Why I Left America, Twice

I thought of writing this post a year ago, to follow up Daddy’s Simple Lesson, and then forgot about it. A few months ago, I ran into an insane piece of Americana and thought again about the post, and promptly forgot about it again. Now, with Donald J Narcissist about to take over the White House, and with the moronic Left still so far up its own ass it cannot come to terms with why DJN won, it again seems a good time to write the post. Then I can forget about it once and for all.

My family left America for Australia in 1961, which, in that era, was like leaving for the Moon. We went by boat, although admittedly that was as much from my father’s fear of flying¹ and desire for a luxury cruise² than an indication of the magnitude of the trip. I was two years old at the time and so didn’t have a lot of thoughts on the matter, but my parents and my brother Jeff did, and they really had no idea what they were in for.

There were various reasons why, even though they were knowingly rolling the dice, my parents were willing and keen to leave America. First, they both had very weak family ties: Jewish claustrophobia on the one side and white trash horror³ on the other. In the mid 50s they left Pennsylvania for California, no trivial change: think Melbourne to Perth, but sixty years ago. It thus took no great effort to consider continuing, across the Pacific. Only decades later, in the 80s and 90s, did my mother return to America for a couple of visits, including some family aspects;⁴ my father never returned, never even contemplated it.

Although the looseness of family ties made it reasonable to contemplate leaving America, to actually leave required something more. Parts of that something more were troubles with the marriage and my father’s uncertain job future. But a key something more was supplied by the Cold War, which at the end of the 50s was reaching its peak craziness. My parents were not especially political but also, unlike the American establishment, they were not out of their minds. In my father’s memoirs,⁵

But I was also feeling general dissatisfaction with life, the world, society, the bomb, I feel – I still feel – that everybody was in a state of anxiety, but didn’t know they were. There was something about their whole manner of living – at least the people I associated with – which was just anxious. There was no sense of tranquility anywhere. And there was plenty to be anxious about. There was the bomb, …

And I felt I was in a state of anxiety, and a lot of it was focussed on the bomb , but I think a lot of it was kind of displaced, it was really anxiety from a lot of things, but it somehow got focussed on the bomb, you know, we’re going to get blown up. And there was enough justification for feeling that way because it was always a threat, it was always talked about. There was this Conelrad station or something, you got instructions what you were to do when the sirens went off, or Conelrad’s gonna tell you that the bomb’s about to fall, as if they could give you any advice that was going to make any sense, you knew there was nothing you could do. You’d walk down the street and there’d be these ads for fallout shelters. And people were building fallout shelters. And what you had here was a kind of overturned bathtub, is what it looked like. This was going to be your fallout shelter and was going to save you from the world going to hell. 

My mother’s memoirs describes the period the same way, and as they both did when talking to me and my brother. There was also one particular story they told, and which appears in both memoirs. From my father’s memoirs,

And you’d get programs, I watched this program on TV where it was a group of people – experts and priests and learned professors and God knows who else – discussing the serious ethical question of,

“Is it ethical to turn your neighbour away from your fallout shelter at the point of a gun?”

That was the big ethical issue. Well, I figured this is no place to be. So it was time to think about going somewhere else. 

And that’s why we left America.

********************************************************************************

That was sixty years ago, and a particularly crazy time; one should not overstate it as an indicator of America today. But neither should one understate it.

A few months ago, I ran into an FBI training video (from 2020, I believe). It is worth watching, and then we’ll chat:

 

Was everyone suitably entertained? The video is titled Run. Hide. Fight. As the FBI puts it,

This FBI training video shows patrons at a bar reacting to an active shooter incident. By employing the Run, Hide, Fight principles—as well as knowing the basics of applying Stop the Bleed techniques—individuals are prepared, empowered, and able to survive the attack.

Empowered.

Is America really this nuts? Maybe not, but close enough.

I went back to America in the 80s, to do my PhD and followed it with a post-doc. I was at very good universities, I was in the privileged enclaves. Still, I saw plenty of poverty and societal viciousness. This was the charming era of that asshole Reagan – who is still revered – and the less stupid Bush – who is relatively revered, in comparison to his cretinous son. I saw, and was the victim of, violent crime, more than once. And I saw plenty of fear, from everyone: of crime; of being unemployed and thus of poverty; of getting too sick and thus, again, of poverty. Everybody knew that if you went down the wrong street you could be in trouble, and there were lots and lots of wrong streets, often just a block away. Everybody knew that falling down in America could mean falling a long, long way down. And, although everyone lived with this fear, the majority of my very smart university colleagues pretty much accepted all this as normal. Living with fear was simply the trade-off for the entrepreneurial spirit, the price of Freedom. They, America, had turned the noble goal of Freedom into a thought-destroyer, into an all-poisoning perversion. Even the majority of officially smart people were poisoned.

At the end of my post-doc, I had to make a decision, whether to stay in America or leave. It was pretty clear that, if I wished, I could have found a happy home at a liberal arts college, in a lovely college town. But it was still America. It was still a long, long way down. I figured this is no place to be.

And that’s why I left America, again.

Career-wise, returning to Australia was, by and large, a debacle. I have not regretted it for a minute. I am certainly not regretting it at this moment.

 

1) My father never flew, and never cared that he never flew. He was teased, of course, particularly as he was a psychologist. Daddy loved to tell a story of when he drove from Melbourne to a conference, in Canberra I think, while all his colleagues flew. They teased him mercilessly, offered him therapy to overcome his irrational fear. As it turned out, Daddy drove happily, and the psychologists’ plane had to make an emergency landing. He then offered them therapy, to overcome their irrational desire to fly.

2) The Oriana, near the end of the era of grand boats.

3) When my mother was eleven, her mother abandoned the family, leaving my mother and her two siblings in the care of whomever, but not their loving but useless, alcoholic father. There followed foster families and so forth. Their father, sober but physically wrecked, died in 1957, when he was forty-six.

4) My mother remained very close to her brother, Lee. Their sister, Louise, largely lost contact with the family and died in a house fire in 1981, a tragic end to an incredibly difficult and incredibly sad life. 

5) Recorded conversations with my half-brother Ed.