I'm an aging queer, progressive, with many well-to-do friends who genuinely believe themselves to be "good liberals." And yet, one by one over the years, they've left Portland or Seattle or L.A. for the bourgeois "progressive bubbles" of, say, Austin or Boise or the Carolinas, singing arias about how clean and peaceful and arty these places are. And yet I see what their states do to voting rights, abortion rights, LGBTQ+ rights, BIPOC rights, inmate rights — all while the populations praise Trump and outlaw vax and mask mandates.

If your socio-political principles go only as far as your nose, while you essentially reward and enable oppression and injustice, then doesn't that make you a big, fat phony? I think so.

Friends often ask me why I stay in Portland, and I tell them I love Portland like no other city I've lived in. For the most part, we live and struggle and fight authentically, we own our shit and genuinely care about the least among us. When fuck-all racists invade our city, we show up. When our police beat or kill our brothers and sisters, we raise holy hell. We defend women's right to choose and queer folk's right to live and love.

Portland's an untidy city comprised of a tapestry of freaks, losers, winners, artists, hipsters, hippies, anarchists, and avid dog lovers. I don't want to live in a phony progressive "bubble" inside a fascist red state. I prefer the real thing, with all its warts and imperfections. Just saying.