Exile,again

America has spoken, and the yahoos have won. US film-maker Jon Jost writes from Rome to explain why he will not be returning to his home country

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In 2003, I returned to the United States after 10 continuous years living abroad. Keeping well away from the "centre", I chose to settle in a small fishing community in Oregon state, on the north-west Pacific coast. It was there this spring that I shot and edited my latest feature film, titled, aptly enough, Homecoming.

In this film, I wanted to try and understand what was happening in this strange post-9/11 America I had returned to. Leaving the strident politics to others, I chose to dwell on the personal, on the seemingly invisible traces which the tragic events that have unfolded since then have left on my country and its people. While the film tells a small fictional "family" story, it is meant as a kind of parable about the broader American family. One son returns home from military service in a "transfer tube", sparking a series of events which will lead the other (step-)son to reject his adopted family, and finally commit suicide.

It is not a happy story. Still, it was and remains my hope that through the oblique means of "art", we might glimpse beyond the tumult of the moment and be more honest with ourselves. Homecoming addresses -- poetically, obliquely -- the harsh divisions which are ripping through America, and (owing to the country's inordinate power on a global scale) through the world. It is a very small step towards a more truthful dialogue between Americans, but it is still a step.

In late July, just as I was close to finishing work on the film, I wrote an e-mail to friends predicting that Bush would lose the elections. I was so caught up in my own reflections that I guessed the rest of America must feel like me. We all needed a break from the thunder and brimstone, the Rapture-coming-tomorrow scenarios, and the politicians who are so rabid they literally seem to foam at the mouth. I assumed that Bush and his clan had burned too many people with their shallow and selfish manoeuvres, and that everybody who listened to him on the campaign trail knew he was bluffing, just as I did.

I was just adding the closing titles to the movie. In a moment of optimistic anger, after the traditional thanks to all those who had helped me, I added two more end cards, in what I hoped was a calm and dispassionate tone of voice. The first one began: "No thanks to G W Bush, R Cheney..." and so on, listing all the key names of the administration, and went on to call for their impeachment, trial and conviction for "high crimes and misdemeanours" under the US Constitution and its laws, which they are publicly charged with upholding.

The second card cited the manifesto published by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), connected up a few simple dots, and named it for what it was -- "treason".

I ended my e-mail to my friends with the confident assertion: "If they win the election, I guess I'm out of the country. But they won't win."

How wrong can you be?

Not that I didn't do my bit. I voted early, knowing I would be abroad on election day. At the age of 61, it was only the second time. The first time was in 1972, for McGovern. My guy lost then, too.

Now the dust has settled, Bush has begun to make his intentions known. Despite a veneer of seeming accommodation with his opponents, the path he will take is all too clear -- the American turn to the hard right will continue, and the military adventurism of the PNAC will be pressed forward, as will the stripping of various social services. Following the fiscal theory currently in vogue with the rightists, Bush seems determined to run the government into such debt that it will be unable to do anything except support its bloated military, and will have to cut all social programmes. The billion-dollars-a-day Iraqi adventure will make sure that the deficit continues to spiral.

Strangely, the possibility that there may be some socio- political downside to this programme seems not to have occurred to those of my countrymen who like to wrap themselves in yellow ribbons and deck out their local diners and churches with banners reading "We Support Our Troops". For among the many obscenities of this election, one of the most obscene is the fact that Bush was elected by the very people most wounded by his policies -- people just like the characters in my film.

How did this happen? The ideological propaganda machine has been working flat out. Whipping up hatred against gay marriages and abortion was apparently all that was needed to distract attention from the president's dismal record of lies and incompetence, not to mention the most grotesque evidence of corruption on a gigantic scale. Will that still be the case when the fiscal wreckage can no longer be disguised? When a draft can no longer be avoided? Or when the militaristic posturing runs afoul of ugly realities -- as indeed, it already has?

Such questions hardly matter to Bush and his friends, for they live in a world based not on facts, but on faith. Bush himself is the perfect mirror image of his nemesis (or is he his secret ally?) Osama Bin Laden. While one true believer sits in his cave in Waristan, working with his followers on the One Way, eager for death and martyrdom, the other is borne aloft by the Christian right of America, full steam ahead to Armageddon, who egg him on to revive the Middle Ages and launch the crusade of the "good". Wholesale death courtesy of Walmart, all in the name of God and Country, smiting the Islamic "evil". The curse of jingoism, to which America seems periodically drawn, is back with a vengeance, fully robed in Biblical cloth. And this time, it is blooming from the depressed centre, while the elitist coasts are squeezed to the sidelines, reduced to mere spectators in their own country. Meanwhile, China sits silently, watching and gloating.

Democracy can only function properly if the electorate are educated and intelligent with regard to the things between which they have to choose, and if they are honestly and truthfully informed about them by politicians and the media. But in the American body politic, ignorance of almost everything is the norm. In fact, we seem to take pride in our stupidity. The second of November was above all testimony to the failure of America as a culture. Indeed, it may be a sign that the great American experiment in "democracy" is in serious trouble. Given its present trajectory, I would not be surprised if a fundamentalist "Christian" theocracy were one day to arise from the ashes.

However, I do not intend to stick around to find out. Yahoo America has spoken. Half the people have voted for concentration camps, no accountability and rewarding the very rich at the expense of the very poor. This is not a country I can live in. And frankly, this redwhitenblue All- American fascism -- to use a word I am careful not to abuse -- is probably of such a nature that I would actually be at risk in returning.

So it looks like I will be staying away for another four years, this time involuntarily. Given my age, that may well prove terminal. But I am not ready yet for another homecoming.

The witer is an American film- and video-maker who has been active in social and political matters since 1964. He was imprisoned from 1965 to 1967 for refusing military service. His latest feature film, Homecoming , premiered in the Digital Cinema section of the Venice Film Festival this September. Go to: www.jonjost.com .