Mike Gogulski

Sunni: Ah, okay; that all makes much sense. Thanks, Mike. So, you’re currently living in Slovakia. What informed your choice to live there?

Mike: Slovakia was to be the first stop on a multi-year global tour that I was to take with my girlfriend. The choice was essentially random, as Bratislava was where she was offered a good English teaching contract. I found myself inexplicably falling in love with the place, and this and other factors contributed to us splitting up. She’s still globetrotting and having a grand time of it. I’m comfy here.

Sunni: Okay, another stupid question: what was inexplicable about falling in love with it?

Mike: It was completely unexpected. This was to be stop number one on the grand world tour. I had the belief that, surrounded by an alien and unfamiliar culture, my girlfriend and I would naturally cling to each other and become closer thereby. It didn’t happen that way. I quickly found myself engaged with several extraordinary people who I could not imagine just saying “goodbye” to in service of the globetrotting ideal. I found myself wanting to stay in one place for a while—a huge contrast to the four interstate moves within the US I had undertaken in the previous eight or so years. At the same time, I felt my great desire to travel fading—why zip off to someplace new when there is so much new around me here, every day? Any time I want to see something new and experience a different place, all I really have to do is ride a bus or tram line to the end and see what people and things are like there.

Sunni: You’ve very neatly encapsulated my dilemma when traveling: I want to linger and leisurely explore, but too often the schedule doesn’t permit that. The text on your “about” page states that you intended to renounce your citizenship by now, but elsewhere and more recently, you’ve pushed back that action a little. Any particular reason or reasons for that?

Mike: Yeah, I should update that, but my renunciation is coming soon anyway. I pushed the date out in order to allow time to renew my Slovak residency permit first, which should be issued in a couple of weeks. I think there is a fair amount of risk in what I plan to do; waiting a bit for this reason is just a risk-minimization strategy.

Sunni: I guess we’re getting ahead of the story a little bit. Can you summarize, and possibly update if relevant, your published thoughts regarding taking this step?

Mike: I have published a couple of things more recently: Unabashed Anti-Americanism and Renunciation as divorce. For me, renouncing my citizenship is the public act which culminates an inner journey I have been on for many years. If I look at my own emotions surrounding what I plan to do, perhaps the greatest driver is wanting to separate myself from what I see as an endemic American cultural hypocrisy: America the “most free”, America the exceptional, America the world’s best hope, and so on, in the light of what the American state actually does and what it has done. Internally, I declared myself to be a citizen of the world, American by mere accident of birth. I’m taking that thought to its limit.