The Two Americas
After nine months away, I thought I'd be able to see my country more clearly. But my vision is murky as ever.
The United States’ 250th anniversary has come and gone, sullied by a president who couldn’t help but make it about himself, which is somehow not even the only instance of him publicly making something about himself from this past weekend.
Over the course of my year in exile, as I will probably half-jokingly describe it should I ever become interesting enough to write a memoir, I’ve had a lot of time to wrestle with my feelings about the country that birthed me.
I’ve come to learn, living abroad for the first time in my life, that American optimism and confidence really are unique. There are few other places in the world that could have created my situation in the first place: someone who refused to quit journalism and writing despite having grown up around absolutely no one who had ever been a journalist or published writer or anything remotely adjacent to those fields in any form. I will always be grateful to America for the I can do anything mindset it seems to freely instill in every American.
But I think I’ve repeated my story enough times that it should be familiar. When I was 18, the United States was largely a functional, if imperfect, liberal democracy. The week of my 28th birthday, ahead of my departure for London, podcast hosts were openly discussing rumors of liberal political donors pulling back funds out of fear of upsetting the president, and news shows were now covering what they felt comfortable describing as the breakdown of the rule of law in our country.
When I left, I was already struggling to reconcile my love for America and my fear of what it may have become. I expected that perhaps I would find some clarity from my new vantage point in Britain. Instead, I found the people here — not just friends and acquaintances, but lecturers, professors and mentors as well — were just as split on which of the two Americas we were looking at from across the Atlantic on any given day.
No, not two Americas as in red versus blue. Normal versus abnormal. Leader of the free world versus unpredictable rogue state. Rising authoritarian power versus Disneyland trips and World Cup tickets.
One person tells me he wouldn’t visit America right now for fear of immigration detention, that it may be on the same path as Putin’s Russia. Another asks whether it would really be so bad for me to return home, that he wants to come visit me.
I hear from one ear that I’m too obsessed with covering America. From the other one that American democracy is the most important story of this decade.
Right now, during the World Cup, we see thousands upon thousands of excited fans from all over the world cheering for their home nations. But six months ago immigration agents were shooting protesters in the streets — incidents that still have yet to face any real investigation — and even now there are threats of new ICE raids in New York City once the football festivities are done with.
The White House accepts, even if begrudgingly and in bad spirit, the outcome of major court rulings. Yet it has also completed its subjugation of the Justice Department to President Trump’s will and continues to threaten interference in election processes.
For many, it is indeed business as usual. But the world still reels from our threats to annex our allies, from our launch of an ill-planned, damaging war at the whim of an 80-year-old man who appears more interested in redesigning the capital than anything else.
We collectively fear the worst when he posts threats of ending civilizations, but then reassure ourselves that all is well when he appears not to mean it. This is of course a perfectly desirable scenario to find oneself in — unable to tell whether the most powerful man in the world is actually considering using his nuclear arsenal on a country of 92 million people, or if it’s just absent-minded bluster from an old man tapping away on his phone.
These are the thoughts that cross my mind as I question whether to stay in Britain or head home and rejoin the story and the fight. Is there hope? I think so. More than there used to be, certainly. Donald Trump is not as all-powerful as he may have seemed in January 2025. There is a universe in which he and his team carefully protected their popularity, coasting an improving economy to ever-increasing poll numbers. That is not the one we are living in. Starting wars after promising to end them, spiking gas prices after pledging to slash inflation, are not things that go over well with voters, as it turns out. While Trump may have attempted a coup last time he was on track to lose political power, it is rather difficult to attempt further coups when everyone hates you.
That’s what I tell myself when I think I’m looking at America-1, at least. America-2, though, is a different place, one where as low as the president’s approval has fallen, he still has that stubborn hold on a third of the population — and in fact his numbers have even ticked up a bit in the last month. In America-2, the actual president of the actual United States of America has pardoned the participants in his previous coup attempt, sending the signal that further antidemocratic malfeasance is encouraged and may even be rewarded.
By the grace of whatever god or gods you may believe in, Trump is probably too old to attempt the third term he has long loved to “joke” about. But he will still, by 2029, have spent four years corruptly using the office of the presidency to enrich himself to an unprecedented degree. At minimum, I expect him to pardon himself. If he feared a future Democratic administration might still try to punish him, though, would he do everything in his power to install a Republican successor? I don’t doubt it for a moment.
These are the two Americas I see, alternating between each depending on the way my eyes focus. I suspect we won’t know which is the real America for some time to come.