm not saying the is a quote-unquote safer city than Seattle if you're trans. I'm not saying the vice versa either, but this is just an aspect of the politics of escape, especially in the United States. There is really no real escape.

There is no mythical safe haven where you can live your free life and frolic through the park and never have to face any kind of hardship or political disenfranchisement. If you still want to relocate somewhere, that's something that you should consider and, again, create options. But I also do not want to abandon my friends here because I just have a more stable job. I want to be here for them and help them,

and not in a patronizing way, but in a solidarity way. That's really important to me. And I think people who are thinking about these same things and running these same questions of if they want to commit to staying in the United States, I think should also make those considerations of, is which one of your friends is not gonna be able to make the same calculation. And frankly, I feel like

better as a person and like my mental health feels better knowing I'm gonna be here with them rather than going to a Berlin nightclub, which does sound fun, and I still might on vacation. Oh, you definitely need to go to Berghain, Gare. Oh, yeah, I have plans this year. You need to spend three days that feel like about four hours in Bergen. I'm excited. I am, for the first time,

planning to leave the continent this year, which is a little bit scary because re-entering the United States is pretty tricky right now, which should also play into your considerations. Yeah, yeah. Also the general safety of air travel at the moment. And the general safety of air travel. Now moment. And the general safety of air travel.

Now that we don't have a gay man running the planes. Yeah, it turns out he was actually all right at that. Woke was keeping those planes in the air. You know what? Kudos to him. Turns out he was okay at that job. But yes, I don't know what I was saying, but I'm sure it was really important and well thought through about not abandoning people who maybe don't have the same resources that

you do. Yeah. To your point about like coming back to the US, I think understand that like one of the things that migrants deal with, even if they get to a place and they have some degree of permanence and they feel safe there, is that they will never be able to go back to where they're from in most cases, right? They'll be able to when someone in their family passes away, they can't be there for the funeral. That means that when they have a grandchild, they have a niece or a nephew, something happens in their community and they want to be there to help. It's a natural disaster. They are just stuck. And that's not something to like,

to discount as something that's not important. Like that is really hard. And if you have a community now, especially for trans folks, right? Like, I just think that like there are so many places where like, like you say, garrison, where bigotry against trans folks is being more and more normalized. So like if you have many places where like, like you say, Garrison, where bigotry against trans folks is being more and more normalized. So like if you have a community where people, where you're experiencing joy every day with the people you're around, like leaving that should be something that you really think hard about because that can be hard to find. Yeah.

Yeah. Especially in Edinburgh, because they're all, they're all turfs with their in the cafes. It's not true. Just to be clear. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of the discussion I wanted to have. Um, I'm sure we all have more thoughts on this that we will, we will express

very eloquently as soon as we close this recording session. That's how we do it. But, but I know this is this type of stuff that we've been thinking about. I know, I know listeners have been too, because you're asking us these questions. It's certainly annoying that we don't have a concise yes or no answer, but there isn't a concise yes or no answer. I think the most concise one I have is that you should be giving yourself as many options as you can.

If that includes applying for Irish citizenship because your grandfather is Irish, then hey, why not? Go for it, right? Ireland's great. Nice country. You'll like it. But I am trepidatious, I guess, about public calls to flee the country at this point

and kind of the underlying politics and ideology of that, let alone the logistical aspects of trying to relocate to a different country where you are not a citizen. And frankly, I think there'll be a lot of countries that are not super eager to take American immigrants. I think Canada is typically kind of low-key been one of these places, especially if we're going to go to war with Canada to make it the 51st state, then it might also create some tricky aspects. Yeah, it could make it harder.

But I don't know, if anyone else has any other thoughts, air them now or forever be beholden to angry Reddit comments. Yeah, I don't know, please don't burn each other down on Reddit. Like, now is the time to give people a little grace and be kind to other people. Don't flee to Belgium. Stay away from Belgium at all costs. I had a nice time in Belgium. What do you have against Belgium?

I have a friend in Belgium. As an Italian, I think we need to go to war with them again. You know, it's what made Caesar great. It could make us great again. That's my stance on Belgium. It's Italian territory. I stand with the Belgian people. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. It was shocking. It was very shocking. Like that could have been my daughter. Like you never know. I'm Jen Swan. I'm the host of a new podcast called My Friend Daisy. It's the story of

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