Thanks for this counterpoint, that's exactly the sort of thing I think people need to see when thinking about moving (whether emigrating from America or anywhere else) - what's the big problems for people there, what's their equivalent of these problems. Would you mind telling me which party this is so I can do some more research on it?

Yes, I've had this suspicion awhile. Last year an ex-coworkerif mine was quoting the disproportionate crime rate among black people statistics at me and then leveled up into saying Africa is such a desolate place and so only unintelligent people would have stayed there in ancient times, thus meaning there's a selective breeding for unintelligence in that continent. I tried to argue with him about the dubiousness of IQ measures in the first place, let alone IQ heritability, and the deep statistical flaws in the crime rate argument, which don't disentangle race from poverty, but as soon as I tried to make these counterarguments he brushed me off as being "brainwashed" by "lies about equality".

I don't even know what to do about something like that other than just stop talking to the person. What's terrifying is he's otherwise pretty smart, totally fits in with respectable society. Not some stereotypical redneck racist type. I think about that a lot and wonder how many others like him are going totally undetected around me every day.

Yeah, some of that is the impromptu nature of this post. I've thought about moving to other countries since high school. I'm very interested in a lot of cultural things that are just vastly more prevalent and thriving in Europe. Sometimes it feels like I was born in the wrong place. So there are definitely places I'd love to run to. I visited Switzerland and it felt like heaven on Earth compared to my state. I wanted to move there long before Trump's first election. But it seems that particular country is near impossible to move to, plus Swiss German seems particularly tough.

I really like learning about other cultures and such, I'm afraid I may have come off entirely wrong in the brevity and laser-focus of my original post.

Very interesting that you say the working language would be English. That's fantastic news. I definitely think I can get to a basic conversational level with languages pretty quickly, but reaching the technical professional level is my big fear. So that's very encouraging to hear that it may not be so dire as that at least in the Netherlands. Thank you for taking the time to respond!

My German teacher had a fairly profound impact on my life, I knew him for four years and he was absolutely enamored with everything about Germany. Like the German equivalent of a weeb. Some of that has transferred to me, I like basically every aspect of German culture I'm familiar with, especially the sense of humor. Since I already have some language familiarity, it's always been near the top of my list, until recently with the AfD stuff giving me a bit of a fright. Although I saw they were recently classified as extremists, which was reassuring (thanks Lemmy for being such a good news source!)

It's of course too bad to hear about the rural racism, especially since I'd prefer a rural place of living, but it seems those two things always go together to some extent.

I'm certainly going to enroll in classes for whatever language corresponds to my target country. I really want to be an exemplary citizen of anywhere I go. I feel it's an honor to be accepted for a visa somewhere so I don't want to take that lightly. My biggest concern is just that I won't be that great with the target language despite my best efforts.

Thank you very much for your insights and kind words!

Thanks for understanding, I do feel a bit hurt by some insinuations in some responses, but I understand why citizens of the world would feel unhappy with whiny Americans right now. I just hope it doesn't progress into a hatred. Many of my fellow Americans are very good people, but unfortunately we are so disenfranchised politically - I think it's hard to convey the extent of it. The state of things here isn't a result of laziness and unwillingness to participate. But in fairness, I didn't refine my original post deeply and it came off not quite right. I'm not looking to selfishly abandon ship or become a silent drain on another country. I would love to build community, but it's certainly easier in some places than others, for a wide variety of reasons.

Canada is certainly tempting if only on the basis that I would be closer to my family, and my family closer to me. And the recent election results were very relieving. Weed is legal here too though, haha.

Thanks, for some reason Spain has never been near the top of my consideration. I suppose that's because it's not one of those classic "top ten" type of countries that seem to always be at the top of lists of good things. But it seems the margins of improvement are slim between top 30 and top 10, so I'll have to look more into that.

Yes, I've thought about this a lot and do make efforts to improve my environment. But it's disheartening, the vast majority of people in my community are extreme Trump supporters. I know people who threw parties to celebrate the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. It's hard to know how to improve my community in light of that, and in fact it's hard to even want to.

But I am open to suggestions, what do you think are some of the best things I could do to improve my area?

I deeply agree with the community aspect. I can see how my original post came off as self-centered, but it's always been my vision to be an active contributor to the local and larger communities of wherever I live. I am generally a pro-social person and do my best to help my local community. I definitely agree that building a strong community is vital to the criteria I'm looking for. It's just that my current community feels largely like a lost cause. We certainly have a subculture that is what I'm looking for, but it's just that - a subculture. And while that may be comforting and nice, it's not enough to get politicians to listen.

I try to stave off the harms of capitalism as best I can while also balancing my own happiness for my limited time on Earth. But that's a topic I'm sure we could both write essays about, so maybe best to save that for another time.

Yes, I wouldn't be renouncing U.S citizenship unless I really had to. I've stayed this long precisely because I don't want to leave the "problem spot" and cause it to only have extremists left over living here. I do try to support events and businesses that support causes I agree with, but that's about all there is to do as far as I can see. As I said in other comments, I would truly prefer to fix things here, as I like many things about my life here. But it's starting to feel like I'm complicit in something wrong by remaining a resident and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Yes indeed :( it's a wishlist for sure, not feasible in it's purest form.

People thought "Gulf of America" was just Trump being ridiculous and egotistical, but to me it now seems clear that it was intended to lay the groundwork to ban press like AP. I believe that was a multi-step plan. The administration is not stupid, they're getting everything they want. Everything is working out in their favor. That is not by accident, that is not the result of stupidity.

It's worth pausing and considering what kind of non-stupid, multi-step plan would call for a large accumulation of likely Trump-supporting soldiers with military equipment at Washington D.C.

Is that what this is? Who knows. But I think it's naive to attribute any of these actions to just ego-stroking.