New York Magazine

05/21/2025

But fleeing the U.S. isn’t the answer. This is not the Vietnam War, when young men of draft age fled to Canada to avoid dying in an unpopular conflict thousands of miles away. If Trump has tormented Yale, among other Ivy League institutions, these widely celebrated academics would be able to carry on just fine for the rest of this decade and beyond. For all the ways Trump has upended American life, democracy persists: We continue to hold local elections, and the media publishes freely. I and many others write critically on Trump every single week; we are not being shuttled off to prison camps.

Trump, however, has ordered the arrests of green-card holders, and American citizens must recognize their privilege. I certainly do. Fleeing is a cheap, ego-flattering maneuver; it helps no one. This is not the late Weimar period or Nazi Germany. Death camps are not being constructed, and opposition political parties are not being outlawed. This isn’t Xi’s China, Putin’s Russia, or Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. America is, for all its flaws, a republic that has lasted more than 200 years. In nations bereft of any genuine democratic traditions — or those, like Hungary, that are quite small in population — versions of fascism are possible. But it’s very hard, despite the claims made by these histrionic academics, for it to actually happen here.