Living in The United States of Embarrassment
A few months ago, I confessed to a close friend that I’d been imagining myself in a way I never had before in over half a century of living here in America: I’d been imagining myself as an expat.
Seeing my social media timeline, now filled with breaking news that is the stuff of horror films and chilling 1930s newsreels, I’b been daydreaming about what it might be like to wake up in a place that doesn’t feel the way this one does: oppressive and disappointing, bitter and divided. I’ve pictured myself greeting the morning with expectancy, and moving through the day with the simple exhalation of belonging, of truly feeling at home in the place I call home.
At first, it was difficult to admit this newly-burgeoning fantasy of flight from my place of birth, until I found out how many here are similarly prone to daydreaming right now, as well. Over the last year, tens of millions of Americans moved from national pride to abject humiliation, exchanging the promise and possibility of what we could be for the grim reality of what we are. After the last election, we spent a few horrible days or weeks in stunned sadness, and most of the rest of the time since, alternating between rage and shame.
So many of us understand how horrifyingly ridiculous this all is. We see every illegal, immoral, violent thing this Administration is doing. We know how thoroughly batsh*t crazy our President is, and we’re well aware that he has absolutely no business running a street corner hot dog cart, let alone the Land of the Free and home of the Brave.
We still get outside news here (for now, at least). We read the reports from all over the world. We see what they’re saying about us. We hear the jokes. We know that we’re a global laughing-stock. Occasionally, we even find spots to laugh along with them just to retain our paper-thin tether to sanity, but for most of the time, we’re red-faced and beside ourselves because we’re living as a planetary punchline and it isn’t funny.
Every day seems to deepen the severity and magnitude of our never-ending national facepalm. That’s because this authoritarian regime filled with felons, grifters, insurrectionists, and sociopaths has put many of us in a precarious position that we’ve never been in our entire lives: we’re now ashamed of our homeland.
No, not of the ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Diversity that birthed this young and troubled nation, not the tremendous sacrifice that’s been offered by past generations in order to protect and preserve our fragile democracy, not the noble Constitution that once formed the very bedrock of our collective, not the things we’ve done together to this point to try and craft a country open and welcoming to the entire world.
But we are embarrassed by this President and his kleptocratic Cabinet, and we’re embarrassed to live in America as they represent it in the world. We’re ashamed that they are speaking for us, serving as our ambassadors, being our surrogates, because we know it all reflects terribly on those of us who call this place home. It’s exhausting to try to live, work, and study while holding your breath and hiding your face, alongside so many who seem proud of this ugliness that is defining us.
As a result, so many things are now shame-triggers for us: the mention of his name, the very sight of him, the flag, the word America. Hearing those first few words of our National Anthem, “Oh say, can you see...” is cause for mourning, because right now it’s nearly impossible to see those things we should still proudly hail.
Perhaps the only true comfort we’ve found in these days has been the solidarity of like-hearted humans who are equally humiliated; the affinity we have discovered together, like arm-locked, rebellious souls fiercely burdened to see one another through a terrible disaster. We are fellow captives trauma-bonding in a tenuous hostage situation that seems certain to end poorly. If misery loves company, then we are certainly finding such heavily grieving company now.
So yes, we are united here in our great embarrassment; people of every pigmentation, religious affiliation, orientation, and nation of origin. We are all greatly ashamed of the America that the world is experiencing and the one we see ourselves becoming. And no, most of us are not leaving, even if those loud and angry few who are not mortified but proud of a wannabe despot and his genuflecting gaggle of enablers would prefer we did.
We are staying to push back, to advocate for one another, to repair what is being damaged in whatever incremental ways we can. We are staying to be the dignified and rational response to the most undignified, irrational behavior by those in our leadership. We are staying because we know that our nation, as shameful as it is, is better than those who have commandeered it and made it into the blight on this world that it has become.
We’re shaking our collective heads here in the Land of the Freaked-out and the Home of the Facepalm, trying to make America good again despite our leaders… and we will.
Thank you for the timing of this post, John. I went to a little home decor spot yesterday, a mom and pop "rustic" furniture store. At checkout, the woman, one of the owner's said she just KNEW this year was going to be a great one with trump doing all kinds of GREAT stuff. I said, "well he just bombed Venezuela and kidnapped their president and his wife, so I'm not sure where the new year is headed." She smiled a big weird smile, like she hadn't heard me or didn't care but it was creepy. Then she said, "well finally the drug addicts won't have any drugs and then they'll decide to quit drugs and get jobs." And that was that. All neatly tied up in a bow for her. Compliments of fox propaganda station.Ugh. Ruined my entire day for real. It's hopeless out there.
I read this slowly, more than once, because I recognized the feeling before I recognized the words.
That unsettling moment when you imagine yourself somewhere else, not because you want a different life, but because you want a different emotional climate. A place where the air doesn’t feel heavy with embarrassment before the day even begins. I’ve had that thought too, and I didn’t rush to judge it away.
I don’t think that impulse is cowardice. I think it’s grief looking for oxygen.
What you’re naming isn’t a loss of patriotism. It’s a loss of moral alignment. That disorienting experience of watching the symbols you were taught to associate with dignity and aspiration get repurposed into something smaller, harsher, and theatrical. When that happens, shame creeps in not because we’ve abandoned our values, but because they’ve been taken hostage and displayed without consent.
I’ve felt that same tightening in the chest when familiar phrases are spoken with a tone that no longer matches their meaning. It’s a strange thing to mourn the distortion of something you still believe in. There’s no clean language for it. Only honesty.
What steadied me in your words wasn’t the confession of wanting to leave, but the decision to stay. Not in a triumphant way. Not wrapped in slogans. But in a tired, clear-eyed way. Staying not because it feels noble, but because it feels necessary. Because walking away doesn’t feel like relief so much as the surrender of witness.
I don’t think most of us are ashamed of this country in the way critics would like to frame it. We’re ashamed of what’s being done in its name, and of how casually cruelty now wears authority. That isn’t disloyalty. That’s a moral response.
And I don’t think the shared embarrassment you describe is weakness either. I think it’s recognition. A quiet nod across a crowded room that says, I see this too. I haven’t gone numb. I haven’t mistaken ugliness for strength. That recognition matters more than we often admit.
There’s something fragile but real in the way people are holding each other up right now, not with grand strategies, but with presence. Staying human while the culture keeps rewarding the opposite. Refusing to let cynicism masquerade as wisdom. Choosing care when mockery would be easier. You might pause and ask yourself how often you’ve seen that choice made lately, and how much it costs.
I don’t know how this resolves. I get plenty wrong. I’m not pretending otherwise. But I know this much. Wanting to escape doesn’t mean you’ve given up. Sometimes it means you still remember what home’s supposed to feel like.
And staying, even in embarrassment, even in anger, can still be an act of fidelity. Not to power. Not to leaders. But to the belief that this place is larger than those currently misusing it.
That isn’t naïve. It’s stubborn. And right now, stubborn decency might be one of the few things still holding the line.