Not Just Another Proverbial Wandering Jew.
Nha Trang, Vietnam, November 13th, 2024.
Salaroche

The origin of the legend of the Wandering Jew dates from the days of Jesus of Nazareth. According to Christian lore, the Wandering Jew was a guy who taunted Jesus while the latter was on his way to be crucified.

For his utter disrespect, and as a punishment from “above”, that Jewish guy was condemned to stay alive indefinitely and was cursed to roam this Earth until the mythical “second coming” of Christ, which nobody knows when it will happen and doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon (if ever).

The legend seems to be part of the general Christian tendency to blame the Jews for not recognizing Jesus as their messiah and for even sending him to his death at the Golgotha. The legend, therefore, has clear antisemitic connotations. But the “Biblical” interpretation of that legend is not the only one.

There’s a lighter version of it that applies to people who travel a lot, which could include me, but I have hardly ever applied it to myself. That is, until November 7th, when I received a WhatsApp text from a friend in California in which she was seriously lamenting the Democrat’s loss in the recent elections.

One of the first things she said was “I know you will not return now”, and she was right. At that point in time, barely 2 days after November 5th, I had already discarded my plans to go back to California. No way I can irresponsibly go back to stay there over the next couple of years.

I will first need to observe how things unfold over there which, according to the Cabinet appointments the despot-in-waiting has already selected, the future looks a bit bleak for the United States.

That future includes: A gutting of government agencies, filling them only with Trump loyalists, an aggressive nationalist foreign policy that may have immediate negative short-term repercussions on the economy, massive financial deregulations that will leave American consumers at the mercy of big capital, possible gutting of Medicare and other social services, workplace raids everywhere, concentration camps along the border, massive deportations, etc. In short, the end of America as we know it.

In the face of such unpromising prospect, for the first time ever in my life, I truly felt country-less. Because of my lifetime travels, I have accumulated 4 citizenships, all of them legal, as the constitution of those 4 countries allows for multiple citizenships, so I had gotten to feel like a multinational individual. At the most, I had occasionally come to consider myself as a Rolling Stone.

But the November 5th electoral results in the US have left me with very strong apprehensions. The clear mandate my fellow Americans invested the wannabe-tyrant with left me feeling like I don’t belong among them, like I really don’t have a country anymore.

Actually, I felt like I no longer belong in any of the countries that I’m a citizen of, which is the first time I have ever felt that way in the 76 years that I have lived on this Earth. So, when I told my friend I agreed with her statement saying “I know you will not return now”, I also added that “it looks like I will forever remain country-less, like the proverbial wandering jew”.

And the fact is that I do fear for the future of the United States. I fear we might have lost it forever as, from my international perspective, the overall changes in the offing look alarmingly ominous.

Bottom line: If the worst-case scenario ever comes true, I will probably end my days like many other proverbial Wandering Jews have ended theirs: Somewhere along the road. If that ever was the case, well, so be it.

Salaroche