Now that Donald Trump has ended his term as U.S. president, the world bemoans the condition he leaves the United States. From Seattle to Sydney, there is disgust at the deadly assault he inspired on the Capitol. The opprobrium rang out with one clear plaint: America had lost the plot, and it couldn’t be put back together again. As an American abroad, my question was personal: Did I make a colossal error five years ago?
In early 2016, I stood with about 80 other people in a Brooklyn courtroom and became a U.S. citizen. It wasn’t because I was a newly converted patriot with a need to place hand on heart and recite the oath of allegiance. Mine was a purely voluntary commitment.
As an Australian, I wasn't fleeing political or religious persecution. I had freedom of speech, and a comfortable life as a permanent resident of the United States. I had clocked more than two decades as a reporter, editor and executive at a major U.S. news organization. I did it partly for convenience. My wife and children are American. I had resided in the United States for many years with no plan to return to the land of my birth — a place I hadn’t lived in since the mid-1990s. It seemed a nuisance not to go the whole hog and get myself a say in how I was governed, as opposed to merely writing about it.