Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
The Deserter
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
I’m in London because England is English-speaking and the tap water doesn’t give me diarrhea. I’m not here to sightsee. I don’t have the strength to engage with different customs, cultures or conventions. I need a sanctuary with familiar creature comforts.
I’m not traveling. I’m running away. I’m escaping the coming Trump presidency.
On election night, a dull pang—like a worsening toothache—took over my happiness. Two days later, I quit my job teaching high school civics. A week later, I landed at Heathrow airport.
During the campaign, politicians repeated a touchy-feely lie claiming Americans have more in common than what separates us. Not me. I have nothing in common with people who bully their way through life, wallow in anti-science stupidity, resent government programs that save their lives and champion crooks or cruelty.
I have nothing in common with the 187 million adult Americans—seven out of ten—who voted MAGA or didn’t vote all. They reduce everything I taught my classes into meaningless blather.
One textbook chapter about the Vietnam War pictured brawny men in hard hats holding signs reading, “America, love it or leave it.” Back then, a deplorable rejection of democratic norms. In today’s politics, not bad advice at all.
Within days of election night, a panicked telephone call from a friend living in a rural-suburban part of the country frightened me. His veterinary clinic cares for horses and cows, dogs and cats. A millimeter of his skin—the thin layer with melanin—is the color of light rye bread. He was born in India.
MAGAts tolerate—or accept with too much enthusiasm—racist leaders because they don’t know race is only skin deep, literally. In human biology there is no such thing as race—not bone structure, hair type, facial features or brain function. Skin color is just my body’s natural pigment reacting to sunlight. Save us all from dumb racists.
“I don’t want to be targeted like Jews in Germany in the 1930s,” my friend’s voice trembled. “How will I know when to get out?” His fear tattooed me.
Unhelpfully, impotently, I told him to stay off isolated country roads and to avoid going to town alone. I had no trouble imagining some MAGA brownshirts hassling a brown-skinned veterinarian driving to treat an ailing herd of livestock.
My exit is not a protest, not a boycott. I am simply too weak to deal with what’s coming. TV images of decent people being deported and families ripped apart or a cascading climate crisis will crumble me.
I once saw a challenging political poster: “Ever wonder what you would have done in Nazi Germany? You’re doing it now.” When I read it, my mouth cracked dry.
The average Londoner is surveilled 300 times a day by CCTV cameras. The cameras record where I go, but they don’t see the tightness in my chest. They don’t X-ray the cowardly chambers of my heart.
One evening, I glimpse my reflection in a pub window. White shirt the color of surrender, blue jeans, black jacket with zippered pockets. My hair scruffy around the ears.
I look very much like an American refugee seeking political asylum.
