Liberty and justice for all United States persons abroad

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Letting go and moving on – how to deal with the anger

Posted on by Posted in Issues regarding US persons abroad 54 Comments

 

The following comment by Calgary deserves to be a post.

… and someone needs to write a book on the “human” side of this, the collateral damage, especially for families like yours, Animal. And yours, monalisa.

If only others really, really understood, we could (or I could) leave the anger behind and live my remaining years without the nagging worry in the back of my mind that my son’s situation (and me as the trustee of his finances) will be “caught” / that I am / we are criminals.

I don’t have the worry of having to visit aging, ailing parents across the line. Mine are both gone — and in many ways (as awful as that sounds), I am glad for that fact. I hate the burden on my one sister who understands all this by my unrelenting discussion to her of me, her Canadian sister, and family’s US citizenship-based taxation issues. It is a maze and we are blindfolded and we don’t have a step-by-step best procedure that will work.

PS — I am one who would be most hesitant to again cross the US border with my Canadian passport and CLN, especially if my son were travelling with me. That he would be safer to cross the US border with his Canadian passport that shows his Canadian birthplace with someone else rather than with his mother who has a Canadian passport with a US birthplace makes me sick to my stomach. But that’s my perception — I would not feel safe in doing that with him and some nice border guard asking if I was his mother, then putting two and two together.

I’m so glad both of you — and I wish so many others — were tuned in to Isaac Brock. And, I’m so glad it’s here for me and my unresolvable anger.

For many the anger is worse than the tax issues. Somehow or other, one must learn to put the anger behind you. Sometime ago I wrote a post on this called: “Psychotherapy for U.S. citizens abroad“. Excerpts include:

Moe Levine (not that I ever met him) was considered to be one of America’s greatest trial lawyers. Although he died in 1974, his wisdom lives on his book (appropriate called) “Moe Levine on Trial Advocacy“. He (legend has it) was a master at delivering the closing statement in his jury trials. When arguing for a severely injured plaintiff he (according to the commentators of his time) would tell the jury (referring to a badly injured client):

“It’s not what you take from them it’s what you leave them with.”

In other words, the inability to live a normal life was worse than the injury itself. Leaving aside the financial costs, Obama/IRS tyranny has had a very serious effect on the lives of many U.S. expats. Few of them will ever forget the day they learned about these problems. One (of many) example is the story of Ambassador Jacobson’s 70 Year old grandmas” in Saskatchewan. (For an update to this see this comment.)

Suggestions for how to resolve and move beyond the anger …

How has this experience changed you as a person?

 

54 thoughts on “Letting go and moving on – how to deal with the anger”

  1. The_Animal, earlier and elsewhere on this site I gave this suggestion for a Pledge of Disallegiance. Feel free to recite it to replace the old version in your mind:

    “I no longer pledge allegiance to the flag of the United State of America, nor to the imperiousness for which it stands, just one muddling nation among many but with arrogant self-importance aplenty.”

  2. @monalisa …… I have Asperger’s Syndrome so am not completely 100%…… I assume high functioning 🙂 btw. just like my 18 year old son.

  3. Thanks, AnonAnon.

    The Pledge of Allegiance truly is, I think too, brainwashing. And, I learned it two ways — one without “Under God” and then “Under God” put into the Pledge. I maintain that the exceptionality those who live in the US feel is because they believe their country is chosen and better than the rest of the world, save Israel.

    I believe there should be absolute separation of church and all religions or non-religions (our personal spirituality choices) from state / government / public schools. But then, I digress.

  4. Right, Calgary411. I’m old enough to have learned the Pledge both ways, too. Of course, I had no idea what it meant when we recited it in grade school.

    I agree with you on the God part, too. Whether or not one believes in the reality of gods outside one’s imagination, having to invoke a god to support one’s position is to me a sign of mental insecurity, especially where nations are concerned.

  5. In high school, a few of us felt that “with liberty and justice for all” was not accurate, given the civil rights situation, so we started saying “attempting liberty and justice for all.” This was in the 60s. We went to a cool school, so we didn’t get hassled. Or maybe the teachers didn’t get on our case because they were amazed we kids had actually analysed what we’d been repeating by rote every day 🙂

  6. @pacifica,

    Sounds like you did go to a cool school. Students should be rewarded for having and using analytical skills. Perhaps your teachers also agreed with the truer concept “attempting liberty and justice for all”.

  7. I think that there should be an article on IBS about the full ramifications of what FATCA and the potential IGA could do to Canada as a whole, not just from an “expat POV”. Right now all they see is “well…better you than me.” Most Canadians won’t be sympathetic until we explain what FATCA can potentially do “TO THEM”!

    https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/s480x480/521271_10151538360940295_554305652_n.jpg

    Is “development of a rapport with the occupant of the US Oval Office the most important
    personal relationship for any Canadian prime minister”?

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  10. Oh dear, here I come with a dumb question because I’ll never be internet literate. What are pingbacks for? I see them and wonder are they going into the land of tweets or onto a facebook page or something? I’ve clicked on them and just end up elsewhere in Brock. Just curious.

  13. Oh I see … good work USCitizenAbroad and The_Animal. The FATCA IGA sellout is of course not the only secret negotiation going on. It’s one stealth step at a time towards the biggest sellout of all, the NAU.

  16. my post just got ‘eaten’ by the system, internal error….will have to leave it to another day

  18. AnonAnon,

    An interesting article perhaps for some / many of us regarding that Pledge of Allegiance most of us US Persons Abroad, but US born and raised, know by heart: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erik-nielson/the-pledge-of-allegiance_b_2991729.html. For some, it may be controversial. Not for me.

    … It never ceases to amaze me that, day after day, otherwise rational parents allow their impressionable young children to partake in a ritual so rooted in conformity that it seems inimical to the principles of freedom and individualism that underpin our country. And yet, in public schools across the nation, millions of young children are lined up authoritarian style, told to face an American flag dangling somewhere in the room, and are then expected to profess their allegiance to it — and of course to God as well — using words that many are too young understand in the first place. I suspect that most parents assume the pledge has a long and dignified past, that it’s part of the American fabric, and are therefore willing to leave it unchallenged. However, its history is not nearly as long or distinguished as people might think.

    Indeed, the pledge of allegiance was not conceived by patriotic soldiers making a brave final stand on some cold battlefield during the Revolutionary War, nor was it the inspired creed of our noble Founding Fathers. It was actually written in 1892 by a Christian Socialist, Francis Bellamy, as part of an advertising campaign for The Youth’s Companion, one of the country’s best known and highly regarded magazines. Taking advantage of deep anxiety among Anglo-Saxon Protestants about an increase in immigration during the final decades of the 19th Century, The Youth’s Companion hatched a scheme to turn nationalism into profit. Through its premium department (essentially a mail order service that sold goods at discounted prices to lure new subscribers), the magazine began selling American flags and promoting the idea of putting one in every school. Seeing the opportunity to link the magazine and its flag drive to a high profile celebration of Columbus Day in October of 1892, one of the magazine’s marketers, James Upham, asked Bellamy to craft a pledge of allegiance that would accompany the ceremonial raising of the flag.
    …
    Not long after he penned the pledge of allegiance, he made these frightening statements in an editorial for the Illustrated American:

    A democracy like ours cannot afford to throw itself open to the world…Where all classes of society merge insensibly into one another every alien immigrant of inferior race may bring corruption to the stock. There are races more or less akin to our own whom we may admit freely and get nothing but advantage by the infusion of their wholesome blood. But there are other races, which we cannot assimilate without lowering our racial standard, which we should be as sacred to us as the sanctity of our homes.

    …we strongly encourage our two young children to abstain from any part of the pledge of allegiance. It’s not easy. They are the only ones in their classes who don’t participate, and I know it has made them uncomfortable. But as they begin to understand that thinking for themselves is the true embodiment of liberty, I am hopeful that they will arrive at a patriotism that is honest and critical, not one that has been foisted upon them.

  19. The Pledge of Allegiance is not mandatory. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that requiring someone to say the pledge is unconstitutional. In schools where students are asked to say the pledge, anyone may choose not to say it personally. In many schools, private and public, the pledge is not said at all. I never said it.
    Many schools skip Pledge of Allegiance

  20. @Shadow Raider,

    I’m glad to know that some schools choose not to have the pledge at all! That is the better option than having a child somehow ostracized by not saying it when all his or her other classmates are reciting the words.

  21. calgary411, thanks for finding that piece of history of the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s very interesting. I had no idea it was a non-governmental initiative originally, though according to Wikipedia it was adopted by Congress as part of the Flag Code, as was the addition of the “under God” phrase. For more details see
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance

  22. Thanks for the additional history / background to do with the US Pledge of Allegiance. Wonder if any US school kids learn that history and have full knowledge that they do not have to take part?

  24. I was speaking with my US based tax lawyer a couple of weeks ago, she is wonderful…I had to ask her to bill me.

    Every time I talk to her I have a shift in my thinking. She reaffirms that I am not, and have not been a US person for some time. She said, don’t give them power, she was referencing the powerlessness we feel in the midst of all of this mess. I came away from the call feeling ever more confident that all I need to do is to get my CLN, and then be done with it.

    What makes me angry is that the twists of history make these matters so complex. I am less stressed about my own situation, because all I am going to do is apply for a CLN, I’ve been living as a Canadian for 30 + years. I am saddened and outraged by all of the stories I read here, or on other sites or in the news, about the unnecessary and overly complex tax hoops that so many people who have a birth or adoption tie to the US have to go through. And I am upset about how little Canadian government officials seem to know and understand about how people are affected, and that the law is not black and white on these matters.

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