Is Being an "Ex-pat" passé?

I re-read  Sommerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge last week, which has for several reasons, awakened several thoughts in my head about what it means to be American first, and secondly an Ex-pat. It that time done? Is there such thing as an Ex-patriate any longer? I'm not so sure that the answer is as easy as the question.

In Maugham's novel, the narrator, an eponymous Mr. Maugham (caveat lector: even when an author uses his/her own name, he or she is lying to some extent...) begins his story about a group of Americans, one in particular, with trepidation. He goes on to relate this story, trepidation having passed, and it is a rather curious portrait painted. Why?

It is not easy to put a finger on it, but something just seems off kilter. This is the time of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Gershwin and Pound. Paris, baby, Paris in the Twenties! What greater time to be and what greater place to be, until 1929, that is. Some of the characters are ruined by the events happening back in America, while others, well... simply put, profit. Yet, that is not what sticks.

 It is the concept of America and what they have left behind, and will one day return to, that is the rub. They left America for Europe, usually Paris, to do ... what? Sow their wild oats? Learn French? Socialize? What is usually so surprising about novels of this time period is how well the Americans apparently did learn French, which is now the complete opposite stereotype. Wild oats, plenty to be sown in Paris, Montmartre...Quartier Latin...

Socialize, hmmm, to be social with the French? No, with OTHER Americans and a couple of Brits for good measure. For the most part, the Americans were not welcomed with open arms, they, whether by choice or duress, remained outsiders. They had communities of people who had left the home country, the fatherland, they were ex-patriated. And, they socialized with each other, for a while. Then, the party was over.

And, then, as many ex-pats do, they went home. They re-patriated.

This was before the Internet. Before blogs, Before Twitter. Before, ... Facebook. You had to actually face people first. You could not dabble and flirt in the electronic before engaging in social networks. The social network was, well, social.

With the virtual networks, does one then ever leave? The saying, "you can't go home again" becomes vacant, staring with dull, saucer-shaped eyes.

Huh?

You can't go home again.

Why?

You can't be re-patriated to something from which you were never ex-patriated.