The soufflé of sentiment rises quickly online, but only the bread of community sustains.
There are many readings about the world we’re in right now. One of them, elaborated by Noah Smith, points out that some of the “movements” with a strong following today are actually online communities without a real extension in real-life communities.
Due to this factor, what we’re experiencing may soon behave like a French favorite plate: like a soufflé, online sentiment rises and agglutinates, and it can come tumbling down as fast as it reaches its apex if it doesn’t build an actual structure that is meaningful to a majority of people who will sooner or later leave the “fight or flight” mode that made them vote for a reaction against the status quo.
Soufflés: a culinary theory
Noah Smith might have a point. After World War II, for example, veterans who returned home and wanted to create a family did so in communities where they felt they belonged, and people found ways to bond with their communities through sports, school, and service.
There was also a consensus on rebuilding a world that needed to say never again to totalitarianism-led atrocities. A majority of people, regardless of their political leaning or demographic, said “never again” to Hitler, the Holocaust, and also the risk of repeating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reconstruction, material prosperity, and an open society to work together seemed to make sense to everybody.
The dreams of current people’s great-grandfathers and grandfathers fell behind, and the world changed. Institutions atrophied, and social dynamism in advanced societies got demoted to the bottom of the priorities list. Special interests and corporate lobbying did the rest.
I coincide with most of this interpretation of the long 20th century we’re just saying goodbye. I’ve already mentioned here before that I’m the translator for the Spanish market of a book, The Engineers of Chaos, in which Italian-Swiss writer and political scientist Giuliano da Empoli (old adviser of ex-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, a social-democrat reformer that reinvigorated Italian politics until he decided to call a frivolous, unimportant referendum that he lost, prompting his fall), explained in 2019 why we are in the current historical moment.
In other words, I’ve translated a book for a Spanish publishing company that exposes what Noah Smith is trying to explain, but in a more elaborate, mature, and researched way. I recommend the book, now more prescient than ever, which opens with Da Empoli (the grandson of an important political figure from the Italian fascist movement, an advisor of Mussolini before his fall) having a casual interview with Steve Bannon at the bar of a hotel in Rome. I’m not sure an English version exists; it should. There are French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish editions (the Spanish translation is mine, published by Oberon in Spain).
In need of a Roberto Bolaño type. Reason: a Great American Novel
I’m opening with Noah Smith’s article and a reference to Giuliano da Empoli because what continental Europe experienced between the two world wars was the transformation from a world of early-20th-century Mitteleuropa cosmopolitan thinking and lifestyle (the paradigm of the later European Union, and of Nietzsche’s idea of the “good European”) into a world retrenched around nationalism and ideology.
I wonder if some author of a certain intellectual stature will soon write today’s equivalent of Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday.
I would personally have loved to have Roberto Bolaño (who died in 2003 at 50, a Chilean living in Spain who had lived in Mexico City and knew very well the culture of “Fronterizos,” as he demonstrated in 2666) write a big Latin American novel about what’s about to happen with the pariahs within American Latino communities across the US. It would have been the saddest story, but I’m sure it would have been a hell of a reading.
I doubt there’s anybody of similar stature in or outside the US to embark on such an enterprise. A no-BS take, just good prose in a “novela río” hammering the reader’s temples, just like The Savage Detectives. As a good Chilean, he also had a weak spot with crypto-nazism (Chile being a country that has confronted this problem). The time is ripe for someone to take on the challenge and write a Great American Novel on the topics that matter—the way Uncle Tom’s Cabin is—though I doubt the format matters now as much as it did generations back. For a novel to have an impact, it needs to be read by the public in a Colleen Hoover way.
A persecuted father making life beautiful for his son
Back to Noah Smith’s musings. Only the obliteration of the Third Reich changed the course of Western Europe’s fate, giving way to a consensus around the benefits of cultivating an open society, although it sent Eastern Europe to an era of Soviet control that still dictates what might happen in the future, as the United States forces Britain and the European Union to look at the future outside the American protective umbrella. Pax Americana is officially dead, and the kids are old enough to leave the house, pay their bills, and forge their own futures. It might all go to their long-term benefit.
Like during Europe’s interwar period, big shake-ups create many victims, among them those who have left or have to leave their places and are perceived as a threat elsewhere. They become pariahs, as governments use them (very effectively, by the way) for scapegoating. And, like Nietzsche’s eternal return, people descending from groups that once flew their places are called to dictate the exclusionary sentiment and turn it into law today.
Inducing fear within the communities of an entire, over-exploited sub-class of American non-citizens instead of looking into ways of accommodating law-abiding, hard-working neighbors can be a big enough problem. But it can turn into a much bigger one if you start cherry-picking when interpreting constitutional fundamental rights and decide to deport legal permanent residents because they are perceived as undesirable.
Those cheering such moves may not understand that, once you override fundamental rights to some, there’s no guarantee that the same arbitrary behavior can’t happen to anyone deemed an enemy. The scariest thing about arbitrary recklessness is that it can turn formerly serious places into unserious ones.
In a climate that forgets about nuance and questions temporary rights if it needs to, people who became immigrants or had to flee their countries as refugees wake up in environments not wanting them. Some of them not only have to remain hopeful and safe themselves but also have to care about their children, trying to instill in them a sense of dignity and hope in the existence of some sort of universal justice (think Roberto Benigni’s character in the film Life Is Beautiful). By the way, Beningni’s character is called Guido Orefice.
The undocumented American who decided to self-deport
How do people manage to construct a sense of belonging and hope far from their homes when they know they aren’t wanted by some (most?) of their neighbors? Trees often survive with little water, or with transplanted roots (a metaphor used by Edward Said in Reflections on Exile), and even some plants (referred to as “air plants”) can survive with no dirt, feeding themselves from ambient moisture and rain, and using their roots to clamp themselves somewhere, if only temporarily.
Another powerful metaphor is the beaten-up suitcase, used by Shaun Tan in The Arrival, a oneiric graphic novel where the protagonist carries only a suitcase as he enters an unknown land, highlighting the universality of displacement and adaptation.
Some of us live far from our places of origin but have one advantage: a passport, an education, a family to call and ask for help, a credit card, a place to go back to, a nationality backed by a developed country that might use diplomacy to care for its citizens when they are stranded somewhere else. Imagine having none of that.
Given the context many people face, now more bluntly than before, what’s the actual difference between “expatriate,” voluntary or economic “migrant,” refugee, etc.? Call somebody who considers himself “expatriate” a “migrant,” and wait for the patronizing clarification. But, ask a perceived “migrant” if they consider themselves an “expatriate,” and you’ll realize that they are too busy trying to build a reality around them that isn’t a given, and they’ll humbly smile at you. They don’t care.
The comeback of an accomplished British citizen with plenty of agency
I read that Jill Damatac, a Filipino author who arrived in the US at the age of 9 with her immigrant parents, flying Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship, never became a legal resident, just like her parents.
She could never regularize her situation in the country, nor could her parents, despite their efforts over the decades. Her story doesn’t have anything to do with Trump’s over-gesticulation on the topic, which reminds anybody that administrative deterrents have always existed, only now the attitude is bordering showmanship and in-your-face sadism, which is a marker of some of the worst scapegoating that ever occurred in Europe.
However—she explains in a forthcoming memoir on her two decades in the US—a decade ago, she decided she’d had enough: on January 1, 2015, she took a one-way flight to the Philippines despite not having the required visa, as she was, in her own words, “self-deporting.”
If she could leave the place she had struggled to be a legal part of, her plan for the future was looking brighter, not worse:
“At takeoff, sorrow overtook the terror I felt at check-in. The T.S.A. agent had scanned my passport — renewed in 2002, devoid of a visa — and waved me through. I froze in place: Where were the ICE agents?
“That day, I found out that no one cares if an undocumented immigrant leaves America. Only my husband, waving from beyond the gate, cared. He would eventually meet me in London; I was to go to Manila first to apply for a British spouse visa, which I couldn’t do in the United States because I was an undocumented person.”
Eventually, Jill joined her husband in the UK, where she became a legal resident, earning two master’s degrees (one of them in creative writing at Cambridge University). She knew that the decision to leave would bar her from legally returning to the country where she had lived most of her life for 10 years.
But a decade has passed, and she is returning to the US just to visit it. She does so as a naturalized British citizen, as well as an accomplished and happily married filmmaker and writer. So much for the American Dream. Worth remembering that her personal story has little to do with Trump’s new mandate.
“On January 1, 2025, the 10-year ban expired; on January 6, I was approved for the L-2 visa. My husband and I could go to San Francisco. I was going home.
“But first, a short stay in Manhattan, which felt to me less like where I once lived — a place of bodega owners, mom-and-pop shops and the kind neighbors who’ve lived next door since the ’60s. It now feels like a clenched fist. In tears of guilt, I remembered my parents, struggling in the ’90s to be legalized, fleeced by unscrupulous immigration lawyers until time ran out on their tourist visas.
“I wished I could go to New Jersey to see my parents for dinner and join my sister for wine at her Hell’s Kitchen apartment. But my dad died of a heart attack in 2022, while preparing to self-deport with my mother. Mom self-deported to Manila just before the 2024 election, after 32 years away. My sister, who left in 2017, is now Dutch, a neuroscience Ph.D. living just outside Amsterdam.”
On the importance of symbols
Jill Damatac could become a more frequent story, especially when the US Administration and the majority of Americans who voted for it remain in favor of setting stricter rules on immigration, which could lead to the deportation of people who didn’t commit crimes and dreamed of a better life. In bringing their dreams to other places, some of these people could help make other societies more dynamic.
I talk about Jill Damatac because she decided to raise her voice and speak about her own life odyssey on her own terms, eluding the paternalizing, condescending tone that others put on behalf of perceived victims of scrupulous enforcement of administrative rules, which don’t understand about nuances and individual cases. Jill knows that she’s talking about something that might affect many people who worked hard and believed in the place they live more than many of their citizens by right.
Another interesting part of her story is that she isn’t trying to sneak into the US no matter what, and she doesn’t hold any grudges or animosity. On the contrary, her book deal and visit to San Francisco are proof of her authority, or what we may call agency. She is a “person,” loved by her husband, recognized by a country that allowed her to fight for her dreams. That place isn’t the US.
What came to my mind thinking about this is the importance of narratives and the impact of symbols on the collective unconscious. A bunch of American soldiers raising a flag atop a hill on an island in the Pacific (a picture that helped win a war); a Vietnamese girl with the skin falling off her arms and body as she runs, naked, towards the camera (a picture that helped stop a war); a courageous young man against a tank before being run by it (a symbol of the cruelty of totalitarianism).
Hollywood and pop culture as a whole helped the US gain a global standing over the decades, and the dream, if wounded, was still something that stood on its own. I wonder if it could ever be wounded beyond repair. What many of the testosterone-run advisors around the current US Administration don’t seem to realize is that there’s nothing “soft” in having the most reliable, most economically profitable soft power engine during the last 80 years. It takes time and effort to build over time, but it can be disassembled much faster.
The often-overlooked strength of soft power
Soft power is the low-hanging fruit, the ultimate proof of actual strength. Without it, American tech giants could struggle in their profitable global markets and also make a case strong enough for consumers and companies around the world to finally build their local champions.
Thinking about Jill Damatac, something came to my mind. Is the American Dream at risk when people looking up to it decide to move on and build similar narratives of self-actualization elsewhere? Another change that could come in the future, if trends persist: what if many American citizens who feel unwelcomed in their country decided to live in other places, but instead of being perceived as “expatriates” abroad—a term that seems to carry clearcut connotations—they are regarded just like any other migrant? What if, by trying to inflate its value with exclusivity, the value of Americanness would get deflated?
Fortunately for US citizens, the divide between expatriates and immigrants seems to go hand in hand with every country’s economic solvency and stance in the world. Things can change, and have done so for many other countries. Some, like South Korea, seemed to join the “people with rights to be considered expatriates” club as their democracies and economies converged with the rest of the high-income countries.
Argentina, one of the world’s wealthiest countries at the beginning of the 20th century, became a middle-income country over the decades, following the opposite trajectory. But it would take a massive, generalized blowup over more than one generation for a place like the US to follow such a path. Since we live in a time of advisors frivolously talking about existential risks, the possibilities are higher than 0.
On moving elsewhere
COVID isn’t the origin of the current turmoil, but it surely acted as a catalyst, accelerating the discontent and creating a gap between authority (institutional, medical, cultural) and the many who felt detached and disenfranchised from society. It’s been five years since the pandemic began; its direct consequences are long gone, but many of the drastic imbalances it created, from increased inequality and higher political polarization to inflation and rising housing costs, are still in play.
Talking about the concerns of people who can choose to leave the country that recognizes and protects them (like me or any American citizen, for that matter) is somehow a frivolous concern when compared to the unease that many families are in at this moment. However, it’s legitimate for anybody with the chance and will to do so, to live some time outside their own reality and country; I’m glad I had the chance to do so.
Besides, I chose to go live somewhere else than Barcelona when local nationalism was getting exhausting as it was the only topic around me, sucking any other energy and/or endeavor around very capable and bright people; I saw it as a gigantic waste of time, some sort of cosmic onanism. So I immersed myself in French culture and got to know the town of Fontainebleau (which is one hour south of Paris) first, and then Paris.
I didn’t lose anything as an expatriate; on the contrary, I got to be a part of French culture and enriched many perspectives on the cultures we have made a part of who we are at home.
Even if the remote work trend has officially reversed as companies and administrations have prioritized at-office schedules for quite some time, office and commercial real estate has never recovered from the blow and is well below pre-pandemic levels.
In the last five years, many people have chosen to leave urban and suburban areas for good, trading off convenience and access to more space. However, not everybody enjoyed the flexibility of leaving expensive areas for less affordable and crowded ones.
COVID remnants: from telework to geographical arbitrage
Young families with children, for example, tie such big life upheavals to work and education prospects for their children, and a search for perks like pleasant weather, access to the outdoors, or good school districts might diminish the financial difference between costly urban areas and appealing neighborhoods elsewhere.
Suburbs in coastal California and the Northeast have seen a sizeable flight of young professionals capable of teleworking, families with children, and retirees leave costly places like the San Francisco Bay Area or New York City for gentle cities in the Rockies and metro areas in Florida, Texas, and the Southwest.
As the new US Administration plays with the idea of offering a golden visa to high-income non-citizens willing to pay at least $5 million in the US, an offer that would seem designed to entice people willing to overpay to conceal their (likely very shady) profile, many European countries that introduced similar programs to attract foreigners during the sovereign debt crisis of the 2010s are discontinuing them or planning to do so.
Authorities in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Cyprus have all expressed the same concerns about announcing the end of incentives to attract high-income non-citizens (or non-EU citizens for the programs in EU countries). They cite several loopholes to support their decision: people buying real estate to rent it right away for short stays, money-laundering schemes, and local backlash as locals relate the programs to housing unaffordability.
Ireland, which began its Immigrant Investor Program in 2012 to attract non-European high-income individuals willing to invest in the country, terminated its program in early 2023. The United Kingdom closed a similar program, the UK’s Tier 1 visa for investors (launched in 2008), to new applicants in February 2022, citing fraud and national security issues.
Spain closed its golden visa at the end of 2024 as the government tried to appease public opinion amid the escalating housing prices amid an economy currently outperforming its main European peers. Portugal modified its golden visa in 2023 for similar reasons, eliminating the real estate investment option and offering more productive direct investments in the country (funds, job creation, scientific research, or cultural heritage preservation).
Cyprus abolished its citizenship-by-investment program in 2020 following allegations of misuse by shady organizations to give EU citizenship to people who didn’t meet the program’s criteria.
As of now, Italy’s and Greece’s golden visa programs continue without significant changes, for both programs have been designed to attract non-real estate direct investment: besides real estate, Greece offers to commit to the country with the significant purchase of government bonds or establishing a bank deposit, while Italy directs those interested in their program to invest in innovative startups, Italian companies, or government bonds.
Places that will pay you to move there (with caveats and restrictions)
It’s a well-known catch-22: it’s expensive to live in vibrant cities, which also tend to concentrate some of the best-paid jobs. So, part of the income increase compared with less dynamic metro areas or rural places gets diluted as housing and the cost of living are higher where the best opportunities abound.
Population decline has affected isolated and comparatively underdeveloped rural areas in advanced countries for generations, and trends like deindustrialization, urban decay, housing unaffordability, or, more recently, the COVID pandemic haven’t reversed the trend.
Digital workers can take advantage of rural areas’ generational hollowing out by moving to more affordable places while keeping a comparatively high salary.
Several small towns in Europe, Japan, and Australasia offer small incentives to attract new residents willing to settle and raise a family in rural areas suffering severe depopulation.
Ponga, a picturesque town in Asturias, in rainy and green northern Spain, offers families €3,000 to help with costs due to relocation, as well as an additional €3,000 for each child born in town; not far from Asturias, in Galicia (northwestern Spain), the village of Rubia provides a monthly symbolic stipend of €100 to €150 to new residents.
Candela, a small town in Italy’s southern region of Puglia (the heel of the boot conformed by the Italian peninsula), offers several incentives ranging from €800 for singles to €2,000 for families to move there.
Outside the European Union but in the same region, the Swiss village of Albinen offers 25,000 Swiss francs ($28,500) per adult and 10,000 Swiss francs (around $11,400) per child, to families willing to prove their good faith and commitment by buying a home worth at least 200,000 Swiss francs, committing to the place for at least 10 years.
Japan is also trying to fight depopulation and rapid aging, offering ¥3 million yen (around $22,000) to families willing to relocate to rural towns and villages.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the village of Kaitangata, New Zealand, offers affordable houses and land packages at a discount to attract new residents to the area.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias
It’s perhaps worth mentioning that while such incentives don’t discriminate by ethnicity, they tend to do so by nationality. The packages offered in Japan are aimed at Japanese citizens and permanent residents in the countries: even if foreign residents on long-term visas may qualify, short-term visa holders (tourists, students) do not.
Switzerland (where Albinen is located) has strict immigration rules, easing the process only for EU citizens while making it much more difficult for non-European applicants. As for the places in Spain, Italy, and other EU countries, they are open to citizens of any EU country, but non-EU applicants (such as Americans) may need to obtain long-term residency or visas first.
Like many things from the post-WWII reality, the world became “flat” only for Westerners, while other citizens around the world keep struggling to move around and, especially, settling elsewhere, even when they can do so in their own academic or professional merit.
Somehow, Americans have become less geographically mobile over recent decades. In the 1960s, one in five Americans relocated each year; in 2023, the rate had declined to about one in thirteen. Reduced mobility can have broader implications, from fewer economic opportunities to increased social division and polarization.
Given the current trends and the new Administration’s erratic first weeks in power, many Americans at the bottom of the ladder who voted for Donald Trump will pay more for things (effectively, direct “taxes”) and suffer the consequences of federal cuts.
They could end up proportionally paying for the tax cuts planned at the top, which will only benefit the biggest corporations and the wealthiest people in the country. The path to unseriousness is already set. Canadians, Europeans, and other historic allies are rushing to diminish the reverberations of the tectonic shift as much as they possibly can.
As Antonio Gramsci or Stefan Zweig (and Giuliano ds Empoli) would point out, the world of yesterday is officially gone, and the world of tomorrow is uncertain.
Perspective will settle things down soon enough. The soufflé is already half gone, though it could go up again momentarily, coasting on the fate of crypto and stocks, which is sadly the only thing many meme voters care about.