Fleeing America
Kevin McCullough
It takes a special kind of misunderstanding—of history, of freedom, of one’s own responsibility—to believe that the answer to America’s challenges is to simply walk away from her. Yet that’s exactly the sentiment captured in the recent New Yorker feature about Americans exploring the Netherlands as a political “escape hatch” from Donald Trump’s return to the White House. A relocation outfit—bluntly branded “G.T.F.O.”—now sells curated European migration tours to Americans weary of the “chaos” of their homeland. According to the reporting, these folks wander through Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, imagining that swapping passports might somehow restore the peace they believe politics stole from them.
The people on the tour are not villains. They’re not even unpatriotic. What they are is exhausted. But exhaustion, no matter how justified, has never been an excuse to abandon a nation that has given more liberty to more people than any other in recorded history.
And this is where the New Yorker piece reveals something deeper—something the author never quite names: these Americans aren’t fleeing Trump. They’re fleeing responsibility.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2025/12/12/fleeing-america-n2667811