The Lesson Dorothy Could’ve Taught Trump’s Biggest Critics

The Europeans have gotten themselves into a pickle. And it’s no wonder we see a story in WIRED featuring the lamentations of Americans who took off for the greener pastures of the Old Country and are now headed, or are heading, back to their native soil. Was it for adventure or discovery? For some. But the underlying cri de Coeur was politics. It seems every free and fair election cycle in which a Republican takes office, the liberal cause is that fascism has overtaken our great democracy and now get ready for forced births, mass jailings of minorities and the already oppressed, a clampdown on the media, and deportations. So, these people indulge in self-deportations, looking for a way out of America’s depraved state.

And what better way to find a utopian paradise abroad than to scour the foundational enterprises of truth and transparency, like Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok? You’d have better insight by watching “National Lampoon’s European Vacation.” “They Fled Trump’s America. Now They Regret It” details the experiences of Americans abroad, getting an up-close and personal look at what happens when you stop worrying and start loving socialism.

I’ve seen enough “House Hunter International” to see how this would end. Americans used to a fairly basic, comfortable standard of living in the States go across the pond expecting a comparable experience and find out they’re about to pay five times the rent to live in an apartment smaller than a storage locker, and instead of a pimped-out laundry room, get a washer-dryer combo in their kitchen. I guess freedom from the Orange Man means getting to enjoy watching your underwear hit the spin cycle while cooking dinner.

“Amy” recalls:

But the reality of life in the UK was dramatically different to what she’d imagined. “There are huge misconceptions about access to quality health care, standard of living … the quality of life is significantly lower than in the US,” she says, citing the challenges she experienced with the National Health Service’s maternity care—having moved while pregnant with her first child—as well as the lack of disposable income in Britain, thanks to lower salaries. “Things in the UK that are considered luxury items are very common” in America, like a dishwasher and dryer, she adds.

All interviewees were anonymous, worried about backlash for criticizing the dreamscape of leftists’ imaginations. It is oddly satisfying that the people interviewed were never afraid of conservatives’ ire for leaving, but of the leftist online army for speaking truthfully about their experiences:

For left-leaning Americans concerned about Trump’s reelection, relocation to Europe was presented as a lifeboat: Some claim you can live gentler, freer, and, most of all, morally lighter. Celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, and Rosie O’Donnell, all fled the US for political reasons. Courtney Love announced she was applying for UK citizenship in early 2025, describing the political climate at home as “frightening.”

The irony is woefully lost.

And being rich is one of those privileges that is universal. It allows a seamless excuse escape abroad without having to deal with the day-to-day inconveniences of living and working. “Josh” (another anon fearful of lefty backlash, lol) found life in Germany to be not what he envisioned, despite having briefly lived there before:

“Finding work was so hard, and the endless bureaucracy had grown worse since I’d left,” he tells WIRED. “I missed the friendlier people, freedom of speech, and ease of daily life” in the US. He adds, “If you aren’t born and raised there, and don’t look German, you’ll never be fully accepted.”

It’s OK to point at laugh at these folks. For decades, the leftist elite and online Bluesky screamers have torn themselves into hysterics about the coming American empiricism, the fascist state, the march toward a dictatorial hellscape, and that the last bastion of hope against this rising totalitarian scourge is Anywhere But Here.

But one has to wonder where these people’s internal barometer is set when they think New York City is too right-wing. “Kate Glavan, an influencer whose posts are often focused on leftist politics, moved to London in late 2024 from New York. She almost immediately found getting work incredibly difficult, with many of the brands she’d previously worked with not having a good enough reason to do sponsored content with a creator now speaking to a British audience. Earlier this year, she announced she’d be returning to New York.”

In this case, Kate just had to wait for socialism to come back to New York.

This is really just an exercise in one basic truth: The United States really is the best country in the world. It’s not only that we don’t put to death our old or infirm like our neighbors to the north, or can prevent thousands of heat-related deaths in the summer months through the modern (American-invented) air-conditioning, or have enough space to make Man Caves, She Shacks, and pimped-out laundry rooms. I’ve crossed most of the nation over the course of my lifetime, including out to Hawaii and Alaska, and nowhere else do you find beauty, diversity, and freedom as you do here. From the wide, bright sky of the Northern Plains to the rugged, wild landscape of the desert Southwest and the rich layers of haunted viridity in the South, there’s a place for every taste.

Often, it takes foreigners coming here to wake us up to what we take for granted — just look at the success of last summer’s FIFA World Cup and the popularity of X’s favorite traveling U.S. salesman, FreddyLA7.

Maybe there’s a lesson here that Americans with a certain snooty disdain and resentment have to keep learning generation after generation. It’s embedded in a story I just read to my young kids in our quiet house as I had a load of wash going in the laundry room, the dishwasher blasting away in the kitchen, A/C keeping us cool in the summer night, while waiting for the birth of our son under the world’s best medical care. In “The Wizard of Oz,” a story about a girl’s journey to find what she had all along: There’s no place like home.

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