The MAGA Fueled Shutdown Follies

[Ike Bana]

This is not an immigration problem, it's a humanity problem. Mankind is not the human race, mankind is the missing like between apes and humans.

People who live in places where those in control don't give a shit if the people are starving, and will just murder them if they complain, are not going to stop trying to get into North America and Western Europe. Mankind's inhumanity to it's own will always be generating more misery, suffering, and attempts to escape it than any tough immigration laws anywhere can discourage.

And it's not so much better here in the good old USA. We typically don't face death by government, unless we have an inconvenient level of melanin in our epidermis. But we live in a country where the mega wealthy, in cahoots with all three branches of the government have, beginning in the early 1970's, queered the game to favor big business, big banks, big insurance, and big healthcare, to the extent that GenX, Millenials, GenY, and Gen Z are destined to not do as well as their parents and grandparents before them. It's still better here than anywhere else (with the exception of western Europe), but certainly not bad enough for most Americans to actually decide to get out and go somewhere better.

And it's pretty difficult, if not impossible, to go somewhere better unless you have enough money to swing it...and if you have enough money to swing it, you're probably OK staying put in what is quickly becoming a shithole. The blonde and I could do it, and we have dual Irish citizenship, so we could go live anywhere in the EU. But every time we sit down and try to figure out what it would cost, it always comes up to more than 100 large. Not to mention that we're both pushing 80 and having the endurance to do it comes into question. And then there's the exit tax on any unrealized capital gains at 23.8% for those of us who would revoke our citizenship to get out from under US federal income taxes. Motherfuckers.

Sweden, Demark, or Ireland (where she has tons of family) would be our choises.