On June 28, as I boarded a plane at Los Angeles International Airport bound for Norway, the frivolous thought crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, I would stay on the other side of the Atlantic until the November 5 presidential election was behind me.
But today, as I write from a Suffocating ItalyAmerica looks different from the country I left: strikingly and terribly different.
I flew to Norway the day after an older and occasionally incoherent candidate had spent the day babbling during a debate; but it was his slightly older, though more honest and humane, opponent who sent his party into a prolonged panic with his own—unexpected!—incoherence and babbling. I thought it was perfect timing, because my Norwegian family would have questions. After all, they follow American politics more closely than many Americans do.
Sure enough, when I landed at Oslo airport, my cousin's husband couldn't wait more than five minutes to ask a real Californian about the matter. I joked with him that we might have to extend our stay.
Now there are no more jokes.
Two days after we arrived in Norway, the US Supreme Court found monarchical powers somewhere in the Constitution and conferred them on the president, effectively placing the officeholder’s “official acts” above the law. Unsurprisingly, I had just visited the Norwegian royal palace when I heard about this.
This time, the relatives did not ask questions, only expressed concern and sympathy. One said she might postpone the visit until the political situation was “resolved,” in a tone similar to that long-standing Americans have been using regarding problems with distant governments.
Most recently, I visited the site of Julius Caesar's assassination in Rome, after which I read in disbelief that former President Trump was nearly assassinated, and one of his rally attendees was delicate — in Pennsylvania. Watching an assassination attempt in your own country provokes a special kind of terror that cannot be described, only inflicted.
So far from home, one could be 100 years in the future, reading a U.S. history textbook's account of all the events that, in retrospect, obviously foreshadowed a long, dark period for our country.
But stay in Europe? Those jokes from last month are now appalling. Retire to stable social democracy in Norway? Of course not! Never in my life have I wanted to go home so much. Even though I knew I would be turned into the frog that would be thrown back into boiling water.
It's an unusual feeling of helplessness to be so far away from your home when it's burning. Perhaps the alarm and fear increase with distance. I guess I'll find out when I get back to Los Angeles soon and see the fires. literally and figurativelyclose up.
But as for offering a glimpse into the darkness of American politics to foreign relatives, I've been left at a loss for explanations after that bullet grazed a former president's ear. I've grown accustomed to fielding questions from annoyed Norwegians looking for some kind of logic in our chaotic political permutations. There, political parties trade power all the time, but not in a way that creates American-style turmoil. Its main conservative party, HoleIt bears no resemblance to the modern Republican Party.
The morning after the assassination attempt, the husband of the same cousin who picked me up at Oslo airport wrote to me: “What happened to Trump now?”
As American pundits made blunt pronouncements about what this means for November, all I could say was this: “I have no idea. There are more guns than people in America, so this was bound to happen at some point.”
That's as far as my knowledge goes. Beyond that, what I have is fear and an insatiable desire to return home, even if my home is something very different from the one I left.
