Perette Barella

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Thank you

• Those who voted against all the election deniers who were running to "fix" Trump's loss by rigging future elections in favor of their preferred candidates.
• Those who voted against radical-right and MAGA candidates in favor of sane ones.
• Senators who voted for the Respect of Marriage act, protecting gay and lesbian marriages from being annulled by angry, radical-right MAGA types.
• Those national representatives that voted for the Electoral Count Act Reform, to close the exploits used by Trump and friends to try to overturn the will of the people.

Nevertheless, spending a month in The Netherlands in 2022, my eyes are open to the madness that is the US way of life. The Democracy may be girded anew, but it does not fix the policies and politics that pander to Wall Street, corporations, and the plutocrats. Wealth and income inequality have been bred over decades by policies disempowering workers from fighting for wages. The middle class has shrunk, poverty has increased. Sadly, the people have blamed taxes, instead of wages that haven't kept pace with costs.

So I continue looking forward to emigrating to Europe, to Nederland, although I will admit I am intimidated and nervous about it.

There's a better life there. Better work-life balance. Less religiousity. Public and mass transportation are still priorities. Walking and biking treated as first-class transportation options, not afterthoughts; fewer painted bike gutters. They are not so beholden to their ideologies that they are prevented from having sane gun policies, nor prevented from stopping a madman nationalist liar provoking more division and hatred every night on television. There's less consumerism, less disposability. Race relations aren't perfect, but they're nothing like the racism in the US.

I am glad the US is no longer poised to imminently fall into authoritarianism. Nevertheless, I think my best shot at a better way of life awaits me elsewhere.

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