[still from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, 1972] Sustained, leisurely conversations aren’t just essential to mental health, but to maintaining civility. Faced with another, one must learn how to listen, and to entertain, with proper respect, someone else’s opinions. Plus, one can’t so easily lie or make false accusations. It’s a lot harder to bullshit, in short.
Most people raised by good Parents , Grandparents etc. would never be a Clockwork psycho, I'll assume. I too had a few few Arvn acquaintances in Saigon when I went back in 2019. One was my moto driver and we would hook up eveyday for some cruising. At night we would go to the street food place near Ben Tranh { sp} market - there they have a lot of tables and I could see what foreigners were touring in Vietnam - interesting to see round eyed women in Saigon . During my tour I only saw 2 round eyes. Just something that aways stuck out , I guess. Anyways, after a couple beers Chanh tran would open up about his 8 years in the re education camps. That'll bring tears to anyones eyes. I could talk and trust these guys-- not to BS me because they still remembered our military camps and their english words was another unique trait - their scars too.
I met another older Vietnamese Arvn DiWei { Captain} in Cozumel in 2001 and he was in the Delta where I was too. He said he esscaped the re education camp and made it to Thailand - where he used the names of some Americans he had worked with. Those again were very intersting / heart breaking conversations. He was schooled as a cartographer and all the time in the Arvns, didn't think that the NVA would ever win.
Sorry for rambling on Mr. Dinh- I have no one to discuss this with , here in Crimea. You can probably understand why. Ca'm on !
Thank you for that tantalizing post. I may be dense, but I couldn’t put it all together. Were you in Vietnam during the war as a Soviet soldier? And now in Crimea, but why wouldn’t you find others to talk about those experiences. Few here in the US know about the re-education camps, but I have a Cambodian acquaintance who was placed in one and managed to escape with his wife through the jungle. He explained to me how they were all controlled in Pol Pot’s regime, starved on strict calorie rations.
That's a nice smile in the first picture. This is becoming rarer in the West, where you have mostly forced smiles to customers in shops, but, everywhere else, most people walk around with a mix of tension and frustration, or digging their face into their phones, trying to avoid any contact with other humans. I know, I do it too.
Don Sang is a very poor, out of the way island in the Mekong with no tourists. Spending two nights there, I couldn't communicate with anyone, since no one spoke English or Vietnamese. Still, I was made to feel most welcome.
the photo of the 6 am mass reminds me that spouse and self for a while went to the daily 6 am mass in the baltimore suburb where we then lived - maybe a dozen people habitually attended - we never talked with them - then once in a clothing store we saw one of the people - we greeted them but didn't talk then either - spouse was having a difficult time and felt strengthened by participating in the eucharist
i'm not sure if you've ever expressed your view on anthropogenic climate change, linh - my personal opinion is that it is underway - sometimes i read people saying that the collapse of global civilization can be averted, other people say the opposite
there are even some who think "near term human extinction" - in a decade, or two, or a few - is a real possibility - that seems unlikely to me - although they are only a small fraction of the 8 billion humans currently on earth, there are some pockets of people who could carry on with local resources even if the fossil fuel powered transport and manufacturing system and global trade infrastructure entirely collapsed
i've only personally known one person who was murdered, although i knew someone else whose estranged spouse burned down their house and could have died if they hadn't escaped - and only one person who committed suicide - i didn't have to go to war - all in all i have had a fortunate life
recently i have started listening to a bluegrass music station on the radio - as predictable as the lyrics are, they nevertheless are very sincere
may the creative forces of the universe have mercy on our souls, if any
This is a big topic that should be addressed in an article, I think. Where to go when your society is no longer bearable? Another question is, at what point does one decide it's no longer bearable?
I think it becomes unbearable when you have no one you can talk to in real life (i.e. not just in computer world), who still emanates from the world of morality and common sense. Interesting that I started reading you on the Unz review, Linh. Ron Unz was a hero of mine in the old world. How could he have succumbed to the vaccine lies, given his seeming intelligence about so much else? My conclusion was that he was so much a part of that Silicon Valley mentality that he couldn’t see how corrupted it had become.
Well, Ron has a big ego and his own theory about Covid being a "neocon bioweapon to hurt China." Since the fact that the whole pandemic was a hoax to force dubious vaccines on billions of people undermines his rather silly theory, he's not willing to discuss it. That's one part. The other part is, the UR is also a limited hangout, and Ron will discuss some things, but not others.
I went through the same questions about Unz. The early Unz wrote interesting, eye-opening stuff that really helped one navigate to truth. And then with Covid he turned 180 on a dime. Sleeper cell or just threatened and made compliant? Or something else I’m not aware of?
What makes it bearable is making those people that are Narcissistic 'woke" as uncomfortable as possible and always challenging their cop out rationalizations.
Letting them know that Canada is at war with Ukraine against Russia, and that the capitulation of them to the CoronaPrank allowed the dystopia all is experiencing, including severe bigotry against countries that have never threatened us.
I kind of agree with you, Ernest, in a way. I tried telling people the truth, but the distance between truth and the fantasy land in which they seem to live is about as great as from the earth to the moon. Their entire "reality" is built on this sand castle and they can't let it slip away even one iota without some personal crisis overtaking them. They just won't go there. Just like the alcoholic who has to hit rock bottom before he can rebuild some semblance of a life.
Your blogspot is always eagerly looked forward to.
Ronnie plays his readership to generate some odd kind of authenticity from them.
The debates over 100's of comments, the threats of banning etc. I began thinking that maybe widening the responses at first will winnow them closer to a uncoersed resolution. His take on the CoVid1984 vaxxes, however was so hackneyed that I noticed many former commenters had disappeared, but the small degenerate contingent posts some whoppers that absolutely humiliate themselves...
Certainly sometimes laughing is the only response to tales of inhumanity. I believe I told this story before, but - in the '60s or '70s, in a country which had a "revolution" every few years, a doctor was imprisoned for, well, being a doctor. His guard would perform the required tortures but also engaged in everyday conversation. The doctor on many occasions tried to appeal to the guard's obvious humanity. One day the guard asked the doctor if years hence, the doctor, as a free man, would attempt revenge against the guard. The doctor said "Of course not. My profession is to heal people". The guard replied, "But don't you see? Mine is a profession, just like yours."
the guard- acting according to his role and the expectations of his superiors, peers and subordinates, not according to his humanity. That story could have come right out of Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You".
"You need not believe me, but it’s an entirely different world. Older and more enduring, it will outlast that distant madness."
I completely believe you, Linh. I've seen it myself. Western youths are insane and broken. It's night and day with how most Asian socieities are, societies which know discipline, respect, studiousness. They have dark sides too, but the difference has become so stark that a society like Japan, China, Laos, Thailand, Philippines might as well be paradise.
Most Western kids nowadays have had bad upbringings that range from neglect to outright abuse. This has a wide array of deleterious effects, from creating more of the LGBTBQQ crowd to making outright criminals. Even those not so horribly affected still have no common sense, boundaries, how to speak, how to act. The adults in the US aren't doing them any favors either, many of them asleep at the wheel. The culture has changed such that it isn't necessarily allowed to do what needs to be done. Fathers aren't in control of the home, if they are even allowed to be in the home or start a family in the first place. Authorities take advantage of the law-abiding while letting real criminals go crazy.
I can easily see how bad upbringings has resulted in the coddling of criminals in many American cities, and the uplifting of degenerates. In the America of the 2020s, it's cool to be broken, and anybody who is somebody is an asshole and criminal. Any kid (and that's what they are, though they may strut around school as if they own the place) who hasn't indulged in badness isn't someone to take seriously. Long gone are the days of the good citizen, the good student, the good human being.
More and more of these horrible youths are growing into dysfunctional adults. It's yet another problem that only collapse could solve. The new American Dream is fleeing the nightmare.
'Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people' (Oscar Wilde)
Plato observed that in a democracy there is not a people who share a culture, but a collection of isolated individuals running wild. I guess today this is called social atomisation. The socially atomised individuals in a democracy are unable to maintain their culture and their mutual bonds, consequently the government binds them.and gains more and more control over them... and in our times, capitalism and the commercial sector sells them what goes for 'culture'.
I read "Clockwork Orange" many years ago and then saw the movie version of the book. It disturbed me considerably. But I've never made the astute connection as you have done here, between that book and the direction American society has taken, Mr. Dinh. (I did infer a connection between American culture and a later novel, "American Psycho." But I think your juxtapose is better. "American Psycho is too luridly over the top.)
I'm waiting for my passport to arrive so I can book a flight to the Philippines. I can't endure another winter here in New England. I am too old to cope with the miserable weather. I just learned this past weekend that the Philippines will allow older Americans (over 65) an extended stay if they transfer a modest amount of money to a Philippine bank account and have a small but guaranteed pension. I can meet all three criteria. Looking forward to escaping the exorbitant rents here and the angry, pushy people. Like you I like quiet places in which to write and think. No amplified, electric music blaring. No private cars driven by unhinged lunatics buying ever more gasoline to make Rex Tillerson and ExxonMobile shareholders rich. Good-by to all of that. For a long, long time.
I have a hard time watching many of the "transgressive" films of the seventies. I watched most of them in my twenties when I thought, like many semi intelligent people that age, that there was something "artistic" or interesting to things like coprophilia. So many of those films drip with cocaine use, sexual nihilism and gratuitous violence in a manner that I now find difficult to stomach.
I do appreciate Malcolm McDowell. What a talent and grin. The drugs and debauchery of the times turned his hair white, but those piercing eyes remained mischievous.
It had been years since I have watched Clockwork Orange but, if memory serves me well, that fictional world's a lot saner than modern America.
Today black crime and violence against whites is encouraged (Asians are caught up in it) and whites are (as are cops) at risk if they fight back and hurt the black thug.
I can't remember there being a war against normal life in CO. Maybe there is but the Jews are definitely waging one now like they did in Weimar.
Most people raised by good Parents , Grandparents etc. would never be a Clockwork psycho, I'll assume. I too had a few few Arvn acquaintances in Saigon when I went back in 2019. One was my moto driver and we would hook up eveyday for some cruising. At night we would go to the street food place near Ben Tranh { sp} market - there they have a lot of tables and I could see what foreigners were touring in Vietnam - interesting to see round eyed women in Saigon . During my tour I only saw 2 round eyes. Just something that aways stuck out , I guess. Anyways, after a couple beers Chanh tran would open up about his 8 years in the re education camps. That'll bring tears to anyones eyes. I could talk and trust these guys-- not to BS me because they still remembered our military camps and their english words was another unique trait - their scars too.
I met another older Vietnamese Arvn DiWei { Captain} in Cozumel in 2001 and he was in the Delta where I was too. He said he esscaped the re education camp and made it to Thailand - where he used the names of some Americans he had worked with. Those again were very intersting / heart breaking conversations. He was schooled as a cartographer and all the time in the Arvns, didn't think that the NVA would ever win.
Sorry for rambling on Mr. Dinh- I have no one to discuss this with , here in Crimea. You can probably understand why. Ca'm on !
Thank you for that tantalizing post. I may be dense, but I couldn’t put it all together. Were you in Vietnam during the war as a Soviet soldier? And now in Crimea, but why wouldn’t you find others to talk about those experiences. Few here in the US know about the re-education camps, but I have a Cambodian acquaintance who was placed in one and managed to escape with his wife through the jungle. He explained to me how they were all controlled in Pol Pot’s regime, starved on strict calorie rations.
No Tom I'm American, which isn t very popular anymore since Kiev in 2014. It ws a different Crimea prior to 2014 - now it isn't right.
That's a nice smile in the first picture. This is becoming rarer in the West, where you have mostly forced smiles to customers in shops, but, everywhere else, most people walk around with a mix of tension and frustration, or digging their face into their phones, trying to avoid any contact with other humans. I know, I do it too.
Hi Tom,
Don Sang is a very poor, out of the way island in the Mekong with no tourists. Spending two nights there, I couldn't communicate with anyone, since no one spoke English or Vietnamese. Still, I was made to feel most welcome.
Linh
To find sanity in this world today is a rare thing. Enjoyable read. Thank you.
Yes.
the photo of the 6 am mass reminds me that spouse and self for a while went to the daily 6 am mass in the baltimore suburb where we then lived - maybe a dozen people habitually attended - we never talked with them - then once in a clothing store we saw one of the people - we greeted them but didn't talk then either - spouse was having a difficult time and felt strengthened by participating in the eucharist
i'm not sure if you've ever expressed your view on anthropogenic climate change, linh - my personal opinion is that it is underway - sometimes i read people saying that the collapse of global civilization can be averted, other people say the opposite
there are even some who think "near term human extinction" - in a decade, or two, or a few - is a real possibility - that seems unlikely to me - although they are only a small fraction of the 8 billion humans currently on earth, there are some pockets of people who could carry on with local resources even if the fossil fuel powered transport and manufacturing system and global trade infrastructure entirely collapsed
i've only personally known one person who was murdered, although i knew someone else whose estranged spouse burned down their house and could have died if they hadn't escaped - and only one person who committed suicide - i didn't have to go to war - all in all i have had a fortunate life
recently i have started listening to a bluegrass music station on the radio - as predictable as the lyrics are, they nevertheless are very sincere
may the creative forces of the universe have mercy on our souls, if any
Hi mistah charley,
Regarding our increasingly crazy weather, you should check out Dane Wigginton's weekly video on geoengineering:
https://www.youtube.com/@DaneWigington/videos
His documentary, The Dimming, is a great introduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf78rEAJvhY&t=4075s
Linh
"It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me, people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is oh, it is"
Always a pleasure, Linh. I especially liked the picture of the toddler carrying a bottle and sucking on a pacifier!
At least you have a saner world to return to, Linh. I grew up in San Jose , Calif. Can’t go home again. Where is home for me?
Hi Gina,
This is a big topic that should be addressed in an article, I think. Where to go when your society is no longer bearable? Another question is, at what point does one decide it's no longer bearable?
Linh
I think it becomes unbearable when you have no one you can talk to in real life (i.e. not just in computer world), who still emanates from the world of morality and common sense. Interesting that I started reading you on the Unz review, Linh. Ron Unz was a hero of mine in the old world. How could he have succumbed to the vaccine lies, given his seeming intelligence about so much else? My conclusion was that he was so much a part of that Silicon Valley mentality that he couldn’t see how corrupted it had become.
Well, Ron has a big ego and his own theory about Covid being a "neocon bioweapon to hurt China." Since the fact that the whole pandemic was a hoax to force dubious vaccines on billions of people undermines his rather silly theory, he's not willing to discuss it. That's one part. The other part is, the UR is also a limited hangout, and Ron will discuss some things, but not others.
I went through the same questions about Unz. The early Unz wrote interesting, eye-opening stuff that really helped one navigate to truth. And then with Covid he turned 180 on a dime. Sleeper cell or just threatened and made compliant? Or something else I’m not aware of?
What makes it bearable is making those people that are Narcissistic 'woke" as uncomfortable as possible and always challenging their cop out rationalizations.
Letting them know that Canada is at war with Ukraine against Russia, and that the capitulation of them to the CoronaPrank allowed the dystopia all is experiencing, including severe bigotry against countries that have never threatened us.
I kind of agree with you, Ernest, in a way. I tried telling people the truth, but the distance between truth and the fantasy land in which they seem to live is about as great as from the earth to the moon. Their entire "reality" is built on this sand castle and they can't let it slip away even one iota without some personal crisis overtaking them. They just won't go there. Just like the alcoholic who has to hit rock bottom before he can rebuild some semblance of a life.
"Just like the alcoholic who has to hit rock bottom"
Yes, a spiritual rock bottom.
Your blogspot is always eagerly looked forward to.
Ronnie plays his readership to generate some odd kind of authenticity from them.
The debates over 100's of comments, the threats of banning etc. I began thinking that maybe widening the responses at first will winnow them closer to a uncoersed resolution. His take on the CoVid1984 vaxxes, however was so hackneyed that I noticed many former commenters had disappeared, but the small degenerate contingent posts some whoppers that absolutely humiliate themselves...
however they lie and gaslight.
Certainly sometimes laughing is the only response to tales of inhumanity. I believe I told this story before, but - in the '60s or '70s, in a country which had a "revolution" every few years, a doctor was imprisoned for, well, being a doctor. His guard would perform the required tortures but also engaged in everyday conversation. The doctor on many occasions tried to appeal to the guard's obvious humanity. One day the guard asked the doctor if years hence, the doctor, as a free man, would attempt revenge against the guard. The doctor said "Of course not. My profession is to heal people". The guard replied, "But don't you see? Mine is a profession, just like yours."
the guard- acting according to his role and the expectations of his superiors, peers and subordinates, not according to his humanity. That story could have come right out of Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You".
"You need not believe me, but it’s an entirely different world. Older and more enduring, it will outlast that distant madness."
I completely believe you, Linh. I've seen it myself. Western youths are insane and broken. It's night and day with how most Asian socieities are, societies which know discipline, respect, studiousness. They have dark sides too, but the difference has become so stark that a society like Japan, China, Laos, Thailand, Philippines might as well be paradise.
Most Western kids nowadays have had bad upbringings that range from neglect to outright abuse. This has a wide array of deleterious effects, from creating more of the LGBTBQQ crowd to making outright criminals. Even those not so horribly affected still have no common sense, boundaries, how to speak, how to act. The adults in the US aren't doing them any favors either, many of them asleep at the wheel. The culture has changed such that it isn't necessarily allowed to do what needs to be done. Fathers aren't in control of the home, if they are even allowed to be in the home or start a family in the first place. Authorities take advantage of the law-abiding while letting real criminals go crazy.
I can easily see how bad upbringings has resulted in the coddling of criminals in many American cities, and the uplifting of degenerates. In the America of the 2020s, it's cool to be broken, and anybody who is somebody is an asshole and criminal. Any kid (and that's what they are, though they may strut around school as if they own the place) who hasn't indulged in badness isn't someone to take seriously. Long gone are the days of the good citizen, the good student, the good human being.
More and more of these horrible youths are growing into dysfunctional adults. It's yet another problem that only collapse could solve. The new American Dream is fleeing the nightmare.
'Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people' (Oscar Wilde)
Plato observed that in a democracy there is not a people who share a culture, but a collection of isolated individuals running wild. I guess today this is called social atomisation. The socially atomised individuals in a democracy are unable to maintain their culture and their mutual bonds, consequently the government binds them.and gains more and more control over them... and in our times, capitalism and the commercial sector sells them what goes for 'culture'.
I read "Clockwork Orange" many years ago and then saw the movie version of the book. It disturbed me considerably. But I've never made the astute connection as you have done here, between that book and the direction American society has taken, Mr. Dinh. (I did infer a connection between American culture and a later novel, "American Psycho." But I think your juxtapose is better. "American Psycho is too luridly over the top.)
I'm waiting for my passport to arrive so I can book a flight to the Philippines. I can't endure another winter here in New England. I am too old to cope with the miserable weather. I just learned this past weekend that the Philippines will allow older Americans (over 65) an extended stay if they transfer a modest amount of money to a Philippine bank account and have a small but guaranteed pension. I can meet all three criteria. Looking forward to escaping the exorbitant rents here and the angry, pushy people. Like you I like quiet places in which to write and think. No amplified, electric music blaring. No private cars driven by unhinged lunatics buying ever more gasoline to make Rex Tillerson and ExxonMobile shareholders rich. Good-by to all of that. For a long, long time.
I have a hard time watching many of the "transgressive" films of the seventies. I watched most of them in my twenties when I thought, like many semi intelligent people that age, that there was something "artistic" or interesting to things like coprophilia. So many of those films drip with cocaine use, sexual nihilism and gratuitous violence in a manner that I now find difficult to stomach.
I do appreciate Malcolm McDowell. What a talent and grin. The drugs and debauchery of the times turned his hair white, but those piercing eyes remained mischievous.
It had been years since I have watched Clockwork Orange but, if memory serves me well, that fictional world's a lot saner than modern America.
Today black crime and violence against whites is encouraged (Asians are caught up in it) and whites are (as are cops) at risk if they fight back and hurt the black thug.
I can't remember there being a war against normal life in CO. Maybe there is but the Jews are definitely waging one now like they did in Weimar.