Establishing Myself Inside and Outside of the American Empire

What leaving the U.S. taught me about complicity, collectivism, and the myths we tell ourselves

Photo by Global Residence Index on Unsplash

What does accountability look like when you reject the politics of your home country but continue to benefit from its power? This essay traces a personal reckoning with American identity, liberal disavowal, and passive resistance—moving from anarchist experiments in the United States to life as an expatriate in China and Japan. Through encounters abroad and the collapse of idealized alternatives, it interrogates the limits of dissent, the seductions of moral distance, and the uncomfortable truth that opting out of empire does not absolve one of complicity.

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Taking accountability for your home nation's actions feels impossible when you embrace passive resistance. How do you meaningfully separate your belief structure from the realities of your indoctrination?

In November of 2025, I was sitting in a smoke-filled bar in Osaka. For how clean a nation Japan is, you are still permitted to smoke inside if the bar is small and divey enough. As an only-when-drinking smoker, I felt some comfort in this dive where multiple vices can be satisfied at once.

As usual, I was traveling on my own and trying to make friends. I struck up a conversation with a lovely woman from New Zealand. She shared stories of her time in Hanoi, Vietnam, and excited plans to travel China with her son. She explained that this bar was once her local haunt when she lived in Osaka.

She was like me; we both had no real interest in returning to her home country. We had both left the conventionality of “western” life behind and were embracing the lessons collectivist nations had to teach us.  After she turned in early that night, I took over her chair and joined two men in conversation. They turned out to be two gay cis men who live in Alberta. One born in Canada and one born in Argentina. 

We got off to typical bar conversation. We discussed travel and share anecdotes regarding various characters in our past lives. Things ultimately went political. Since we were all queer, there was a certain level of comfort in the conversation. We start on a different baseline. Eventually, my nationality became the center of conversation. I was expecting jabs I was accustomed to like “The Imperial System is silly”. The man born in Argentina was particularly passionate about his criticisms of my country of birth, particularly President Trump. 

“You voted for him,” he insisted. 

I tried to explain that I hadn't voted for our current president and therefore shouldn’t be lumped in with the “you” he was referring.  But that didn’t matter. Every time I said, “Well, not me,” he countered, if not me, then how did it happen? How was this man leader of the free world? What had I done to stop it?

I had no answer. 

I operated on the assumption I was better. Better than the MAGA cult, more moral, somehow less American than the dumb Americans of stereotype. But I couldn’t explain why that wasn’t me.  Up to this point, it felt like it was enough not to agree. However, this interaction forced me to see the part I played in the ongoing tragedy that is the American Empire. 

Inside the Empire

In my mid-20s, I fancied myself an activist. I lived in an international community in Richmond, Virginia, with a group of self-proclaimed anarchists. I was attracted to them because they proposed a style of life that rejected capitalism. 

I was pushed towards anarchism in general because of the hypocrisy of the Obama administration. He ran on change, and I remember the celebrations in the streets of my university town. However, that joy turned into confusion after Obama ordered two drone strikes in northern Pakistan, resulting in the deaths of children.

I was 10 when Bush knocked out Gore, 11 when planes hit the Twin Towers, 12 when the US invaded Iraq. I grew up with unjustified violence, and I thought Obama was the answer. This proved I had a lot of learning to do.  The reality was that the United States government was one of death, money, and hypocrisy, so I aimed to do anything else.

For me, that was anarchism, doing something other than the exploitative model provided by capitalism. If one is to fight against something, they must live in a way that reflects their ideology. For me, that meant finding a community where I could grow emotionally, artistically, and politically with support without fear of being unhoused or going hungry. 

I thought I found my people at a house party. I was invited to a backyard fit pit party, as was the style at the time, where I met with some of the members of a group that was living how I thought I wanted to live. I was intrigued by their tenet of income sharing. All members worked together to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, booze, the essentials. Sharing income and dividing labor would give each member of the house more time for personal projects and self-expression. 

It wasn’t perfect, but for a while, it felt like we had carved out a way of living that could break the cycle of consumerism that supported violence. We would be the punk house on the hill that would be the example to all. However, as it is with most good ideas, people get in the way. Eventually, desperate for recruits, we let in people who were more interested in benefiting from what we had than in working toward something better.

Ultimately, this community–like many others–failed because it ceased to be egalitarian. We had let in people who were not interested in income sharing, which, for me, was foundational to equality.

We failed to build long-term support systems within our community. We owned nothing and were just as tied to the system we were fighting as our landlord. 

As my community lost what made it revolutionary, I decided to move to China to teach English. Since I wasn’t getting a corporate job, I could still tell myself I was fighting the good fight against capitalism. 

My partner at the time had lived in China before and assured me we could make enough money in a year to return state-side and start our own community. 

My desire to exist outside of the American capitalist system moved me to a country that called itself communist. 

Outside of the Empire

I stepped off the plane in Chengdu, China, with no clue what I was walking into. My partner and I split not long after arriving, and I had to make new friends. 

A wonderful English woman was gracious enough to include me in her pub quiz team at a pub called The Underground in Chengdu.

The Underground was the only bar in the city that catered to the international queer community. The English-style pub was run by a cis gay couple, one English and one Malaysian. I started to deconstruct my worldview. The characters I met at the bar and my experiences working in a Chinese public school revealed an interconnected world of freedom and isolation.

By the time I arrived in China, two very important things had happened recently: the end of the one-child policy, and the raising of the Great Firewall. The Great Firewall was a slang term for the PRC's blocking of many Western websites as a power play in social control. 

I walked into a world where political dissent wasn’t just frowned upon but unheard of. Most of the Chinese individuals I spoke to expressed a real trust in the government, in stark contrast to American skepticism. Most believed the Party had enacted laws that benefited the people. Citizens explained away every inconvenience as necessary for security. Every omission was for the betterment of the nation.

I met a woman who didn’t learn about the Tiananmen Square Massacre until she was 21, while visiting Hong Kong. I asked her how she thought the general population would feel about this information. 

She said, “I don’t think they give a fuck. They grew up hearing stories about their parents and grandparents starving, and now they are not.” Why would they question a government that brought them back from the brink?

Additionally, the collectivist nature of Chinese society puts social pressure on its members to consider the impact their actions would have on their parents and their community.  What would be the benefit of open dissent? Why make noise and cause problems, social and legal, for their family? Life was good enough; what is the point of rocking the boat?

There is a fundamental truth in this mentality. As alarmed as I was, I see the logic in the argument. There are different methods of social control.

Stating your opinion is your right as an American citizen. But our individualist culture places such an emphasis on personal choice that it disintegrates community.  In the US, people change their profile pictures to reflect their political opinions. They start arguments at Thanksgiving, but that hasn’t stopped the current administration from targeting oil vessels off the coast of Venezuela. 

The citizens of the US trust the Constitution, as the average Chinese citizen trusts the Party. 

Gaining Perspective

I was raised in a fiercely liberal household with a healthy fear of conservative thinking and a hard anti-war stance. A foundational disappointment with US foreign policy led me to think I was different. 

I left the nation of my birth, unsure of what to expect. I threw myself into learning and experiencing all while communicating politically with all the confidence of a middle-class liberal.  My experiences as an expatriate revealed that acknowledging the flaws of your home nation is not enough. I have evolved my opinions on living in a community.

This nation and its people must move beyond this system and create a parallel one. Not because we need to shift towards collectivism, but because that is the true American tradition––Independence from a government that no longer serves us.