The solutions that you mention, emigration or talking to jingoists at parties are utterly individualistic. I tried both and learned that people are the same every way you go, in the sense that they are creatures of habit and opportunity they do what they and other hve been doing and they chgange their routines if they see an easy opportunity. You see that in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. What is different, though, is social institutions that control individual behavior.
An institutional change in Poland ca 1989 produced incredible changes in people's attitudes, views, behavior etc. Suddenly you heard political views never heard before - extreme right, money grubbing, all sorts of fascism, bigotry, sexism, anti-semitism etc. It is not that such opinions were not held before the so-called "collapse of communism" - you heard different idiocies expressed by various individuals here and there - but they were private idiocies, whispered with consternation rather than shouted and if they were shouted it was done only in a drunken stupor. They were not sanctioned by the existing instituional system and thus they did not count, they lingered on shithouse walls and in gutter conversations. Once the political landscape has changed, these opinions were elevated to legitimate points of view and expressed bluntly and loudly in the public.
The problem with the this country that such opinions are sanctioned by the existing instituional order. It is not the people who express these rabidly jingoistic, hateful, ethnocentric idiocies that is most frustrating, but the fact that such opinions and such people are sanctioned and considered "manistream." Unlike Germany, this country never underwent de-nazification. Expressing loonie fascist view is not only legal, but cool.
While people here have very few rights to a collective action - they have every right to engage in the most debased idiocy, arm themslves to teeth, insitgate hatrd and bigotry, waste everything they lay they hands on, believe in any imaginable bullshit - as long as they do it individually. Yes, they are the product of the system, but there is no such thing as human nature outside the system, every humanindividual ever is product of his/her social-historical environment. You can change people by changing their environement - but it will not happen here, at least not during our life time. The only semi-radical reform this country experienced, the New Deal, has been dismantlend and reversed. That tells volumes about the chances for any progressive social changes.
That's enough rant for now. I will be traveling to Europe for the next few days - should be back after May 15 or so.
Cheers,
Wojtek