June 2007
Years ago, I began hearing and seeing the statement San Francisco is over, and I struggled to puzzle out what it meant.  Had some cataclysm destroyed the city, yet been ignored by the media?  Or had San Francisco just become passé, a shadow of its pre-plague self?  When I moved to the Bay Area in 1999, mild culture shock quickly set in.  Northern California’s sidewalks aren’t rolled up at sunset, but there’s little raging night life.  After all those yoga classes, long sessions at the gym, and big organic meals, who has energy to party?  I believe San Francisco is over was the predecessor to today’s old-guard whinge about gay ghettos being overrun by heterosexuals.  Straight folks move in, and there goes the neighborhood.  Myself, I’m no gay separatist.  I think the real Disneyfication that activists are bitching about would be to trap the Castro in a permanent temporal loop: disco forever; poppers without end, amen.  How absurd this is.  How retrogressive.  The Seventies might be long gone, but San Francisco itself is alive and well.

During my two years in Seattle, my last two in the States, I began researching a book on the case for expatriation.  I hadn’t fled the country yet, so I decided to table the project until I could speak from experience.  Now that I’ve lived abroad for a couple of years, I feel more strongly than ever that leaving was the right decision.  Even before Bush fils was installed in the White House, I had my doubts about the direction the country was taking.  Since then, the endless morass of incompetence and corruption almost defies description.  Much has been written about the neglect of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing chaos in Iraq (as I write this, my brother-in-law is there).  Fresh scandals emerge every week: Walter Reed, the GOP tampering with the judiciary, and so on.  The mind boggles.  And these things are only the tip of another iceberg… much like the one that sank the Titanic.

The federal entitlement programs are underfunded and overburdened.  Generation X, my age cohort, lives in the demographic rain shadow of the Baby Boomers.  By the time we reach retirement age, about 30 years from now, the Boomers will most likely have depleted Social Security.  Things don’t look great for Medicaid and Medicare, as well: health care costs in the US are insanely, unreasonably expensive and the prices are still going up.  Yes, I’m doing my best to save and to invest, as we all should, but I’m starting from nothing.  I got wiped out a few years ago.  I don’t like to imagine depending on these programs someday, even if they’re overhauled and restored to fiscal health.  But what if they’re not?  Major reform is necessary, and I see little evidence of the political will to make it happen. 

Bush’s tax cuts have sucked billions out of the economy, and the invasion of Iraq has cost billions more.  As if that weren’t enough, American anti-tax sentiment makes funding major infrastructure projects difficult and time-consuming, leading to nationwide neglect of roadways, transit systems, bridges, and airports.  I could name a dozen critical projects off the top of my head, like seismic safety upgrades to BART in the Bay Area or replacement of the Alaskan Way viaduct in Seattle.  Plus, the lack of a national health care scheme has left tens of millions either uninsured or without adequate cover.  In both cases, infrastructure and health, fixes and cures are typically many times more expensive than prevention.  We’ve already seen what a great job Uncle Sam has done with reconstruction in New Orleans.  What happens after the next huge earthquake hits the West Coast?  Or when there’s an epidemic kids could and should have been vaccinated against, but weren’t?  Americans don’t tend to see proactive expenditures as investments, though.  Even if they did, the money’s being spent in the Middle East.

Then there’s the cost of housing.  Home ownership in urban areas has become an impossible dream for too many people, relegating many a prospective buyer either to remote suburbs (I’d rather have a chainsaw vasectomy than a two-hour commute) or third-tier cities like Shreveport or Cedar Rapids.  I have nothing specific against those cities, but they’re not home.  They’re not for me.  And it’s not just me: my generation has largely been shut out of home ownership, the first time this has happened on such a large scale in modern US history.  More recently, I’ve been reading that the American real estate bubble has burst.  Mortgage default is on the rise.  Home prices are dropping, resulting in negative equity: another sick trend to complicate the situation further.  Real estate is the most common means by which people acquire wealth, yet so many Americans are not moving up (and are living on credit)… where will it all lead?  Talking about the widening income gap would be a cliché if it weren’t such a stark, ugly reality we all have to contend with somehow.

The American economy cannot endlessly bounce back from any imbalance.  We act as if we have unlimited money.  We don’t.  The US no longer occupies a position of economic hegemony over the rest of the world.  It’s trying, but China, India, and the European Union have their own agendas.  They don’t take orders from Washington.  We can’t go on running deficits and blowing up small countries forever.  At some point, fiscal austerity measures will become necessary.  Who’s to say these reforms won’t occur only after another Depression or an Argentina-style currency collapse?  I’m dubious about the nation’s appetite for reform, and I’m getting closer to 40.  Optimism seems naïve, like shrugging off one’s smoking habit or one’s fondness for deep dark suntans.  Sure, medical technology is also always advancing, but why take stupid chances?  Why act as though we have unlimited time?  The US may last for several more centuries, but I won’t.

And then there’s the gay thing.  Two people make a marriage, but the government provides rights and protections.  For the ostensible leader of the developed world, the US lags badly in this regard.  Whether the solution is full marriage, or a UK-style comprehensive civil partnership scheme, same-sex relationships need federal-level recognition.  Now.  It’s happening on the state level, gradually.  There is also a need for federally-mandated protection from anti-gay discrimination and hate crimes.  There’s progress on this front, too, but the opposition is shrill, well-funded, well-organized, and after more than two decades in charge, used to calling the shots.  Yes, there are worse places to live.  In cities like Seattle and San Francisco, you can mostly tune out the opprobrium.  It’s always there, though, like smog.  Inhale it long enough, and the toxicity builds up.  While I’m single and living abroad, gay issues have less relevance to my daily life.  If I were in a relationship, though, my (presumably foreign) partner would not be able to come back to the US with me.  He’d either need to navigate the glacially slow immigration process on his own, or we’d have to choose a third country.  If I were Canadian, British, South African, a Kiwi, or Australian, this wouldn’t be a concern; we could get married or civilly unionized, and buy our plane tickets.  This makes me ashamed of my country.  Some gay people find value in working for change.  Altruism and activism can be meaningful if you feel you’re contributing to something greater than yourself.  I’ve been through too much loss to have an appetite for further steamrollering by Larger Social Forces.

Many have given their lives to defend the United States.  Many would say my departure dishonors that sacrifice.  However, being an American means being an individual.  It means making use of that freedom of speech we considered important until the Patriot Act was passed.  It does not mean switching off one’s critical thinking faculties and becoming a happy but brain-dead robot zombie for Jesus while the country spirals deeper into corruption, while the government whores itself out to corporate interests, and while we enrage the world by waging illegal and unwinnable wars.  These things are not what America was meant to represent.  I’ve taken stock as best I can and concluded there’s little I can do to effect systemic change.  Gay activists and religious zealots actually have something in common these days: they want to roll back the clock.  But the Castro and Greenwich Village are never going to be what they once were, just as America can’t have Camelot back.  We essentially need a Second Republic.  Maybe I’m wrong about the net effect of the trends I’ve discussed, but I don’t think I am.  I’m convinced I can only build a better life for myself by living abroad and seeking permanent residence elsewhere.  Sad but true.  I’ve chosen to start this journey in Korea, because being here enables me to make the career change I spent a couple of years planning.  I am teaching English and writing at a university, and working on a master’s in applied linguistics.  In later articles, I’d like to write more about my arrival and first couple of years here, for those who are considering making a similar leap.  Korea isn’t perfect, and at the time of this writing I don’t expect to spend more than two more years here; however, it’s a great first step away from the US.  America isn’t over, and neither is San Francisco, but we’ve seen the last of much that was good about both places.  I know I’m not alone in believing it’s time to move on.

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