As our editor Chris Queen recently pointed out, a lot of people, mostly celebrities. claim they're leaving the country every time we elect a Republican president. Of course, very few actually do it because for all of their theatrics, it's just a bunch of virtue signaling, and they know that this country is the reason why they live the charmed lives they do.
Up until a couple of years ago, I could never understand why anyone would want to leave the greatest country in the world. But current events and a few personal matters left me questioning everything.
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At the time, I was becoming disillusioned with what was going on around me. Another Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden election was on the horizon, and I was ready to elect new people (though, before anyone lectures me I have since changed my mind on Trump — I now think he's the right person to lead our country at this time).
I tried tuning out the news, but it seemed like everyone in charge wanted to tax this and regulate that and take away my freedom. Outside of Washington, D.C., it felt like we were on the verge of another Civil War. The country is and was divided, but it felt like we had gotten to the point where you couldn't be friends with your neighbors if you didn't vote alike. We'd just dealt with everything from riots to a pandemic (to which the response was carried way too far).
The place where I live just outside of Atlanta has changed so much that I don't recognize it. Our local government is a corrupt joke these days. I was sick of watching the news and knowing what was going on 24/7. And I was sick of just, well, stuff. I remember going into a Sam's Club around Christmas and seeing rows and rows of these tacky plastic decorations and wondering why we need all this stuff. On a personal note, I'd lost my mom to whom I was a caregiver for years and felt sort of lost in general, so I'm sure that played a big role in my newfound apathy. But something had to change.
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I've wanted to visit Costa Rica — a country that I knew had a large expat community — for years, and after my mom died, a friend suggested we visit. In March 2023, we spent about eight days there, and I don't think I'd ever felt so healthy and relaxed. It wasn't just that I was on vacation. It was that I felt a world away from all that was going on in the United States. Life moves a little slower down there, and for the most part, the people are much kinder.
Over the next year and a half, I'd go back many times, exploring almost every inch of the country, looking for answers I suppose. What would it be like to live there? Could I give up some of the luxuries I have in the United States? There are no same-day Amazon deliveries there, nor are there any sprawling suburban towns with big box stores and fast food joints on every corner, but I was okay with that. I wanted to get away from it and simplify my life.
As I type this, I'm sitting in my Atlanta-area home, so obviously, I never took the plunge. I didn't rule it out for the future, but I did come back down to earth — or the U.S. — a little bit. I re-engaged in what was going on here, and as I said, I came to realize that Trump was who we need in charge right now. I even made a career change that saw me going from writing marketing junk to writing news and politics again (which is how I started my writing career in the first place).
However, I'm witnessing a new phenomenon in our country that has me re-thinking it all again: a disregard for human life.
I consider myself a very pro-life person. Yes, that starts with abortion. Life begins at conception — most scientists agree — and I think ignoring that is akin to playing God. But it extends far beyond that. Pro-life means being in favor of life from conception to death in my opinion. And the support I'm seeing for a murderer named Luigi Mangione is absolutely disgusting.
Mangione is, of course, the guy who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. I'm sure you all know the story by now, so I won't rehash it. Initially, the people who were cheering him on seemed like a fringe thing. A few quadruple-vaxxed "they/them" gals and guys on X with blue hair and piercings in places that look decidedly painful — the ones who spend their days posting about defunding the police and attending anti-Israel protests, the ones who think Trump will put them in concentration camps — were calling him everything from a hero to a thirst trap. They were calling for the deaths of CEOs, and not just the ones who ran insurance companies, but also those across many other industries. I supposed I expect nothing less from that crowd though.
But admittedly, it wasn't just the fringe far left. Over time, I heard people I know and love make similar comments. Christians. Conservatives. People who claim to be pro-life as well. "Given what I've gone through with my own health insurance, I'm not surprised that no one cares that this man was killed." "I work in the healthcare industry, and I can totally understand why this guy committed murder and won't be shocked when more people in the industry are killed."
I started to argue when friends posted things like this on social media or even said it to my face. One lady's husband works in construction. "How would you feel if the house he built crumbled under the next tornado that flies through Georgia, and the residents came and killed him over it?" I wanted to say. What happens when someone in a bad mood goes to a restaurant and they're served a scalding hot meal and burn themselves on it? Is that an excuse to take out a gun and shoot the waiter? Your daughter teaches horseback riding lessons. What if one of her students falls off a horse, and the parent of the child shoots her over it? What if I write an article someone doesn't like, and they hunt me down and kill me over it?
But I bit my tongue. Honestly, if people feel that murder is in any way justified, what's the point? What's going to convince them otherwise? Are we at that point of no return? Are we just accepting vigilante behavior now? Are we heading towards a state of complete lawlessness?
And it seems like it's getting worse. I was on Instagram the other day, and a local news site I follow posted about how a local power company would be raising prices in January. The first three comments with hundreds of likes were "Who's the CEO? Where's Luigi?" "These CEOs haven't learned???," and "Who's the CEO? Asking for a friend." I was shocked. I actually tried reporting them for inciting violence, but my response from Meta was that these comments didn't go against community standards. Meanwhile, another lady I follow who owns a local farm was reported and banned for slaughtering chickens for food (and she didn't even show the gory parts on Instagram).
Since then, I've seen memes pop up across social media, only to receive hundreds of thousands of likes.
And a friend just sent me an advertisement from a business for a sweatshirt with Mangione represented as Time's "Person of the Year" on the front. It's like we're just normalizing murder now.
And don't get me wrong. I know the insurance industry is an absolute mess. I know our healthcare system is a mess. I lived it for a decade while taking care of my very sick mother. But murdering someone's father and son is not the way to fix it, especially when government regulations and the fallout from Obamacare are far more to blame than any private company (and I don't advocate murdering government officials either, just so we're clear). But this is a topic for another day.
Because the disregard for life doesn't just extend to the murder of Thompson. Maybe I'm naïve, but during the last election cycle, I never understood how people would vote to secure their right to have an abortion on demand over topics like national security. You can put a baby you don't want up for adoption. You can prevent pregnancy in any number of ways. If a terrorist crosses the border and kills you, none of that matters.
And then there's the case of Joe Biden's recent pardons. He commuted the death sentences of some murderers on death row, but not some of the most notorious ones like the Boston Marathon bomber or the guy in Charleston who shot up the AME church. How do you draw that line? You're either for or against the death penalty. When you start picking and choosing, particularly for political reasons, you're playing God, just like the people who justify their actions by saying life doesn't begin at conception or the CEO didn't give me what I wanted.
Erick Erickson posted on his Substack earlier this week, "It is no surprise that in Western societies that have increasingly devalued life, there is a move to end the death penalty for murderers while concurrently expanding it to babies, the infirm, and the elderly. Our society has devalued life and is led by those who do not respect life."
While I haven't agreed with a lot of what Erickson has said lately, he's spot-on with this. And that's what scares me more than anything else we've experienced in the 21st century so far. People feel they have the right to choose who lives and dies. And that's what has got me rethinking a move to Costa Rica at some point down the line.
I'm not sure I want to live in a world where people don't take the most sacred thing we have more seriously. Not to say that Costa Rica — or anywhere else for that matter — is perfect, but whether it's their limited abortion laws or the respect they have for their elders, things are different there, at least for now. And I'd be willing to give up many American luxuries for that, I think.
