Finally the day has come for me to meet the real estate agent and sign the contract for the new villa, which I will be renting — insha’Allah! — from Dec 16 thru March 15th 2018.
If all goes through as expected, I shall be free in 12 days from having to endure the weekend nightmares of Abu Tig marina.
I’m looking forward to my wife booking a flight from the States and joining me quite soon.
Last night was not too bad: just the usual karaoke nonsense from Breeze.
They do this every Sunday night, with some loud-mouthed DJ trying to entice patrons to sing awful songs from the 70s. It s really quite horrible to listen to, but Breeze is on the other side of the marina from where I’m currently staying, and though water carries sound like there’s no tomorrow, the volume was not too bad, and the bar must have been empty, as the singing stopped early.
Watching the gut-wrenching news from the States, it is again doubly obvious that I was correct to expat out of the US. I do not know if Trump will be impeached, but I do think Muller will get him de minimus on obstruction of justice charges, and serve this on a platter to Congress.
If the 2018 off-year elections result in the Repubs losing their majority in both houses, then Trump may be gone by the end of 2018, but will most likely not be imprisoned, in a deal that Congress will cut to keep the nation from civil war.
If on the other hand he fires Muller, watch out.
However, should nothing of consequence vis-a-vis the Groper in Chief happen as a result of this investigation, then you can expect the current tax bill, if it passes both houses and is signed into law, to provide a windfall for large corporations and the wealthy and quickly lead to massive deficits.
This would then lead Republican to achieve their true aim, which is to claim that in order to balance the budget they have to gut Medicaid and privatize Social Security as well as Medicare.
That is another scenario that could lead to the rupture of the United States, which at this point will have become a true kleptocracy that protects itself from overthrow or foreign attack with a massive standing army at its back.
Whichever way you look at it, living in the United States will become an untenable proposition for many Arab Americans, just to mention one demographic, who will be increasingly vilified and scapegoated as a group by this administration in order to divert attention from its catastrophic policies.
So my immediate goal is to secure for my wife and I a quiet, safe, nice place to live, in an affordable part of the world.
Here nutjobs who may be out to harm me simply on the basis of my name will be unable to Google me, find out my address, and drive up to the house and shoot me in the face in my driveway.
I am not joking or being an alarmist; I have lived in Florida for 16 years, and know exactly what I am talking about through past, deeply-disturbing personal experiences.
Things are fast going to go badly — as if they have not already– in the US in the coming year, and Trump and his minions will continuously try to stir up the pot by doing things like declaring Jerusalem the capital of Occupied Palestine, or attempting unwanted state visits to the UK, and other circus acts that do nothing but roil the world, instead of providing calm, steady global leadership.
One day, things may fundamentally change in American politics, such that a Trump-like presidency can never happen again,
But until that day, I’m staying as far away as possible.
Leaving Amerika 