After the insurrection, I fought my urge to abandon this country

A year ago today I began planning my exodus from the United States.

The spectacle of rabid chaos raging through the streets of our nation’s capital, fomented by insurrectionists hellbent on overturning a democratically resolved election, had nearly convinced me this nation was beyond redemption. 

With so few top officials facing accountability for the horrors on display that day when Congress people fled to the Capitol basement out of fear of being murdered, I can’t say my assumption’s been proven wrong.

Crafting an exit strategy was first suggested by my therapist the summer before the 2020 presidential election. It had little to do with the potential outcome of the election and everything to do with my inability to see a future for this country not involving violence by the strong against the weak, a lust for fiction over rationality, callousness toward the marginalized, and a deterioration of nuance for manufactured simplicity. 

A friend reflected my concerns back to me when I confessed to him that I was weighing the idea, asking me, “As a Black person, what would it be like to live somewhere free from the fear of potential terror?” 

I hadn’t been alone in wanting to find out: A record number of Americans left this country in 2020, fatigued from feeling unsafe, from chronic institutional racism, and from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Today, more than 60% of Americans believe we will see violence following the results of future presidential elections. Amid the 2020 presidential campaign, at least 89% of both Republicans and Democrats believed that the election of the candidate they opposed would cause lasting harm to our country. 

Our social media rewards incendiary information over commonality. It feeds us too many dangerous fantasies, and it played a role in the radicalization of nearly 90% of national extremists who were the focus of a 2018 study conducted by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. 

Coupled with last year’s insurrection, it’s been enough for some political scientists to claim that our democracy is in decline and that we haven’t been this close to civil war since the 1800s. 

Barbara F. Walter is one. A political-science professor at the University of California, San Diego, she serves on the Political Instability Task Force, an advisory committee to the CIA that gauges the probability of nations regressing into internal conflict. 

“One of the misconceptions people might have is, ‘Well, you know, the system worked, there was no presidential coup last January. It didn’t succeed. Trump left office, a Democrat came into power. Hasn’t our democracy improved?’ And what strikes me in the last year is it hasn’t,” Walter said.

Using the Polity Score, which measures the probability between +10 (democracy) and -10 (autocracy), the United States, previously at a +10, fell to +5 after the insurgency, placing it in the category of an anocracy (a partial democracy) and reflecting an increased chance of widespread civil strife.

“I guess the best way to think about this is that our institutions are as weak as they were prior to Jan. 6. It would be not inconceivable for another coup to happen or another insurrection to succeed this time,” said Walter, whose book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them” will be released next week.

That scenario prompted three retired U.S. Army generals to pen a recent op-ed for The Washington Post, warning the military against such an attempt in 2024. “We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time,” they wrote. 

With a forecast this bleak, escaping to a Costa Rican lifestyle feels all the more appealing.

Still, I can’t bring myself to accept a life of escape.

As formidable as any aspiring demagogue, violent mob or extremist cluster may be, our ultimate opponent is the moment we now face.

It is this very moment asking if we will refuse to be overcome by indifference, refuse to become the worst within us, and refuse to ignore our everyday role in creating a future worth fighting for today.

It also asks whether we will accept the warnings about our current path as a fixed future, or as a stimulus to alter our collective destiny? 

To realize the latter we must continually seek what is true, what is just, and what is edifying while also being willing to label wrong as wrong and right as right, no matter who is committing either.  

Will this make our country all that it claims to be? 

No, but it will make it a country worth believing in.