Part 3: The “I moved abroad” “oppressed victim” stories

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Part 4: The myth that Americans can just move abroad for a better life

Well, this ended up being continued… more posts were added in Part 2 and in a new Part 4 section. It’s an interesting collection of moved abroad stories – all much the same – America is terrible so this individual/couple/family moved to country X where life is wonderful.

I originally wrote this Part 3 thinking it would be the last of the series. But every week brings more examples of these airhead stories about moving abroad. This Part 3 was going to be the end but eventually more were added. See Part 2 and Part 4.

“I Moved To Europe To Escape U.S. Politics. Four Years Later, I’ve Come To A Terrifying Realization.“

TL;DR – A young writer moved to Europe and expresses anger towards the U.S. and its people. Her US upbringing gave her privileges including the wealth to attend a private high school, to take a “gap year” in Costa Rica (briefly in a virtue signaling “pay to volunteer” program), dual EU/US citizenship privilege, the opportunity to have earned two degrees abroad, and to have lived in 4 countries (possibly 5). Yet she hates the country that gave her immense privilege and felt compelled to spread her anger by writing a column for HuffPost where she trashes the U.S. and the people who live there (and who do not have her privilege to move abroad). She seems to paint herself as an oppressed victim of growing up in the U.S.

The original story is here: I Moved To Europe To Escape U.S. Politics. Four Years Later, I’ve Come To A Terrifying Realization. | HuffPost HuffPost Personal

There seems to be a lack of self-awareness – yet that style seems typical of the “I moved abroad” stories that are prevalent today, and also in the more generic “travel” story space.

Her story was triggering – this post relates to my own lack of global experience, and the long-term effect of multiple brain injuries that can lead to a stress response to the nonsense of the above linked story. I end up perseverating and writing my thoughts down helps break the perseveration cycle.

My Pursuit of International Experience

In 2020, we had plans to finally experience international travel – something we had not done in life. But the pandemic and public health nonsense shut everything down. Three and 1/2 trips booked were cancelled, and 3 more in planning were abandoned. I spent down time learning what I could in hopes of future travel. (I wouldn’t normally go into these details as I do not want to focus on me – but this is a personal blog that is written primarily for my own future reference – sort of like a diary of thoughts – and not a column in a mainstream media outlet.)

I read online stories about global travel and people who had moved abroad. My intent was learning about all things global. I read books on international history and culture, even a textbook on international business. I studied two languages (Norwegian and Spanish).

I learned a lot of global skills and my perspectives on global trade and immigration changed in profound ways.

In 2022, at age 62, we did our first international trip – a self-directed, self-planned trip to the Netherlands. Just two weeks – but it was a good trip. I enjoyed it so much I would love to go back to the Netherlands!

I learned that nearly 100% of my peer group had extensive international experience (studied, lived or worked abroad at some point) – where I had none. Even people I least expected to be international – had lived abroad! I learned that 93% of those with at least a 4-year college degree have been to at least one other country and 70% to 3 or more countries. Within my own field, it’s about 100%.

I know people with more citizenship’s than the number of countries I have been to!

I noticed that 100% of my peers who moved up in business all had global experience, where I had none. I realized my lack of global experience limited me – and I set out, at the worst possible time (2019-2020) to start developing global skills. But of course, the pandemic halted that.

During 2023 and 2024, I read a lot of “I moved abroad” stories and saw a common theme among nearly all of them:

Apparently, this genre of doomerism and cottage core-like escapism/romance novelettes sells eyeballs to advertisers – so online publishers churn these out on a weekly basis. Eventually we see them for what they are – content mill fluff for selling eyeballs to advertisers that depends upon mostly young freelance “travel writers” churning out stories.

Most Who Move Abroad Are Privileged

After 18 months of reading and making notes on nearly 300 such stories (See Part 1: The myth that Americans can just move abroad for a better life and Part 2: The myth that Americans can just move abroad for a better life) a pattern emerged – most of the subjects had privileges that most of us do not have.

  • 1/3 of the subjects obtained their visa via marriage, and 90% of these were well educated, attractive young American women who married a foreigner.
  • 1/3 of the subjects had prior dual citizenship or had a right of descent ancestry privilege in their destination country – they already had a “visa”.
  • 1/3 were split between (a) people who had not actually moved but were visiting often, (b) temporary work assignments, (c) study abroad, (d) a few entrepreneurial visas, (e) a single digit number of “investor visas”, (f) an occasional “retirement visa” (only some countries and some of these are no longer available) or were (g) “unknown/unspecified”. May be 15-20% of the subjects of these stories are Americans living abroad on a work visa.
  • Contrary to the media noise, an estimated 0.7 to 1.3% of American retirees retire abroad – about half of those had prior dual citizenship, residency visas, or family connections. Effectively close to 0% of Americans retire abroad.

Stated another way, 2/3ds of those who moved abroad had immigration privileges that most of us do not have. These frequent stories about Americans moving abroad are a media staple – but are mostly nonsense, as most Americans lack the privileged status of the subjects in these stories and cannot readily obtain a residency visa or citizenship in other countries. These stories are mass media disinformation – falsely implying most Americans can pack up and move elsewhere – but most cannot.

This brings us to today where Lisa Bernardi has written her column for the Huffpost (linked above).

From her story and her online persona at other web sites, she appears to be a privileged, young, freelance writer living in Spain. Like most move abroad stories, her story follows the standard format “America is awful, so this individual/couple/family moved to Country X where everything is wonderful”. From her own description, and her online bios, she seems to have quite a bit of privilege – but then paints herself as an oppressed victim of the United States, which is bewildering.

Her privilege was made possible by growing up in the U.S., but she flees the country, trashes the U.S., and those of us who live here, implying we inferiors lack her privileged status. Wow. She says she will never move back to the U.S. and is considering giving up her U.S. citizenship – she hates the U.S. that much. .

As someone else puts it:

Similarly – we find privileged rich kids pursuing multiple degrees in esoteric subjects having low pay prospects – while trashing university campuses in protests: Education: Privilege and entitlement – Social Panic. It’s the same mindset with my response in that post:

She is privileged, elite and given page space in the media – begging for sympathy and seeking to justify her behavior as self-righteous. The rest of us, in the real world, had or have to work for what we accomplished, and did not have the opportunities to pursue esoteric subjects like peace studies or to recklessly shut down universities. We had to pay for our studies ourselves and get a real job as soon as possible.

Bernardi’s Privileges

  • She is a young American woman with pretty privilege and dual citizenship privilege (from her story in the HuffPost)
  • From her online persona, she benefited from her American upbringing and wealth attending a private high school in the U.S. (local news story about her) where current tuition is about $20k/year
  • She took a gap year between high school and college during which she briefly volunteered at a school in Costa Rica (very briefly) via United Planet (from the news story), which is a “pay to volunteer” program (“volunteers” pay for accommodation and food and other services which amount to many thousands of dollars, plus airfare – “volunteers” would provide greater benefit to those in need by directly donating the money to be spent in the local economy. Many of these types of “volunteer” programs seem sketchy but provide virtue signaling for participants who can afford the fees.)
  • Gap years are a luxury item for the well to do: Education: “Gap years”
  • She has immigration privilege – she is a U.S/Italian dual citizen (hence EU) by right of descent ancestry privilege because she had the luck of being born into the right family (per her HuffPost story)
  • She earned a BA in communications/film studies, entirely at a university in France (likely wealth privilege) (via LinkedIn)
  • She earned an MS in international business, entirely at a university in Spain (likely wealth privilege). It is unlikely she worked and paid for all of her college education.
  • She lived and worked in 4 countries (unclear if she counts the US in that total)
  • She moved outside the US (“I was fortunate enough to have access to an EU passport (my father is Italian) and the financial means to leave“). Immigration Privilege!
  • She works as a freelance writer, free to live anywhere she wishes (unlike blue collar workers doing work that makes our civilized lives possible). That said, she is a prolific writer covering travel and business/finance topic. Unlike many freelance writers – she appears to work hard at generating a lot of articles. Would be interesting for her, perhaps, to write a story about “the rest of us” who lacked wealth, immigration privileges, and the opportunities that she had – and to provide a different perspective than the usual “I’m privileged, I hate the U.S. and moved abroad” stories.
  • She has been to about 3 dozen countries (per map on this page).
  • She profits from being paid in high value U.S. dollars while using currency arbitrage to spend those dollars in a country where dollars are more valuable in the local economy! US citizen privilege!
  • I am guessing she did not work from age 10 onward and pay for 100% of her own college education.

Dripping with privilege after growing up in the U.S., she trashes America – and implies she is an oppressed victim.

Rather than help fix problems, she fled the country – because she can, and you cannot. And after leaving, she remains so angry that she writes a column for the HuffPost saying the US is a shithole. inhabited by shitty people. Nice.

(Update: After her story came out, she deleted her LinkedIn profile (restored a few days later but then deleted again), her X account (still offline) and her Instagram page (since restored) – I discovered this after trying to verify the information. I tried to interact with her on LinkedIn, hoping to see if there was more to this, but when I went back, she had taken her profile offline. I suspect she received push back from many others – more than just my comments on my blog here.)

Most of us do not have immigration privilege

Most of us do not have Bernardi’s pretty privilege, wealth privilege, immigration/dual citizenship privilege, and life privilege. Filled with American privilege, she presents herself as a victim of American oppression – the U.S. is an awful country where a majority voted wrong. She seems to look down upon us common folk stuck in the U.S.

Compare to the Real Word

My experience provides a stark contrast to her privilege (I would not ordinarily share this, but the differing backgrounds are important, and my experience is probably more common than hers):

  • I worked from age 10 onward. In the 1970s, twice as many teens held part time jobs than do today.
  • Because of working, I did not have the option to do school sports or clubs.
  • I was required, even at age 10, to save at least 50% of my earnings for future college education.
  • My parents encouraged me to leave high school one year early and go direct to college – as a way of increasing my future earnings by a year. This meant I was in college one year younger and one year less experienced than my peers – in retrospect, I do not recommend this. In fact, I did not graduate from high school and have no high school diploma.
  • I had to pay for 100% of my own college education – I worked up to 18 hours per week while attending college. (And I did this while suffering from multiple traumatic brain injuries – see below).
  • I attended a local public college, to save money. I did not have an option to attend an elite university or university abroad.
  • I lived at home the first 2 years and rode my bike to the local state college. I transferred to another public university and purchased a used car, paid for myself.
  • I picked a major, in part, for earnings potential not to “pursue my passion”. Despite never graduating high school, I earned a BS in computer science, and over 40, I earned an MBA and an MS in software engineering (at which point the financial ROI is negative).
  • I did not travel during my college summers – I worked full time.
  • I was employed full time as a computer engineer within 6 weeks of graduating; I had no option for time off or travel.
  • I had no option for a “gap year”
  • I had no option for a study abroad program
  • I did not have the option to go to graduate school. (I was a victim of an undisclosed scoring error on the GRE exam. I scored 98th percentile on the CompSci specific GRE, 96th percentile in math, and 92nd percentile in reading/writing but just 27th on their first ever “analytical reasoning” section. I learned years later they never notified students of the analytical section scoring error but told colleges to ignore the score. But not knowing that, I did not apply to graduate school thinking I had failed and would need to take the exam again, in the future. Today I believe all standardized testing for college admissions should be abolished. Studies show SAT scores predict your household income – they may as well gather your income data and estimate your SAT score!)
  • Finally, read of the challenges that many others had in their careers: Skipping college, switching jobs, and not being able to retire: What older Americans regret about their careers. Lack of educational opportunities, poor decisions perhaps as a result of bad advice, have led many to little income, poor quality of life in retirement – and struggling.
  • Most people lack the privileges of globetrotting, multi-citizenship holding, elite university attending freelance writers – who seem compelled to trash those lacking in their privilege and luck of being born into the right family.

Multiple Traumatic Brain Injuries

Since Bernardi highlights a traumatic event that seems to rule her thoughts, I note trauma too.

I did the above in spite of a series of six brain injuries starting with a concussion at age 5 that put me in 18 months of speech therapy, and then a 5″ long skull fracture at age 12 (wasn’t even x-rayed until 5 days after the crash – and was sent home, vomiting and out of it, where I lay in bed for weeks). I would go on to later have 4 more concussions – never properly diagnosed or treated for brain injuries until age 58 (retroactively diagnosed with multiple TBI, including likely brain bleed and a past moderate TBI). In fact, no health care provider ever told me about TBI – I discovered I was suffering from TBI issues on my own, late in life – confirmed by my then doctor, and two neuropsychologists.

In spite of that, I paid for my own college education, later my kids’ college education and part of their grad degrees, and for my wife to return to college for a 2nd degree. I didn’t have access to the Bank of Mom and Dad like typical freelance writers living abroad seem to have had.

I returned to school late in life and earned an MBA at age 41 and an MS in engineering at age 54.

I am not complaining – considering how well I healed from the TBI, and how well I did in my career (albeit truncated early) I view myself as the luckiest person in the world! (Twice, now!) Two doctors and a neuropsychologist called me a “miracle” (their word)! A neuropsychologist told me he could not believe how well I had done! I am not an oppressed victim!

Bernardi assaults the U.S. and attacks those who never had the privileges she had; my lack of global skills is a sensitive – and frustrating – issue for me: I have no immigration privileges. I had no option for a gap year for personal enrichment. I had no option to study abroad. I paid for all my own education. Which apparently makes me inferior to global elite like Bernardi.

Update

In March of 2025, despite having done everything right – no risk factors other than stupidly eating vegetarian for years – which despite what you’ve read, can become a major risk factor for heart disease – I became unusually fatigued while out on a hike. Before we made it back to town, my wife tells me I passed out for a bit. She drove me to the hospital ER where I walked in on my own and registered. Within 30 minutes I was on a medevac helicopter flight to the regional medical center cath lab where a critical heart artery was found blocked. Fortunately, I survived. I was told that 20% of those arriving in my condition have CPR in progress; 10% die and over 25% die within a year. Overall, post heart attack (now at 5 months) I appear to be doing very well – but this may place limits on my future travel options. This makes me he luckiest person in the world, times 2.

But never mind – go cry tears for spoiled brat Lisa Bernardi (or Samantha Tatro, below).

Of Course, I Wish …

I wish very much I could have studied abroad, but I did not have that privilege. I wish very much I could have learned a 2nd or 3rd language (while I have studied and continue to study two languages today, I have no opportunity for immersion practice – such as living in another country – and doubt I will ever achieve speaking proficiency.)

I wish I had an immigration privilege so I could visit a country for more than 90 days.

I had not been to Europe until age 62. I wish I could have traveled earlier in life versus just a brief vacation/tourist type trip as an older adult.

Late in life, the options for global experience go down – there are no options to study abroad, work abroad or marry a foreigner (am happily married already – duh). As we get older, we may contend with health issues – the past 4 years, I broke my left foot twice, my right foot once, tore two tendons in my left foot, another in my ankle, still recovering from a hip injury, and developed osteoarthritis of the knee – all good reasons to do your traveling when young! (Update: Despite not having risk factors and having been doing “the right things”, in March of 2025, I had a blocked coronary artery and was airlifted to a regional medical center and put on a procedure table 45 minutes after I’d walked in on my own to our local small town ER. I learned that 20% of those who arrive with my condition had CPR underway as they were wheeled in and 10% die. I am expected to have a full recovery over several months. Obviously, all 2025 travel has been postponed.)

I emphatically tell young people to travel when young, if they can. Do not do like me and over save for a future retirement that might not occur because of health issues.

I’m stuck with a 90-day visa as I don’t have Lisa Bernardi’s immigration privileges, but I will do what I can. But, short “tourist” trips are not the same as the immersion of living, working or studying abroad for an extended period.

Bernardi seems filled with anger and hate – she hates the U.S. and says she does not plan to come back (good!) and says she is considering renouncing her U.S. citizenship (yay!), because the U.S. is the evilest country in the history of the world – even if it likely made her family wealthy and gave her privileges with which she can now imply the U.S. is the worst country in world history… go figure – how does this make sense?

Rather than work to fix problems, she ran away to live a fantasy world of privilege – while gloating over us inferiors who do not have her privilege.

Most of us do not have the privilege to leave and resent her trashing our home rather than trying to be a useful, productive force for good and fixing what is wrong. We are stuck here, unlike selfish elitists like her.

Unfortunately, her column in HuffPost is similar to the other “I moved abroad” stories appearing in other outlets, notably Business Insider and sometimes CNBC. They are written by young freelance writers, who attended elite universities, and moved abroad typically with marriage and/or dual citizenship/right of descent privilege to live a fantasy life abroad.

They all write the same story “America is awful so I moved to country X and lived happily ever after”. (This seems to be an entire class of click-bait escapism for selling eyeballs to advertisers.)

Bernardi’s article seems crazy to me – handed a plate filled with American privilege, she left and trashed us on the way out the door.

Her nonsense was an awakening for me – and glad I wrote this summary as it clarified my thoughts on several topics. Also, and this is important – this is not about Bernardi and her anger filled column – her thoughts are echoed by nearly the entire community of freelance writers producing these “Move abroad” stories. They are oblivious to how this comes across as nonsense.

UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2025

Here is another one of these bull shit stories that begins with “I’m an American” – but she is hardly at all having spent almost her entire life in other countries – and having triple citizenship. She is a global privileged elitist – and a terrible writer.

I’m an American who moved to the Czech Republic 5 years ago. It’s completely changed my definition of work-life balance.

Visa: Dual or triple citizenship.

Category: Married white, European female

Well, Samantha Tatro and her husband just packed up and moved to Czechia. No big deal!

She left out critical facts – like she was already an EU citizen.

  • “My mother is Czech and my father is German-American, and both of them grew up in Europe. I was flying across the world to visit family before I could walk.” “She is a citizen of both the United States and European Union” – likely a citizen of Germany, Czechia and the U.S.
  • She did not learn to speak English until she was 5 years old.
  • She attended middle school in Brazil and then she went to high school at the American School in The Hague (Netherlands) – for all of her high school. This is an elite private school in the Netherlands.
  • She has barely lived in the United States and has spent almost her entire life living elsewhere. So now that she has left, she is qualified to bitch about the U.S.? She was hardly ever an American.
  • None of these critical facts appears in her narcissistic essay about moving to the Czech Republic.

Samantha Tatro is a global elitist who left out most of the critical elements of her story, thus, coming across as a very poor journalist. As a global elitist she could choose to pursue a career that, in the U.S., has poor pay prospects. Per BLS, the average reporter makes about $52,000/year, which is not much for someone with an elite education. As documented in her own words, she has very little experience in America.

No More

After reviewing 350 of these stories, I concluded freelance writers are mostly self-absorbed, self-centered, out of touch, arrogant, privileged, narcissistic entitled twits and their output is not worth my reading time. (See below – many in the travel writing community say this about themselves!)

I am cutting back reading “I moved abroad” stories written by spoiled brat freelance writers dripping with privilege.

I am grateful to have survived multiple serious brain injuries, a heart attack that is often fatal, and to have been successful in a career (truncated by TBI issues) and to be successful financially so I can now try to catch up on missed life experiences including global issues.

I say global issues rather than “travel” as travel has become associated with narcissistic behaviors of posting selfies on social media and counting countries visited – versus actually learning about other cultures from immersive experiences (see below).

I am exceedingly grateful for my wife Kim who took me to the ER in March of 2025 (my only symptom was unusual tiredness, and after which I passed out several times), the St Charles Redmond ER team (!!!!!!!), AirMed Airlink medical evacuation, St Charles Bend (everyone), Dr Sultan and the Bend Cath Lab (who saved my life), and the entire post event Care Team. They are off scale!

Future Plans

I am ramping up trip planning and will start on plans for an extended stay somewhere. As this is done independently by me, without the experience and skills of being a globally elite traveler, this takes time. I do not have family connections overseas, nor friends living abroad – I am totally on my (or our) own in this.

I am now hoping that I can do this in 2026 – an extended trip to another country – limited, of course, to the 90-day visa limit as I don’t have Bernardi’s immigration privileges. (Update: I do not yet know if I have permission of the cardiology team to do this, plus there are some non-negotiable timing issues in my extended family that may not enable this to happen.)

I am going to re-evaluate my language learning options too. May be see if I could do an out of country language immersion course (doubtful for many reasons but I will look into it now with renewed vigor).

Probably not reading “travel stories” after this, though. Most are written by privileged young writers who often come across as our superiors and seem oblivious to their own extensive privileges.

Related – The Narcissism of Travel Writers

How to Tell a Narcissist by Their Writing – much travel writing starts with a close-up selfie of the writer, almost always a young woman, followed by “I” mumble mumble mumble. Here is an example, typical of Insider:

The story is about the writer, and little about the destination. This style of writing makes sense for a personal blog – but does it make sense for every travel article on Business Insider?

Some think this is the nature of travel and travel writing today: Response to: “Has travel become another exercise in narcissism?” | by Jenny MacLean | Medium – many travel writers say that travel writing has become excessively narcissistic.

Many – probably most – stories blame America – positioning themselves as a victim – and hence, why they moved outside the U.S. Per the first link, these could be indicative of narcissistic behaviors.

  • “Takes advantage of others. This is usually done in the form of blaming others for things that have gone wrong with the NPD. NPDs won’t accept responsibility for their actions, reactions, or responses. By placing the blame on others in their writing, they are passively-aggressively tossing the buck.
  • Lacks empathy. NPDs often expect empathy for themselves but refuse to extend it to others. In writing, this can come across as playing the role of victim as an effort to garner sympathy. However, NPDs will see others attempt as gaining sympathy as a weakness.”

The topic of narcissistic writers was expanded into a full post of its own – and the general consensus is that yes, most travel writing is narcissistic behavior – and that’s what professional travel writers are saying!

See Is travel writing narcissistic? Some think so – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking for much, much more on this topic.

Related – Bashing the U.S. is Hip

Apparently, many women loathe America: More women are leaving the US. Here’s why and how they did it. (This is basically a public relations-initiated story on behalf of Cepee Tabibian’s business. This story, like most news, was a “placed” story timed to leverage the election and that many in the U.S. say they want to leave. She’s been busy getting free PR – another one of her placed stories: I left Texas for Spain and have helped thousands of Americans move abroad: ‘There’s never been a better time to make the leap’)

The subjects in this story:

  • #1: Used the DAFT treaty for 2-year visa in the Netherlands. She visited Europe as far back as a high school and decided as a teen that she wanted to live in Europe.
  • #2: The founder of the help you move group was born in the U.S., with one parent from Iran and the other from Columbia, giving herself multiple citizenship options, including accelerated citizenship in Spain, due to an Ibero-American background.
  • #3: This subject previously lived in Spain, earning her Masters there and then worked in Spain as a teacher.
  • #5: This subject had a right of descent ancestry privilege in Italy.

Coddled white collar professionals with pre-existing immigration privileges with a focus on victim-hood and being fed up with America – all have the privilege of leaving. Sadly, this doomerism genre is created by and celebrated by endless media stories that promote this anti-America meme – from what are basically snobbish American rich kids!

And note the androgyny – there are zero stories about American men doing this. Zero.

Remember, an estimated 2-3% of Americans live abroad at any time – and it’s not growing by much. An estimated 0.7% to 1.3% of American retire abroad – and half of those already had permanent residency (dual citizenship, right of descent or prior work-related residency) when they chose to retire abroad. That figure is, realistically, close to zero percent. But you would not know this from the doomer media.

Finally, we have Sharon Stone publicly asserting that Americans have not traveled, 80% don’t have a passport, and Americans are “uneducated” (https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1861500770345971722… ) – in effect, she says, Americans are stupid and close-minded idiots.

Basically, let’s bash Americans because this is hip!

But she is wrong on every point – while calling Americans “ignorant’ and “naive’. How embarrassing.

College and high school degree attainment in the United States

Basically, Sharon Stone’s widely reported comments – were 100% false and yet no one questioned her bullshit. Sharon Stone is an idiot – and the media morons republished what she said without even the slightest skepticism.

Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking