Kaylee Heartman / Daily Nexus
During the 2024 presidential election, I had the privilege of being out of the country. While my anxieties about election result hostility were quelled by the sizable ocean between myself and America, I was terrified of sticking out at one of the top universities in the world as an uneducated American. The week of Nov. 5, I was distinctively American, but nobody hated me for it the way that I anticipated.
On election night, my darling flatmate Clementine and I threw a small party for our American friends in the building. We figured out how to get ballots mailed to a temporary address overseas (no voter fraud accusations here, please and thank you). We wanted to be patriots. We got a cake, we did our part.
Clementine came into my room the next morning, and we hugged in the doorway, unsure if words could convey the full depth of emotion we were feeling. I took down the already falling blue banner hung precariously in our windowless kitchen, which now felt darker, more cramped. What was left of our mysterious blue beverage went down the drain and the cake from Tesco, which cost me a whole five pounds, was thrown in the dumpster — all before 8 a.m.
The morning of Nov. 6, I donned as much blue garb as I had in my small closet. I pursed my lips and shook my head in indignation every time someone said the word “election.” “I’m not like other Americans,” I wanted to say, “I’m different.” If anyone asked, I was from California, not America. I couldn’t yet care about what the results meant for my country; I was instead too concerned with what the rest of the world thought about my existence as a woman whose country elected a man with more sexual assault allegations than I could count on my fingers and toes, about my existence as an American. Turns out, it wouldn’t matter what the Europeans thought of me, thought of my thoughts. Whether I was happy or sad about the results, they were the results, and everyone on that college campus pitied me. They pitied my friends, they pitied my country. They even pitied the people who voted for him. They weren’t angry at America, they were scared for her.
Every time I walked into a room, I felt like everyone was staring at me. I was gawky and awkward and American, and everybody knew what I fell asleep next to the night before (Anderson Cooper streaming on my laptop). In every class I attended, I felt it: heavy on my chest, keeping me quiet. The star spangled elephant loomed large, and, without fail, each professor started class with a sigh, a nod and an awkward “wow” before addressing the large, wrinkly and orange creature. I was only eight hours ahead of my hometown, but it felt like my country was 50 years behind where I stood. I thought everyone would hate me for it, and I was ready to hide myself. I was ready to take a vow of silence so as not to out myself as an American, not to associate myself with the poster boy of my country — but nobody was hateful. The men at the ice cream shop on South College Street smiled knowingly when they heard us speak. It was a good night for business. They were expecting us. “What happened?” they asked, incredulous, throwing an extra scoop of rocky road in there.
One of my classmates, a kind and intelligent true blue Scot, told me all about her flatmate’s election party. One was dressed as Bill Clinton, another was dressed as a coconut tree. All stages of American politics (the founding fathers, Watergate, Charli XCX) were represented in a university apartment in Edinburgh. She told me that they stayed up until 3 a.m. watching the election. “It was rather interesting,” she said. Myself and the four other Americans I knew in my building stayed up until 4 a.m., not out of interest but out of necessity, compulsively refreshing the CNN live election polls, because maybe, just maybe, Georgia would flip.
It was, to some degree, a spectacle to them. They could watch that video of George W. Bush getting shoes lobbed at his head on loop for hours, and still turn the telly off at the end of the night, puzzling about how bizarre American politics were. I wanted to be in on the joke, not be part of the joke. At some point though, it wasn’t even a spectacle for them. It was a point of deep concern about the values that the modern world held.
I was unable to feel concern for myself until I looked around at people who this election would not impact, at least, not as deeply. It was one thing to cry with Clementine in defeat, it was another for my professor from Aberdeen to say we would take the class to reconnect with nature because there were more important things going on outside the classroom. The people of Scotland were not thinking about 45th and 47th President Donald Trump in the same way I was, nor were they preparing themselves to lose access to food benefits the same way I was. They were not hiding behind blue scarves and blue mittens and blue hair bows the same way I was, ashamed that even the color of embarrassment on my face was red. They were just sad, in a way that nobody in my country seemed to be. The lament of people who would probably never step foot in my country told me that the America I was promised as a child didn’t really exist.
A year later, I have to wonder what the Europeans think. I have to wonder if they think about our country at all. For their sake, I hope they don’t have the New York Times push notifications on. Frankly, I wonder if they’re tired of hearing about the newest United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) witchhunt, about Matt Gaetz, the signature on Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday card (but he swears he didn’t sign that guys, and if he says he didn’t do it then he didn’t, because our honest country wouldn’t elect a liar, right?). I wonder if they’re tired of watching our toddler president, who recently graduated to unrestricted iPad access, who posts artificial intelligence videos to Twitter or X or whatever the hell people call it now. I wish I could offer a solution, but I’m not sure there is one. Perhaps the solution is running away, back to Europe, remembering when I used to be gawky and awkward. Perhaps the solution is riding it out, speaking up, using whatever platform will amplify my voice the loudest. I don’t know. All I know is that people outside of America aren’t laughing at us. They aren’t really laughing at all.
Emma Bogna is searching Expedia for one-way flights to anywhere.
