Will This Get Me Deported?
TWO YEARS OF BURN IT ALL DOWN 💌
Hi friends!
Two years ago, I hit send on the very first edition of Burn It All Down. Back then, I correctly wrote, “diabetes medicine that makes you skinny is the only thing trendier than fascism.” A year later, I checked in on the state of affairs and said, “Ozempic now trails fascism in relevancy.” Today, I am truly horrified to report, that despite GLP-1’s acquisition of Lizzo and many of you reading this, after fascism’s recent come up, there’s no longer even a contest.
When a handful of people have asked me in earnest if I’m scared that writing this newsletter will get me deported, even though the First Amendment still exists and legally protects visa holders, we are solidly in new territory. I wish I was joking, you know how I love to do that, but I’m not. I’m also not scared. Wasn’t Trump trying to make Canada the 51st state a few storylines ago? Can a country even deport you back to a territory they’re about to claim? Have we fully moved on from that? My god, I can’t keep up.
I’m not downplaying any of the terrifying shit going on with immigration right now. And, yes, I know about the Canadian lady who was sent to ICE jail when she applied for a visa at the border. But she had violated her last visa, an important detail when you’re evaluating your own risk.
The southern border near Tijuana is a crazy place. When I first moved to LA, I used to drive down and get my visas there, the same process that lady was submitting to. Once, they were doing construction, and I was sent to wait in a random office where a man sitting in handcuffs leered at me for 45 minutes. The vibes were so off that I had to remind myself 31 was probably a bit old to get trafficked. What I’m saying is, it was messy down there even when Obama was president.
Now, I work in America on an extraordinary ability visa that I got for making relatable memes and tricking people into watching vertical videos. I just renewed it under this Trump administration and included two pieces of viral political satire I produced during his first term as part of the portfolio of work I had to send. One of them makes fun of him explicitly. They let me stay in the country knowing what this bitch is about. I don’t have a target on my back. I’m an under the radar, smooth-talking white lady who has successfully and cleanly navigated the immigration system for 15 years. And I have like 700 lawyers in my family. If I can’t hold the line right now and keep speaking freely, we’re so beyond cooked.
Worst case scenario, if Homeland Security decides to search me at the border and finds out that I called the Mad King President an old, rotten kumquat, my dear friend Jill said she’s willing to come bail me out in El Salvador and I confirmed that she is serious. If that happens, we can sell the story to Mike White for his next limited series. Let’s try and think positively about all of this, please!
Let’s not forget that they’re “flooding the zone” with crazy news on purpose so we’ll all be too outraged to just live our lives like human beings. It’s a nasty political tactic and not the first time it has been used against us. But this is 2025, and now the outrage has taken on a top note of terror. Fear is everywhere and it’s spreading like that airborne virus we’re all still a bit insane from.
But I can’t live in fear. Sorry!
Fear is expensive and it will cost you everything if you let it manage your life. It’s exhausting and I am tired enough. As previously discussed, I am willing to go insane, but only in the fun way where I get to be looser. I can’t start censoring myself now when it took so much for me to get to this point.
First, I had to transcend all the horrors and insecurities that came with letting people see me try publicly. Then, there was the fear that I was too old to reinvent myself creatively because we live in a youth-obsessed culture that tricks women into thinking our best days are behind us so we’ll buy $90 face potions, look into lasering our necks, and fantasize about murdering ingenues instead of cultivating our own personal power.
I was 37 when I started writing this newsletter. I had enough experience to finally let my curiosity be greater than my fear. I had the hard-won wisdom to know that when you love doing something this much, it is worth spending time and energy on, even if you have to keep telling your ego to shut the fuck up.
Of course, I feared nothing would come from my efforts, but I promised myself that I would keep doing my thing for six months, just be me, put it all out there, and see if anyone would find it. And right after that six month mark, hundreds of you joined me from a link in The New Yorker. I thought that was a pretty solid sign to keep writing. Now, here we are, and in the best possible way, it still feels like this story is only beginning.
In this current version of the internet, where pseudo-intellectual faffing meets contagious stupidity and algorithms have us wondering if we’ve died and this is hell, my resistance is saying whatever I want and showing up as myself. I have no choice but to keep on keeping on and leave my fate to the same mysterious forces that keep feeding me material. They put Ann Dowd on my plane back to America after Trump “won” the election, I think they can manage this situation. But I’m also not an idiot, so from now on, I will travel with this Barbie flip phone and no other electronic devices.
The thing is, this newsletter isn’t even about politics; it’s about catharsis. Mostly for me, if I’m being honest. But I’m inclined to think that the catharsis might be also be mass. So, let’s make a deal — I’ll keep writing these if you guys keep reading them? Does that sound OK? Because something magical happens when I send these dispatches, my thoughts go out into the world and suddenly there’s more space in my head. I always feel better after, with one dramatic exception: Luigi Mangione. Writing about THAT gave me a massive headache and then I drank through it at like five holiday parties and it basically lasted until Christmas.
In a fearless moment, two years ago, I hit send. Now I have a community of people who have lost the plot in the exact same way that I have. What a salve for the unhinged soul. If you ever have the energy to leave me a comment or to hit reply and tell me a bit about yourself, I promise it will make my day. It’s how I found out that April started a nu metal band in the spirit of burning it all down and that my newsletter was being read in Antarctica by Heather. That means we’re on every single continent. She’s gone worldwide, baby. She’s even with the tariff penguins!
So, thank you for letting my emails find you in these unwell times and for your comments and likes and for telling me I’m brilliant because I will literally never get sick of hearing that. Thank you to all my paid subscribers who supported me at any point this year. You guys helped me stay in the throes of $8 oat latte addiction and I am grateful for it. Thank you to all my fellow writers on Substack who shouted me out and recommended me and shared quotes and lifted me up this year. And I can’t forget my friends who shared this newsletter on social, always a perfect use of Instagram stories. I will promote myself more this year, I promise. But I like it better when you guys do it for me.
Because you’re my accountability group, whether you asked for it or not, I am letting you know that I need to take a few weeks off from sending this newsletter so I can focus and finish my book proposal. Unless the “Blue Origin” explodes tomorrow on its way to space. If that happens, I will shirk every responsibility, including the work that pays my rent, and live blog the fallout for the rest of the week.
Until next time, whenever that shall be!
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™
Liz
If you ever long for more, there are 70 (LMAO. AM I OK?!) newsletters to explore in the BIAD archives.
A whole bunch of you have joined me recently, so here are my picks from the past twelve months:
When I briefly took up smoking after Trump “won” the election and wrote my version of Bridget Jones’s Diary.
When I escaped the LA fires, came home completely out of my mind, and decided to air out my landlord’s throuple (long live gategate™).
When I got naked, howled at the full moon with a group of women I had just met, and then appropriated multiple cultures.
When I got back from that retreat and wanted to stay off the internet, so I went to Erewhon and made fun of drinks.
And, of course, when I wrote about how much I love writing this newsletter. 🥲💗
chihuahua den mother from Sydney, Australia! can’t tell you how much I needed to hear that “fear is expensive and it will cost you everything if you let it manage your life”. for this and for every single word of BIAD I’ve read so far I’m exceedingly grateful ❤️
Proud to be one of the 700 ❤️