It is almost an empty trope at this moment, like an ignored email signature. Your liberal friend, typically pining for Obama, posts that they are going to move to Canada or some other country, indicating that the end is upon us.
I’ve been ignoring these for the most part thinking they are simply overblown responses to a President and administration that is so outside of expected politics that there’s really no response that can meet the perceived excess of Trump.
But now there’s a new uprising of them again about the government shutdown, which is not as big a concern to those on the left as something like border patrol and immigration enforcement excess.
When liberals say “I’m moving to Canada” they are unwittingly (or maybe wittingly) making an argument that individualism is most important. You could make a case that queer people and trans people should be considering amnesty from a foreign government - perhaps even people who are diagnosed with autism if history is any guide for the next moves of the right-wing. But people who are just missing the days of Obama’s violent neoliberal expansion of American market capitalism aren’t presenting a good look here.
Most of my liberal friends expressing this are part of a new political philosophy I call “Fleedom.” This is the idea that if the government isn’t doing what they feel it should be doing, the proper response is to leave.
This is a strange politics for sure and has a lot in common with quitting a game you feel is unfair instead of trying to change the rules, or argue for a different perspective on them. Fleedom is an index as to how bad we are at persuasion, argument, and debate. We have no rhetorical resources. We can’t imagine changing anything or (dangerously) anyone’s mind.
Fleedom is also the dismissal of all those people who didn’t support the right-wing platform, voted accordingly, and are now stuck in a state where their liberties and support from the government are vanishing. What can you do for your fellow citizens if you abandon your citizenship, your country?
Fleedom is simply panic. Nobody wants to study or practice speaking in ways that will reach people who, a priori for most liberals, are too stupid or too evil to reach. This assumption means rhetoric has no power for them. They just want to yell, hate, and insult. This is not going to reach anyone. Neither is a strategy of tragic laughter - “you got what you voted for!” - this places your audience in the position of the rube, which doesn’t really make them want to listen to what you believe the solution should be. Oh, that’s right - the solution is to beg the Canadian government for amnesty.
This philosophy is also part of what I’ve called the “blue Trump” attitude, most clearly embodied in Andrew Cuomo and his supporters. These liberals see nothing wrong with Trump’s style of politics, they just wish he was a Democrat. This isn’t a rights regime or freedom regime at all, but one where people are compelled, without reasons, to support terrible systems just like the right-wing would have us do.
Instead of Fleedom, study how people are persuaded. What sorts of rhetoric work for them? What are the conditions under which they believe they have found truth? What is a fact for them? This might seem gross to most liberals but unfortunately this is how democracy is meant to work. But these days I wonder how many liberals or conservatives actually want to live in democracy. Both seem to want a regime of conformity to a particular way of speaking, feeling, and being. No thanks. I would rather speak and argue with both.