Trump government ‘a turn away from everything decent’: James Cameron

“It’s like watching a car crash over and over and over,” says cult movie director James Cameron, as he gets ready to accept permanent citizenship of New Zealand and move out of the United States.

He is referring to the face of second-time POTUS Donald Trump on the front page of the newspaper. “There’s something nice about the New Zealand outlets — at least they’ll put it on page three,” he says.

“And it’s just sickening,” he says of being subjected to American newspapers. “I just don’t want to see that guy’s face any more, on the front page of the paper. It’s inescapable there, it’s like watching a car crash over and over and over.”

While the Canadian director of the Titanic and the Avatar series has had a home — on a working dairy farm — in New Zealand all the way since 2012, the re-election of Trump seems to have lit a fire under him.

Speaking to Kiwi media outlet Stuff, he speaks of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) agenda of the current Republican chief and says, “I think it’s horrific, I think it’s horrifying … I see it as a turn away from everything decent. America doesn’t stand for anything if it doesn’t stand for what it has historically stood for.

“It becomes a hollow idea, and I think they’re hollowing it out as fast as they can for their own benefit,” he adds.

But why is a Canadian citizen — and possibly soon to be a New Zealander — speaking about America, which is surely for Americans and the beeswax of Americans alone?

Because unfortunately, like many others around the world, he recognises how deeply the policies of a country of the US' magnitude can affect not just neighbours like Canada, but the whole world.

Cameron cites the threat of the climate catastrophe “ahead of us — we’ve been trying to turn this ship to not hit the iceberg, and then Trump grabbed the tiller and plunged it right back at the centre of the iceberg. So am I worried? Of course.”

In the context of uprooting his family and moving to the other side of the map, almost diametrically across (though geographically less drastic, perhaps), Cameron mentions, “I just think you’ve got to earn your right to be in a place.”

And while he is speaking of a new entrant into another community, another country, the idea of earning the right to be in given space has certain resonances in the context of an US that is not just anti-immigrant but positively xenophobic-seeming now — and ready, even as a nation of generations of immigrants, to question the right of others (who may even be First Nations citizens) to be “here” in America.

Contrasting the nation of his birth, Canada, and the home of his choice in New Zealand, Cameron says, “I grew up in Canada, and I see a lot of similarities here [in New Zealand] in the way people behave... There’s an innate respect and a demand for respect.”

Left unsaid but obvious is how this is not the case in America.

Incidentally, in an older (chronologically younger?) avatar, Cameron had once applied for US citizenship as well. He withdrew his application when George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential election.