A Run for the Border

The idea began to crystalize one morning in May, just a few days after the Oklahoma tornado, as I listened to Tom Coburn talk about/dismiss disaster relief for the victims until and unless there were what he sneeringly called offsets.  The loss of lives and property in his own state didn't move him in the slightest - he sat and smirked his way through the interview, redefining political arrogance and hypocrisy - a United States senator, a medical doctor reveling in his power to withhold assistance from those who had lost everything.  It made me ill, made me furious, made me ashamed.  At first, I found myself hoping that neither he or his family would ever find themselves in a position where they desperately needed help but the more I listened, the more I hoped they would.  One thought led to another - climate change deniers, the republican war on women, the poor, anyone of color.  South Carolina re-electing a liar and an adulterer, car thieves and white supremacists in congress along with car thieves.  Those in charge of preventing sexual abuse being predators.  Banks and insurance companies being able to buy politicians like penny candy.  Politicians buying prostitutes and compromising education.  Health care held hostage by the rich and powerful, religion invading and corrupting everything it reaches, terrorists being paid full salaries while awaiting trial, dead children in the streets and a growing gun culture funded by a right wing fringe group and embraced by every inbred moron and tea partier whether they can put together a whole sentence or not.  Not to mention the entire South.  And nobody's accountable.  The inmates are running the asylum and I'm at odds with my government, possibly with my country.

Just suppose, I found myself thinking, I were to say to hell with it.  Just suppose I were to sell everything, pack up the animals and my camera and make a run for the border.

A ridiculous notion, I know, ridiculous and utterly impossible.  The paperwork alone would drown me and I hate snow and cold.  I wouldn't be able to get American cigarettes.  I'd have no way of making a living.  There would be no nightlife, no quick runs to the corner store, no bookstores, no favorite tv shows.  I'd go gray for lack of L'Oreal and I'm not that wild about fresh fish.  I'd miss friends and loved ones, having someone to cut the grass and NPR and maybe a thousand other small things I take for granted here.  Ridiculous and utterly out of the question, a pipe dream born of arrogance, hypocrisy, a handful of corrupt senators and the weariness of one too many bad news days.

And yet it persists, this misty and unrealistic idea of a small house overlooking the ocean, an island of sanity and simplicity out of reach of all that's poisoning this country.  Poisoning me.

Lord knows, I've had more improbable ideas.