It takes a special kind of misunderstanding—of history, of freedom, of one’s own responsibility—to believe that the answer to America’s challenges is to simply walk away from her. Yet that’s exactly the sentiment captured in the recent New Yorker feature about Americans exploring the Netherlands as a political “escape hatch” from Donald Trump’s return to the White House. A relocation outfit—bluntly branded “G.T.F.O.”—now sells curated European migration tours to Americans weary of the “chaos” of their homeland. According to the reporting, these folks wander through Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, imagining that swapping passports might somehow restore the peace they believe politics stole from them.
The people on the tour are not villains. They’re not even unpatriotic. What they are is exhausted. But exhaustion, no matter how justified, has never been an excuse to abandon a nation that has given more liberty to more people than any other in recorded history.
And this is where the New Yorker piece reveals something deeper—something the author never quite names: these Americans aren’t fleeing Trump. They’re fleeing responsibility.
The article paints the scene almost romantically. A mix of millennials, middle-aged professionals, and recently retired couples—each looking to Europe for a world that’s calmer, tidier, gentler than the one they left behind. They tour bike-friendly streets. They admire functioning public transit. They marvel at predictable bureaucracies and medical systems that don’t bankrupt you for an X-ray. For a moment, you feel sympathy for them. Who doesn’t yearn for order in an era where everything feels loud, compressed, hyper-politicized?
But the real story emerges between the lines. These Americans aren’t running to the Netherlands. They’rerunning from the discomfort of living in a nation that requires constant stewardship. They’re yearning for a democracy that doesn’t demand participation—just benefits. They want the “product” of stable civic life without the work of maintaining it.
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The author notes that the Dutch politely remind the tour group that the Netherlands is no utopia. Their own right-wing parties are surging. Their population is strained by immigration. Housing is tight. And the Dutch—who tend to be more honest than sentimental—aren’t shy about questioning why Americans believe Europe is immune to the very tensions ripping at the West as a whole.
But here’s the irony: while these politically-fatigued Americans fantasize about Europe as an ideological sanctuary, Europe moves steadily toward its own nationalist impulses—some of which would make Trump look like a Rotary Club president.
In their attempt to flee “chaos,” these Americans are sprinting directly into political realities they profess to fear.
And yet the New Yorker still frames their relocation fantasies as understandable—even reasonable. After all, who wouldn’t wish for a quieter life, free of cultural conflict and election-year whiplash?
Someone with perspective, that’s who.
America has had 250 years of elections, and nearly all of them were described by someone as apocalyptic. Jefferson was going to destroy Christianity. Lincoln was going to destroy the Union. Reagan was going to destroy the world. Trump, according to the left, has already destroyed everything five times, and his merely showing up at the White House Christmas Party proves the republic is over—again.
But if political tension is enough to make us bolt for Schiphol Airport, then the country isn’t in danger because of Trump. It’s in danger because the citizens have forgotten what the “consent of the governed” truly requires.
The New Yorker piece offers one especially revealing insight: many of these would-be expats say America “no longer feels familiar.” That the country “isn’t the same place” they grew up in. That they wake up feeling like the nation is “burning itself down.”
Maybe so. But every generation has said that. My grandparents watched the world dissolve during World War II. My parents watched assassinations, riots, and a cultural revolution that rewired the country overnight. I watched the Towers fall. My children watched cities burn in 2020. Fear is familiar. Change is familiar. Upheaval is familiar.
Freedom, however, is rare. And fragile. And irreplaceable once gone.
Which is why fleeing from it is one of the fastest ways to lose it.
The author subtly tries to make “leaving America” sound reflective, thoughtful, even noble. But the truth is simpler: if your first instinct when the political winds turn is to abandon ship, then you were never rowing in the first place.
Let me say something else that will offend precisely the readers it needs to: If Donald Trump is the reason you want to renounce America, then Donald Trump didn’t break you—your worldview did.
Because if your relationship with your nation is that brittle, that conditional, that dependent on comfort rather than conviction, then your problem isn’t political. It’s theological.
America was never meant to be our Messiah. It was never meant to guarantee emotional tranquility. It was meant to guarantee freedom. And freedom requires durability. Faithfulness. Courage. Even a willingness to be uncomfortable for long stretches of time.
In the end, the Netherlands won’t fix what these Americans are trying to escape. Geography can’t heal spiritual confusion. Stable streets can’t cure civic apathy. A new passport cannot replace the responsibility of citizenship.
The article closes with a line about Americans searching for “a version of themselves they no longer feel free to be at home.” It was meant to be poetic. But I read something else between the words:
People don’t leave America because America failed them. They leave because they forgot what America is.
And so I offer a gentle reminder to the wanderers: The only place on earth where you are guaranteed the right to speak, to worship, to build, to disagree, to raise your children as you see fit—the only place where you are free to love this country or criticize it loudly—is the very country you’re trying to escape.
You don’t flee from a nation like that.
You steward it.
You argue for it.
You fight for it.
And you thank God you were born in it.
Even in election years.
Especially in election years.
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