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Should I Leave My American Partner?

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › culture › archive › 2025 › 02 › dear-james-american-partner-missing-home-country › 681638

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

I’m 27 years old, I live in New York, and I’m in a healthy, loving relationship with a guy I met here. He’s caring and hardworking, and my family and friends love him for me. The problem is, I don’t know if I want to live in the United States long term. I’m from abroad—a country far enough away that my partner has never been—and I moved to the U.S. on a temporary work visa. As my relationship becomes more serious, I grapple with the thought of having to be here forever.

I never grew up thinking I’d migrate anywhere permanently. I’m very close to my family back home, and I have a comfortable, if not cushy, life there. In the U.S., I deal with the social, political, cultural, and legal hurdles of being a foreigner in a place where the current climate isn’t always the most friendly. I don’t have the financial or personal freedoms I would like. I deal with racists. I get homesick.

My partner loves his job, it pays extremely well, and it legally ties him to working within the United States. Basically, he could never move for me. But when I think about committing to him, I can’t help mourning everything I imagine I’d be giving up. Maybe I’m just being young and foolish and don’t realize that my problems are a speck in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know. Perhaps you can tell me?

Dear Reader,

As an expat, self-transplanted from England to be in America with my American wife, I feel you. This is a beautiful, crazy, wide-as-you-like country, merciless in some ways, impossibly generous in others, and for better or worse I became myself here. That’s one of the things America can do. No gains without losses, though, and I feel the pull of home too: all the occasions missed, the conversations that never happened, the hangs unhung … It’s sort of a shadow on me, my life’s dark side of the moon.

But let me ask you this: Are you thrilled to be with this guy? I mean thrilled to bits, thrilling to his touch, all of that? You say he’s caring, hardworking, your family loves him—all good stuff. Great stuff. And I don’t want to do him an injustice. But somewhere, at some level, in some layer of your being, you’ve got to be thrilled. I think perhaps if you were thrilled, you wouldn’t be asking yourself these questions.

I could be wrong, though, and the two of you might have a scorching and vibrant thing that you have modestly under-described in your letter. Whatever the case, here’s my advice: Don’t leave. America is a challenge. America is an invitation. America puts you on your mettle. Especially right now, in (to use your phrase) the “current climate” of the United States: America needs you!

Reading the news and listening to Bad Brains,

James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

Gerald Ford’s Unlikely Role in the Imperial Presidency

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › books › archive › 2025 › 02 › gerald-fords-nixon-pardon-paved-the-way-for-elon-musk › 681637

Elon Musk has brazenly dismantled government agencies because he can feel assured of his insulation from the law. By the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, he may well receive a pardon. That’s what many recent pardons (Paul Manafort, the Biden clan, the January 6 insurrectionists) suggest: Presidential loyalists and family members are, in effect, immune from prosecution. On the most disturbing scale, they have become like diplomats who can park wherever they want.

The dawn of this age of impunity can be dated to any number of administrations. In his new book, The Pardon, Jeffrey Toobin makes a compelling case that a primary culprit is the 38th president, Gerald Ford. Toobin’s thesis is brashly revisionist; Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon has gone down in history as a great act of beneficence. According to conventional wisdom, by immunizing Nixon from prosecution, Ford short-circuited years of polarizing legal proceedings against the former president that would have torn the nation asunder. But Toobin argues that this overpraised act of catharsis established a precedent of lawlessness. The road to Trump begins, in some moral sense, with the absolution of Nixon.

At a glance, the amiable Ford, a college football star and World War II veteran, seems impossible to villainize. Compared with Trump or Nixon, he was the picture of humble decency. On the day he became president, he lumbered out of his suburban-Virginia house in a bathrobe to pick up the paper. In the White House, he toasted his own English muffins. He told dad jokes, played in celebrity golf tournaments, and had a reputation for basically wanting to do the ethical thing.

Having stumbled into the Nixon presidency, as the replacement for the venal vice president Spiro Agnew, he stumbled into the presidency after Watergate. As Chevy Chase portrayed him on Saturday Night Live, dooming him in popular memory, he was always stumbling. The shtick drew on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous aperçu, “Jerry Ford is so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” (Johnson also declared, “There’s nothing wrong with Jerry Ford, except that he played football too long without his helmet.”)

As the Watergate scandal unfolded, Ford made it his mission to learn as little about it as possible. He defended Nixon in the vaguest terms, and essentially ran in the other direction when Nixon asked him to examine evidence in the scandal. Ford stubbornly, and somewhat inexplicably, refused to prepare for the possibility that he might become president. He had initially accepted the vice presidency in the hope that it would be a capstone to his long political career. Indeed, that was the reason Nixon picked him: He knew that Ford had so little appetite for the big job, and so little political guile, that he was unlikely to conspire to oust him.

[Read: Trump’s pardons are sending a crystal-clear message]

In the days leading up to his ignominious departure, Nixon hatched a very Nixonian plot to exploit Ford’s goodwill and naivete. He wanted to pressure the future president into pardoning him without ever making a direct ask—a strategy he conceived with the White House counsel Fred Buzhardt, under the cover of attorney-client privilege.

On August 1, 1974, Nixon told Alexander Haig, his chief of staff, that he wanted him to begin preparing Ford to assume the job. “Tell him what’s coming,” he instructed. Nixon knew that Haig would check in with Buzhardt before sitting down with Ford. This was the twist in his scheme: Buzhardt had prepared a memo for Haig, listing six “endgame” scenarios for Ford to consider. In classic Washington style, he arrayed the possibilities so that every plan entailed a messy, prolonged handoff except for one: “Nixon could resign and then Ford could pardon him.” This was the elegant solution, but it had the whiff of corrupt horse-trading.

The pardon wasn’t something that Ford had ever considered, so he peppered Haig with questions about it. Although they didn’t agree to anything in the course of conversation, Ford’s interest had been ignited. He came to believe that a pardon genuinely served his own interests. When he finally assumed the job, he wanted to be more than a pleasant placeholder, and he could never be his own man without first disposing of the looming presence of Richard Nixon.

And so Ford talked himself into the pardon. He read a 1915 Supreme Court decision, which ruled that the acceptance of a presidential pardon is tantamount to admitting guilt, and convinced himself that the public would accept that legal logic. He would tell aides that he felt sorry for poor old Nixon, who he worried was in physical decline.

Ford pushed the process forward without really debating the merits of a pardon with his staff. His poorly argued, nervously delivered speech announcing the decision to the nation was so rushed that aides didn’t have time to prepare a teleprompter. Ford barely gave congressional leaders a heads-up, and none of them could quite grasp his reasons for haste. Tip O’Neill, the majority leader in the House, asked Ford, “Then why the hell are you doing it?” He posed that question minutes before Ford went on national television.

In the most outrageous passage of the speech, Ford declared the fate of Richard Nixon “an American tragedy in which we all played a part.” The public, having been accused of complicity, took its revenge. In a single week, Ford’s popularity plummeted 21 percentage points. His party suffered catastrophic collapse in that year’s midterm election.

[Jeffrey Crouch: O]ur Founders didn’t intend for pardons to work like this

With the benefit of time, however, Washington revised its opinion of the decision. Bob Woodward, of all people, eventually concluded, “Ford was wise to act. What at first and for many years looked like a decision to protect Nixon was instead designed to protect the nation.” Ford slowly remerged with the reputation of a healer, a man of grace.

That revisionism is nostalgic gloss. Toobin makes a damning, nuanced case against Ford. Nixon had, at that point, committed the worst crimes in the history of the presidency, vividly and irrefutably captured on tape, and he escaped without any punishment. He received absolution without displaying remorse. “The pardon was just a free pass handed from one powerful man to another,” Toobin writes.

Despite his earnest desire to undo Nixon’s legacy, Ford’s pardon was itself an assertion of the imperial presidency. That’s because the pardon is an inherently Caesarean implement. In every other facet of the American system, carefully installed safeguards are designed to limit the authoritarian exercise of power. But there is no curb on the pardon other than the conscience of the executive issuing one. Presidents tend to tacitly admit that they are misusing this authority when they sheepishly hoard pardons for the final hours of their administration, waiting for the moment when there’s no political price to pay and hoping that their shabby behavior is drowned out by the inaugural hoopla.

By absolving his former patron, Ford helped create a new Washington ritual: the moment when presidents release their cronies, friends, and family from the bonds of justice. George H. W. Bush sprinkled his magic forgiveness dust over Casper Weinberger, Robert McFarlane, and Elliot Abrams, among others, letting them off the hook for the Iran-Contra scandal. Bill Clinton bailed out the financier Marc Rich, whose alleged crimes included buying oil from Iran in defiance of an embargo. (Rich’s wife was a generous donor to Clinton.) And then Joe Biden had the temerity to pronounce himself a defender of the rule of law before he used his presidential powers to insulate his own family from potential prosecution.

Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump has exposed the flimsiness of American institutions. Pressure-tested by his audacious assault on the civil services, those institutions instantly folded. But when a bridge tumbles into a river, the rivets and bolts don’t suddenly fail. They erode over generations. This is what happened in Washington: The unfettered power of the president kept expanding, Congress entered a state of sclerosis, the parties became apologists for their leaders, and courts fell into the hands of ideologues. As Toobin depressingly shows, even upstanding nice guys like Gerald Ford played their part in the collapse.

My Friend’s Instagram Account Has Taken a Dark Turn

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › family › archive › 2025 › 02 › dear-james-friend-instagram-dark-turn › 681557

Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.

Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.

Dear James,

I have a friend I used to be very close with—I was in her wedding party eight years ago—but life circumstances, life goals, and geographic distance have rendered us a lot less so. We don’t communicate much aside from reacting nicely to each other’s Instagram Stories, which don’t reveal a lot about a person. Recently, her posts, usually just happy photo dumps of her cat and vacations with her partner, have taken a turn; they’re full of odd quotes about being a bigger person, learning not to hate, purging one’s soul. She also posted an Instagram Story that made me think her cat was dead. But I follow her partner, too, and it seems that this person now lives in a separate city with the cat.

I feel called to check in, but all avenues seem awkward. Our last text exchange was just sharing links to news stories from months ago. Who am I to text, “Hey, saw on Instagram that you may be going through something”? I could send her a message on Instagram, but that seems insufficiently serious if she’s indeed going through a dark period as a result of what I presume to be a separation. If my presumption is wrong, then reaching out would be even more awkward. Any insight here?

Dear Reader,

This is why I’m not on Instagram.

You don’t get news about a person: You get shifts in curatorial policy. But it sounds as if your friend—unless she’s working on an elaborate cover story before embedding with a politically suspect performance-art troupe—is going through something. And as you’ve been conducting your own informal probe into her situation, you’ve been keeping in mind the old journalists’ maxim: Follow the cat. The cat has moved. The cat’s in a different city. The self-help quotes are proliferating. I smell brokenness.

The question is: Do you want to help her? Or are you just kind of fascinatedly tracking the downturn in her online vibes? (Another Instagram effect: It turns us into dissociated consumers of one another’s lives.)

If you do want to help her—and you were in her wedding party, which in my book gives you a stake, however remote, in this marriage—then I see nothing wrong with checking in via text, carrier pigeon, whatever. In fact, I would say: Definitely do it. It’s never too late, or too early, or too weird, to see if somebody’s okay. Encourage her, if you can, to give an account of herself that exceeds the pixelated Instagram version.

Rooting for the cat,

James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

To Stay In or to Go Out

The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2025 › 02 › fomo-hanging-out-friends-weekend-plans › 681542

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.

To stay in or to go out, that is the question. It’s the dance we do while checking the time before we’re supposed to meet up with friends after a long day at work. Finding the answer is often a matter of conducting a cost-benefit analysis: How far is the restaurant? How well do I know these people? And, most important: Will I regret not going?

FOMO, “fear of missing out,” can serve as a powerful engine for social engagements. Hearing the stories from that one night you stayed in can incentivize you to take a chance on the next invite. But not all plans are meant to be kept, and sometimes, the couch looks more appealing. The dance never ends—it’s just a matter of figuring out what’s worth making time for.

On Being Social

Your FOMO Is Trying to Tell You Something

By Faith Hill

Maybe you are missing out.

Read the article.

The Easiest Way to Keep Your Friends

By Serena Dai

It’s a little boring, a little type A, and a lot better than letting relationships fizzle.

Read the article.

How to Flake Gracefully

By Olga Khazan

An introvert’s guide to canceling plans without losing your friends

Read the article.

Still Curious?

What adults forget about friendship: Just catching up can feel stale. Playing and wasting time together like kids do is how you make memories, Rhaina Cohen wrote in 2023. The scheduling woes of adult friendship: To avoid the dreaded back-and-forth of coordinating hangouts, some friends are repurposing the shared digital calendar, a workplace staple, to plan their personal lives, Tori Latham wrote in 2019.

Other Diversions

The benefit of doing things you’re bad at The Stranger Things effect comes for the novel. “Dear James”: Oh, how the men drone on.

P.S.

Courtesy of Sharon Gunderson

I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “I didn’t know the red-tailed hawk was in the picture til I looked at it later!” Sharon Gunderson wrote about her ski trip to Flagstaff, Arizona. “And the light through the ice-lined aspen branches just made my heart sing all day.”

I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks. If you’d like to share, reply to this email with a photo and a short description so we can share your wonder with fellow readers in a future edition of this newsletter or on our website. Please include your name (initials are okay), age, and location. By doing so, you agree that The Atlantic has permission to publish your photo and publicly attribute the response to you, including your first name and last initial, age, and/or location that you share with your submission.

— Stephanie