"Leaving Away"

Earlier today, a woman in America with whom I am only vaguely acquainted, an Indonesian immigrant to that country, took the trouble to contact me via social media in order to inform me that since I  have been outside the country for some years (or, as she put it, "leaving away", by which I assume she meant 'living away'), I have forfeited the right to comment on current American politics, or, most specifically, on Donald Trump. Mind you, I am a natural citizen of America, born there when Eisenhower was president, lived there for 58 years, which is considerably longer than she has been alive anywhere in the world; nonetheless, it is clear to her that I "don't know what's going on". Strange, if that be the case, that my viewpoint is more in line than is hers with the viewpoint of the majority of Americans, which itself would seem to suggest that it is actually she who does not know what is going on. There's a special sort of irony in this, I reckon--for I would say that among the non-American expatriates I know here in Bali, most seem to know more about American history and American politics than the run-of-the-mill bonafide American knows. I guess that this comes from something called "reading", along with its close companion, known as "comprehension".