Frightened Tribe

January 6, 2022

I rarely write here about expats, the principal minority tribe in my community. Since many of these are friends or acquaintances, I’m cautious gossiping about them in a public blog. They might not like me afterwards, after all.

There are a few Canadians here – about as many as I have fingers, maybe less. There are also people from various parts of Europe. However, five-sixths of expats, roughly, are Americans. For years, since most of them are people who will quote books they’ve read, I assumed they all fit the generic liberal profile: soft left in politics, supporting gay rights, reduced racism, and kindness to animals. They all seemed to like each other’s Facebook posts.

When Donald Trump was elected, I tried to understand what was happening in the US, and began spending time on conservative websites. I also discovered that while they were mostly less vocal than the liberals, there were a number of Republicans here. This seemed superficially hypocritical, since the last US administration was trying to keep Mexicans and Latinos generally out of its borders, yet its supporters felt okay about moving south. But they point out that their presence here is legal: they didn’t come over the border in the night.

B and I have spoken a lot in the past few months. Mostly, he speaks, and I listen. His partner died not long ago, he’s lonely and sad, and some of his anger at the US left possibly stems from that. He needs to vent. Unlike with a right-wing website though, I can make replies and ask him questions. He has worked in the US political system, and has interesting insights.

Mostly what I hear about, though, is the sheer panic happening across the US right now. M believes in ‘the steal,’ but is also lucid in describing popular anger in his home country. Other American friends tell me of their own fear and anger at what M’s side want, even if he draws back from advocating violence to settle the issue. But the endless talk of civil war has an audience. Or rather, two mutually suspicious audiences.

We’ve all read endless punditry on these topics, and it would be tedious to rehash all that here. But I do have a quirky lens here in Tepoztlan on what is currently tearing the US apart, and it’s sad and darkly fascinating. 

Like any Canadian (or Brit), I’ve always been wary of America’s power and its lack of interest in what other countries think of it. I’ve also had many happy experiences visiting the country, and like many people from there. However, I do find the old line that no American ever leaves their own country, wherever they live physically, is true in very many cases, and I have great difficulty persuading some Americans not to fear either social democrats or single-payer medical systems, having been around both all my life. Last month I spent several futile minutes trying to convince one less-educated man that I don’t get my opinions from either the New York Times or the Washington Post. That my views might have been informed and nourished outside the US, over many years, was too unsettling or bizarre a notion for him to handle. He ‘knew’ only corrupt Democrats had opinions like mine.

I try to stay level-headed as these things erupt. Americans have to solve their own problems, though some I encounter here are deeply distressed that their country is no longer a paragon among the democracies. I sometimes become the therapist, the outsider listening to people’s anxieties, but of course I have no prescriptions to offer. I hear about stupid family arguments, and I hear quotes from media columnists who provide excellent analysis but no plans of action. Mexico is a place of sanctuary from all this for these expats, but not an impregnable one. The strife travels across borders at the speed of an email.

And hardly nobody in the US seems able to imagine, or even necessarily to want, an effective bridge-builder between the sides. As B keeps reminding me, the anger is strong. He just can’t tell me where things will end up if and when it bursts out in full strength. After coffee and talk, we head off to do our day’s shopping or to meet friends, and the mild winter sunshine makes it seem to me like the problem is less likely to affect me than I know it eventually will. After all, it will take a lot of hurt and struggle to drain the resentments that are simmering just a single frontier away.