They've got the urge for going, but will Americans flee?

Could America be facing a second lost generation, asks Will Sullivan.

Could America be facing a second lost generation, asks Will Sullivan.

During the months leading up to the US election, the ubiquitous joke among Americans, both at home and abroad, was that if George Bush won, they would consider leaving their country. Some may now be even packing their bags.

The pervasive nature of this desire to expatriate among many groups of Americans huddled in bars and restaurants across the world signifies the gravity of the current split in the American electorate. It hasn't been sparked by any violent political duress but rather through a broad moral and cultural opposition to the direction Americans took in choosing their leader.

In case anyone is still too stunned to recognise the significance of this election, what we learned overwhelmingly from Tuesday's results is that despite previous conservative leanings, the conservative Republican base in the electorate has evolved into a galvanized force of unprecedented scale. It has gained incredible power potential in all three branches of government, is sure to influence contemporary American society for years to come - and it accomplished all this under the noses of those most opposed to it.

READ MORE

The aftermath of the election unequivocally confirms the distance separating the two distinct segments of the American electorate: those who won, and those baffled by the factors driving home the victory.

Over the past two days I've received dozens of phone calls and emails from Americans who no longer seem to be joking about the consideration to leave the country. It's important to understand just how incredible it is to hear this sentiment from Americans, a people notoriously more comfortable inside their own borders.

This isn't the first time Americans have regrouped in foreign lands. In the 1920s, a group of young Americans fleeing a perceived moralistic and social vapidity in post-first World War American culture left en masse for Europe. Many of their rank (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cummings and Hammett, to name a few) became some of the most famous writers in American literary history and were bestowed the dubious title, The Lost Generation, by fellow writer and expatriate Gertrude Stein.

After the dust settles from the stunning victory of everything conservative in the US this week, Europe may have to prepare itself for some semblance of a second Lost Generation descending on the continent's shores. However, any mass exodus of moral dissenters is unlikely.

Once the emotions of the election wear off, and the practicalities of living abroad - work, housing, security, etc - dawn on disillusioned Americans searching for escape, they will turn inwards towards fixing the source of their distress at home rather than attempting to ignore it abroad.

As American writer James Baldwin, who lived in France during the 1960s, once said, "I am not now, and never will become - at least, not by my own desire - an expatriate. For better or worse my ties to my country are too deep, and my concern is too great." This sentiment runs deeply among our populace.

Election 2004 may have caused Americans to consider a life elsewhere, but we can never fully shun the events that transpire at home regardless of the distance we flee.

Times of controversy and crisis often spur increased political awareness and involvement. A second term for George Bush presiding over a conservative Republican majority in congress, and the spectre of increased influence in the judiciary, will hopefully prompt Americans to become more involved in charting the course of their country's future by first coming to terms with the differences that polarize it.

Despite world opinion, the American mandate for George Bush may have the unintended effect of renewing a long malaise in American political, moral and societal discourse that, in the long run, could have a more positive result than a Yes vote for John Kerry.

Only time and visa applications will tell.

Will Sullivan is a native of Chicago, where he took a master's in journalism before embarking on an internship at The Irish Times.