The New American Dream

A friend of mine from college recently texted me a cryptic sentence:

“We did it.”

Except it wasn’t that mysterious, because I had a fairly good idea of what she had done. 

My friend (let’s call her Mary) is married to a guy from Europe. They have talked for years about relocating to his homeland. Well, that idle chit-chat turned into active planning once a certain xenophobic blabbermouth reentered the White House.

Mary and her husband have now moved, most likely permanently, to a European country where they have universal healthcare, almost no gun violence, and higher standards of living than just about anywhere in America.

It’s one of those hellholes of “socialism,” foreign languages, and fancy pastries.

Mary is a well-educated, high-income professional. And now she will take that education and spending money to Europe. But don’t worry, she is easily replaced. Trump’s legions of the poorly educated and massively angry will crank out dozens of babies to take the place of libtards who create most of the nation’s GDP.

I know this sounds like the plot of liberals’ favorite movie, Idiocracy, but I now have first-hand evidence (albeit anecdotal) that it is actually taking place.

But don’t take my word for it.

Data for 2025 indicates that more Americans are leaving the United States. The number of Americans renouncing their U.S. citizenship has also risen. In the first quarter of 2025 (i.e., when Trump took office), expatriations more than doubled compared to the last quarter of 2024. If this rate continues, 2025 could see a record number of Americans moving overseas, exceeding the previous peak seen in 2020, when the pandemic provoked many Americans to seek out a country where people don’t spit in doctors’ faces or punch someone out for wearing a facemask.

This time, political polarization is a chief motivator. You would think this would make conservatives happy.

After all, right wingers have been screaming at liberals for decades to leave America if they don’t like it. Curiously, they never aim this advice at Trump, who hates America far more than any liberal ever could. Seriously, look at the guy’s rants about how horrible this country is. They are the assembled quotes of a rambling lunatic, yes, but they are also the diatribes of someone who truly despises the United States as it actually exists.

And that’s one reason he and his acolytes want to change it. They don’t want an America that bares any semblance to those European nations where people are happier, believe in democracy, and avoid working themselves to death.

The conservative vision of America is a country that “is no longer synonymous with the aspiration to freedom, but with transactionalism and secrecy: the algorithms that mysteriously determine what you see, the money collected by anonymous billionaires, the deals that the American president is making with world leaders that benefit himself and maybe others whose names we don’t know.” Republicans see the USA as 3,000 miles of a theocratic fiefdom where they are permanently in charge.

They would be shocked to realize that not every America shares this vision, and some of them — ok, a lot of us — are talking about leaving once and for all.

An Abrupt Change

You kids might not remember the 9/11 attacks, but I am certainly old enough to recall that horrific day.

I’m also old enough to remember when America had presidents who could speak in full, coherent sentences. But that’s another story.

One aspect of the attack’s aftermath that many people do not remember, or choose to forget, is the Patriot Act. This rabbit punch to our civil liberties was rammed through by Republicans and timid Democrats, all of whom insisted that unless we wanted religious zealots to blow us up repeatedly, we had to agree to be surveilled nonstop. We are still living with the legacy of this panicky response to terrorism.

I also recall more than one conservative in 2001 insisting that we had to racially profile airplane passengers and that we had to be willing to give up some of our freedoms to feel safe.

Well, a quarter-century later, a new breed of conservatives are bravely standing up, renouncing the past, and insisting that… we have to be willing to give up some of our freedoms to feel safe (or at least, not get offended).

You see, “some Republicans who consider themselves defenders of unfettered speech are getting more comfortable with limiting it.” At least one Republican congressman has said, “under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right” before adding “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

I must admit, I had no idea the First Amendment could be discarded so quickly simply because Republicans aren’t feeling it.

Also, these “normal times” that the GOP is referring to are apparently the Biden years, which pretty much admits that the Trump years are fucked up to the point that authoritarianism becomes the default.

The larger issue, a point that has been made multiple times over multiple decades, is that if anything bad happens, the GOP will melt down and shout, “And now we have to take away all your rights.”

Hell, sometimes nothing bad needs to happen for conservatives to, say, “Stop it with your civil liberties nonsense.” It takes very little for conservatives to jettison the values they claim to uphold. 

That might be because they never believed any of that stuff in the first place.

The New Book

Just in time for Halloween, my publisher sent a box of my latest book. 

Here’s what the publishing house says:

The Amityville Horror (1979) was a box-office smash that terrified audiences with its supposedly true depiction of a real-life haunting in Amityville, New York. In the decades since its release, the film has gone on to be one of the most profitable independent films of all time, casting a shadow over the haunted house subgenre and spawning an unwieldy franchise of official and unofficial sequels. 

But in spite of the film’s success, it was lambasted by critics, and the “true story” that inspired it was already being debunked as exaggeration or even outright fiction before the film was even released. 

So what made audiences’ belief in its implausible origin story so stubborn? And why does The Amityville Horror continue to wield such an outsized influence on contemporary haunted house stories? 

In this lively analysis of the movie that traumatized him as a child, Daniel Cubias draws on wide-ranging research into the film’s themes, factual basis, and legacy to explain what continues to draw audiences to this flawed but nevertheless alluring horror classic.

Maybe I’m biased, but that sounds like a pretty cool read.

 So go ahead and grab one before they sell out.

Thanks

The Grimmest of Grim Reapers

It’s been more difficult than usual to keep track of all the outlandish conspiracy theories.

Was the shooter a groyper or a trans activist? Is antifa coming to burn your city down? Will taking Tylenol cause your head to explode?

You may have lost track of the myriad rumors that swirl into our minds every day, courtesy of our friend, the internet.

But do you remember this conspiracy theory from a couple of weeks ago?: Trump is near death, and the White House is covering it up.

Yes, it seems like the distant past when everyone was posting pictures of Trump’s hands and asserting body doubles were on the Oval Office and conjecturing like mad. It was so long ago that, back in those halcyon days, we still believed in the First Amendment.

I know — ancient history, right?

Well, the most obnoxious and unpopular person to ever lead a major nation is alive and kicking, thank you very much, and he showed off how non-dead he is by delivering the most unhinged, bizarre, and befuddling speech in the history of the United Nations.

I can assure you that this was no body double, my friends.

However, the rumors have led to the inevitable question about the inevitable end that all of us face. Someday, whether days or years from now, Trump will no longer be around.

Now, I’m not wishing harm upon our illustrious president.

Do you hear that, all you government goons and right-wing busybodies who are scouring the internet for any sign of dissent? I am not wishing harm upon the guy.

In fact, I’ve said many times that I hope old number 47 continues to thrive in great health. I want him to live to be 100, when he will be an ancient and withered symbol of the nation’s descent into insanity and a living refutation to all those people who deny they stood by or applauded while this country spiraled into fascism. Ideally, Trump will celebrate his centenarian birthday in prison, surrounded by his yes men and fellow failed authoritarians.

But I digress.

What happens when Trump exits this mortal coil?

I mean, besides dancing in the streets. That’s a given.

Well, whenever he dies, it will be a liberal plot.

He could keel over a decade from now while eating a cheeseburger, and right-wingers will claim lesbian folk singers poisoned him. The man could impale himself on a golf club in 2040, and conservatives will insist an immigrant college professor speared him.

From a media perspective, he will not go quietly.

His passing will be a landmark in US history. It may be greeted with a collective sigh of relief or a violent attack. It may usher a period of shame and reflection, or it could provoke mass executions.

We don’t really know. Nor do we know what will happen to his most zealous followers, who will have to face life without their domineering daddy figure.

Like all things Trump, I am wary of this development, as unavoidable as it is.

And like all things Trump, there is no way to prepare.

Who’s Got the Truth?

So the authorities have captured the person who allegedly shot that fascist guy last week.

And it turns out the shooter is a gay Latino Muslim immigrant who is chairman of his local antifa chapter.

Wait a second, let me check that. No, he is yet another socially isolated, angry, young white man who grew up in a household that fetishized guns and worshipped the Republican Party.

I know you didn’t see that one coming.

Even though the shooter is not the dark-skinned foreigner that conservatives were literally praying for, that hasn’t stopped them from vowing vengeance. 

Republicans are compiling lists of people who have not expressed the minimum amount of mourning for a bigot that the GOP deems adequate. This is because the Republican Party is against cancel culture and believes strongly in free speech. Yup.

Also, the Trump administration is threatening progressive organizations, because this murder has given them the excuse they have been dreaming about. The White House says unspecified groups face unclear consequences for undetermined crimes. I’m sure the Trumpists will be thoughtful and well-reasoned in their approach. After all, this is the team that just blows up shipsin international waters for the hell of it.

And of course, right-wing militants — who need a reason to get violent as much as fire needs a reason to burn — are ready to attack. Even more than usual, these lunatics are prepping for full-on warfare. And as we know, even though conservatives deny it at every turn, right-wing violence is exponentially more common and catastrophic than left-wing violence.

In the midst of all this conservative sturm und drang, myriad conspiracy theories have popped up. Because they must. Seriously, if there has ever been more fertile ground for conspiratorial nonsense than 21-st century America, I would like to know.

The assassination is rumored to be the work of a dark cabal, or an inside job, or the work of a Satanic liberal cult, or simply enough, the Jews (who wind up as the villains in every conspiracy theory). Some internet nutjobs insist the shooting was fake, and that the fascist guy didn’t die at all. I’m surprised that nobody has insisted that it was an elaborate suicide — yet.

With all this mishmashing of fact and fiction, progressives find themselves in an odd place. For the first time in, well, maybe forever, misinformation is beneficial to liberals.

This is because the shooter does not fit the easy profile of an ethnic minority gone savage, or a crazed immigrant out for blood. Again, he’s a native-born white guy who was raised Republican. This background has led to conjecture that he fired that shot as the opening salvo in a right-wing civil war. We’re hearing about internecine conservative plots and online mutual trolling and groypers, which is a term that I resent I had to learn.

Again, those who hate liberals will not care what the facts are or the truth of what actually happened. But painting this murder as the work of unhinged liberals is already failing because of the shooter’s profile, the swirl of misinformation, and the absence of clear facts.

For the first time, liberals can say, “That’s not what I heard” and offer up their own crazy story that may or may not be accurate.

No, that is not good for society. But it may help to keep progressives alive.

By the way, we should note that the fascist guy rose to fame by demonizing immigrants and ethnic minorities. He devoted his career to spreading hatred of “the other” and convincing white people that they were under attack by swarthy foreigners speaking bizarre languages. Until his dying breath, quite literally, he insisted non-white people were violent and dangerous.

And then a white man shot him.

That’s proving your hypothesis wrong in the most tragically ironic way possible.