Wild West Exit

Today I exited the United States, and perhaps for good. Next time I may return as a visitor. For a long time I have not been happy with America's politics, neither at home nor abroad, as it seems that no matter which political side is in power, war, economic mismanagement, and disregard for human life is the norm, even if those are US citizens (not talking about crazy abortion activists). It's now a fact that foreign war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan approach an involvement lasting twice as long as WWII, with new war plans being concocted by the Pentagon that seek to control strategic oil reserves, strategic mineral mining, and as usual, supporting regimes and dictators that treat their citizens in ways supposedly contradictory to how the US treats its own citizens, but in actuality are more similar than different, which may explain it. The gradual militarization of the US, by way of militias and their spokespeople, the emergence of the Tea Party, idiots like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck being taken serious, and laws that allow citizens to carry weapons, even to political meetings where the president appears or the recent carnage in Arizona reflect more the days of the Wild West than a society that has developed into a peaceful and emphatic body, seeking solutions for problems of magnitude that threaten the health and very future of the Nation, unless one remains stoic about the oncoming changes in weather patterns, rising sea levels, river levels, and the resulting mass migrations as areas fall victim to flooding, erosion, and loss of industry and livelihood.
Not many seem concerned with that as most limit their already clipped attention span with what's being discussed by Oprah, or Whoopy, or Glenn Beck, that is, if one's not too busy twittering or facebooking, both the epitome of self-congratulatory backslapping nitwittery, and hardly indicative of sharing ideas worth pondering.
And so, feeling increasingly isolated, misunderstood, ridiculed, and disappointed in the direction things are heading I could only come to one conclusion: sell everything, hop on a plane, and make a fresh start elsewhere, perhaps ahead of the throngs...
And so, writing this finds me on a plane heading for Indonesia, a destination presented by destiny on a day when I learned of the end of my home's lease as well as of a friend's offer to dwell a while in her house in Bali, which would become available around the same time.
I am not expecting to find Shangrilah there, rather just a different place with different people, different customs, and possibly a different view of a world I was seeing more and more through pin holes in the blinders worn by the quintessential ugly American, a glutinous, obese, natural resource-devouring, multinational predator with a disdain for the French, Europeans, Russians, Africans, Asians, and Arabs, maybe even the Dutch, all of whom have either tasted its nuclear recipe or at one time or another have been deemed welcome to swallow it in the form of imagining their country turned into a parking lot. Let's say that the tough cowboy image America is relentlessly exporting was beginning to wear me down and I didn't want to end up like so many others, beaten down by bad news, seeking comfort in gated communities, watching cable shows and late night commercials selling more of the useless crap that's already oozing out of people's houses, finding refuge in giant self storage buildings springing up everywhere.
Oh, but wait, I did enlist a friend's help and squeezed a few boxes with photographs alongside the unused belongings he has stashed in storage for a modest monthly rent a third world family could live a whole year on. Much appreciated!
Other than that, everything else I own now fits in the overhead bin of the flight I'm on and under the chair in front of me. Oh, and I'm wearing a Scottevest, a piece of american ingenuity: a garment with 22 pockets that serves as a digital knapsack containing besides the iPad on which I type this, a 1Tb hard drive with all my personal and business files, pocket camera, iPhone, passport, a few thousand dollars in cash, and an inflatable neck pillow.
I know, it's not as romantic as being a young wide-eyed sheep herder in Paulo Coelho's Siddharta-like novel of travel, destiny, and fate, "The Alchemist," but we'll see how this turns out. I do know that all the trappings of a space age roman are here: ship adrift, new galaxies, black holes, and who knows, the chance to save the world and mankind, now that everyone else seems too preoccupied with doing nothing of the sort.
Yeeha!