Am currently in the States right now visiting family. Barely 20 minutes after we landed in the USA at Chicago I have a raging jerk of a CBP officer trying to assert his "authoritay" and treating me and my family like criminals. He was accusatory and combative from the get-go, gives me the stinkeye when we say we live in Mongolia (as if he's taking our living arrangement as a personal insult), and holds us up for secondary questioning which forces us to run to make our next flight. An hour into being back in the States, and I was feeling neither safe OR free.

I love my home country, but sometimes I feel living in Mongolia allows me to be more "myself" than when I happen to be in the USA where I grew up. If someone attacks me, no one will bat an eye or judge me or sue me if I fight back (many would probably judge me if I didn't). As long as what I'm doing isn't bothering someone else I'm usually left alone. The most I need to worry about the police is the occasional parking ticket, and the police as a rule aren't armed and aren't held up as some privileged class that can never be criticized.

It's hard going from a place where people are expected on some level to look out for their own safety, to one where many see those who look to take on that responsibility as misfits or worse...