America, love it and leave it...please

A friend reminded me today of the common pseudo-threat that "if so-and-so is elected, I'm leaving the country." I recall a lot of liberals saying that about Bush. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, none of them left.

A neighbor was threatening to leave if Sarah Palin were elected. My friend, no fan of Palin but even less a fan of narcissistic posturing, said to him, "Go." Pretty cool.

This is only anecdotal, but I have the distinct impression that when a lefty progressive like Obama was to be elected and, alas, was, conservatives talked about moving not out of the country but to another part of the country. Someplace redder. It's liberals who, when they don't think they're gonna get their way, threaten to abandon their purported homeland altogether.

If I'm right --duh--, that says very much in a nutshell.

And when did this trope start up and be seen as a noble and tragic choice rather than a cowardly foot stamping form of treason? The category of the "expatriate". When did it begin and how has it morphed over time? Do white liberals imagine themselves the spiritual children of Josephine Baker?

And apropos of very little, liberals are always telling us how smart they are, how nuanced. Why is it that stupid Nazi chimp George Bush made public his SAT scores (1206), allowing experts to extrapolate that to an IQ in the mid 120's, and yet uberbrilliant John Kerry and LightWorker Genius Obama have not? Humility, surely.