Fifty-two years ago today, on January 20th, 1973, I wrote a letter to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands requesting Dutch citizenship. Having been living in the country for seven years, I was eligible. A short time later I was visited at home in Maarssen, after dinner one evening, by a local policeman in mufti. He chatted with Loekie and me for half an hour, told me that he saw no objection to honoring my request, and politely took his leave. In the spring of 1974 I was invited to the office of the Utrecht District Attorney, who explained to me the rights and obligations of Dutch citizenship.
Then, in April, I received this extract from the State Gazette, granting Dutch citizenship to Joaquin Alvarez Santa Ana and twenty-three others, including me. A few days later I went to Maarssen town hall and applied for a Dutch passport. For the application to be accepted, I had to hand in my U.S. passport. This I did gladly. It was the whole idea.
My reason for writing to the queen on that day, a reason I put in my letter, was exactly to relinquish my American citizenship. I was sickened that the voters of my country had returned Richard Nixon to office for a second term, with the facts of the Vietnam War and Watergate available to them. The disrespect this paid to the values I had been bred to think of as American was too much for me. I saw it as a compliment to all I had been taught in school about “Civics,” and to the politicians I had admired, from FDR to Adlai Stevenson to JFK, to exchange my U.S. citizenship for that of a country that adhered more closely to those values. Most important was the use to which Nixon put his re-election, bombing the cities of North Vietnam in December 1972 and killing thousands.
There is a certain measure here that I want to bring forward. Of all the criteria by which one can judge governments and their leaders, one that stands out for me is their cost in human lives. And as dismayed as I once more am in the U.S. electorate, as fearful as I am about the harm that Donald Trump’s benighted and self-serving policies may bring, I derive a measure of solace from the fact – correct me if I’m wrong – that his first presidency had the lowest body count of any U.S. presidency since the 1930s. Even if this was not a result of humanitarian ideals, it matters. And on the day of his second inauguration, I must acknowledge gratefully that yesterday his bullying was instrumental in bringing about the cease-fire in Gaza. If this is a sign of things to come for the next four years, that will be a lot to be thankful for.
© Gary Schwartz 2025. Published on the Schwartzlist on 20 January 2025.
P.S. 12:40 EST. I posted the above deliberately before the inauguration and the inaugural address. I was uncertain whether I could get it out of my pen after listening to hateful bombast. I was right to be. But Trump did claim the mantle of the peacemaker.
I should also say that President Biden did not wage U.S. wars. On the contrary, I blame him for pulling out the 2,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan that were keeping the country safe from Taliban rule.
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